@PRelations Southeast PA anecdata! AHL-mənd, PEE-can, "caramel" is hotly debated and anyone who says it the other way is Wrong no matter which side you pick. Farmer's fields... corn, soy, wheat, alfalfa hay, sun on green and brown-gold, the first shy sprouts peeking up in rows, manure-fertilizer scent mixed with soft rain-fresh dirtsmell. But then I live in farm country :P (Also, "farm field" is separate from "cowfield" and "pasture".)
Mine is rice and walnut groves, funny enough. I think I would have defaulted to corn if I hadn't spent five years buried in rice paddies, but we called them 'the fields' and just dealt with the Thick As Shit fog whenever the fields were flooded.
@PRelations from a NYC suburb, ah-mend, pee-can, care-ah-mel and i think like....tomatoes and veggies
i remember having an argument with my friends once on whether you pronounce lawyer like how it looks or like Loye-er also: my family says ahl-mond, peh-cahn, and car-mal but it varies about half and half with strangers and friends. there's also a generic sort of accent thing a lot of people i know (and myself) do where almond sounds more like almind or almnd with no sound there and other o sounds get cut short like that. farmer's fields gives me a vague crops picture in my head, but nothing specific.
only fields i see on a semi regular basis (arizona is not for growing. because alas we do not grow vast amounts of cactus for consumption yet.) are alfalfa and then theres a pecan grove near a highway.
Ahm-und or Ahlm-und, pee can, care uh mehll. Farmers field = ??? dirt with a buncha hay bales on it, maybe some horses or cows. Grew up in a small city nearish the ontario/NY border
oh also, apologizing and or the word "sorry"! im curious. i'm canadian and i sometimes hear jokes where people put on this exaggerated canada/minnesota accent and make a big deal about how we say "sorry" (and "about", come to think of it) So, i say "sorry" like either SOAR/SORE-ee or SAH-ree. and "about" is uh-bowt, rhymes with doubt.
Pennsylvania: Personally I have problems enunciating unless I actually pay attention to each syllable, so "sorry" comes out "sər-ee," or even just "sree" more often than not. Regional pronunciation seems to be "SAHR-ee." "About" rhymes with "doubt," yeah. (But then I have not noticed any odd accent in other Canadian friends' voices, so it may just be a "stereotype exaggeration" deal. [shrugs])
pecan = pə'kɑn (puh-KAHN) pecan pie = 'pikæn pa:i (PEE-can pie) almond = 'ɑlmənd (AHL-mund) caramel = 'kɑɹəməl OR 'kaɹəməl (CAR/CARE-ah-mul) sorry = 'soɹɪ (SOW-ry) sorry (sarcastic/flippant) = 'sɑɹɪ (SAW-ry) about = ə'ba:ʊt (uh-BOUT) farmer's fields - usually the mental image is post-harvest or pre-seeding: tilled or furrowed dirt, leftover bits of straw.
This is sort of related to a post I saw in this thread like 2 weeks ago but forgot to reply to and don't feel like searching for, but Spoiler: "Geographically unsettled" going from one geographically distinct area to another is.... an experience, to say the least. And I've noticed that the specific reaction depends greatly on where you're from and where you're going to. (Like, people going from plains to mountains have a different flavor of 'wrongness' than someone going from mountains to plains) I distinctly remember a school trip to Florida my freshman year, and this whole bus full of little Appalachian children looking at the floodplains in Georgia and just going "But.... where are the mountains? If we can't see them we must be on top of one, but this is flat? It doesn't make sense?" And the lack of mountains was generally very disquieting for the whole group. It felt so exposed and unsettling, like we were all tensely waiting to finally go down a hill into the valley that just wasn't there. On the way back you could feel the whole bus get less tense when we entered the hills, it was truely a phenomenon. Like the first mountain became visible in the distance and one kid just yelled "Look! The mountains!! We're almost there!!" and everyone plastered their faces to the window until we were back in Appalachia proper and could finally relax. Re: pronunciations pecan = puh-KAHN pecan pie = pee-KAHN pie almond = AW-mund caramel = CAR-mul sorry = sah-ree about = uh-BAT/BOUT, usually shortened to just the last syllable
weirdly enough, i pronounce pecan as pee-can but say peh-kahn pie. pecan = pee-can pecan pie = peh-kahn pie almond = awl-mund caramel = car-mel sorry = sar-ee
can attest; a sweatshirt here does not have a zipper. if it zips, it's a jacket. a hoodie is usually a hooded sweatshirt, but is OCCASIONALLY a zippered sweatshirt (with a hood, obviously).
"About" should rhyme with "doubt" for everyone. The question is whether the vowel is the same as that in words like "now" and "cloud". For me*, the "ou" of "about" sounds something like "uw" (with u as in "but"), but the vowel of "now" is more like "aw" (with a as in "bat", pronounced separately from the w; not the vowel of "saw"). In IPA I would represent them as [ʌʊ] and [aʊ] respectively. Also: pecan: /ˈpikæn/ PEE-can almond: /ˈɑlmənd/ ALL-mənd phonemcially but probably comes out as more like [ˈɑʊmənd] AW-mənd most of the time. caramel: /ˈkɛɹəmɛl/ CARE-ə-mel sorry: /ˈsɔɹi/ SOAR-y *My parents are from British Columbia; I was born in Montreal, but moved to Pittsburgh at age 2 and then North Carolina at 3. I'm not sure how much of that is relevant language-wise.
Okay, fair distinction. About and doubt's vowel sounds are both "ow" for me (as in "how," "now," etc.).
Sorry for me is sawr-ree. About is uh-bowt. Also fun dumb fact is that I cannot pronounce escape right. I always say ek-scape. It drives my girlfriend batty.
Being raised in a primarily Theraveda Buddhist culture/society/country, Christianity (and monotheism in general) is wild. Then to find out that Buddhism in the US is synonymous with peace and love? I nearly asphyxiated myself laughting. To this day whenever I see all of these Instagram/tumblr/websites selling/decorating with "Buddha" heads and mandalas or calling themselves "soft grunge" everywhere in their houses saying "namaste" and so on, I just...carefully block them and nope out of there. Then hysterically try to scrub my browser history clean of any reminders. They are everywhere. *puts tin hat on* Dishwashers. I'm 33, I only just started using the dishwashers three years ago despite coming to the US around 13, because I never understood what they were for. I used them as just another storage space. Ricecookers. I'm used to cooking in a pot over an open fire (and I've had to mention I'm from a very wealthy family) so this contraption amused the ever living snot out of me. Now I have an adorable 3 cup model that I just let sit there taking up minimal counter space because it's so freaking cute. I rarely use it. US tea comes in tiny little baggies! So cute! I love it! Ever been in a SouthEast Asian mom 'n' pop grocery store run by 1st gen immigrants? American grocery stores are surreal about how 100% perfect everything has to be. Produce has to be laid a certain way, be a certain roundness or redness or length. The damned meat is colored! What the hell, America?
