Ask Lemmy

It's "Zed" not "Zee"

I'm told there are differences between "merry", "marry", and "Mary", but I don't believe it.

I haven't lived there in a while and I don't pronounce it that way anymore, but where I grew up, water is universally pronounced "wooder".

I pronounce Kraken phonetically - "krayken" - but the world seems to prefer "cracken".

Crayon: crown

Caramel: CAR-mul

Pecan: peh-CAWN

My kid got a worksheet on the long A sound. She got through most of them but was stumped on the "lobster". I looked at it - Lobster, Crawfish, neither of those have a long A sound, what the heck?

Hours later it occurs to me.

OH, Craaay-fish? Who in the world calls them that? Nobody here. Where was this printed?

I moved to AZ and I can now tell who is from here and who moved in from out of state by how they pronounce the town name Prescott.

Houston the city and Houston the street.

As I live in the south I hear my "how are you all doing" morphing into "howya'lldoin" and there's nothing I can do to stop it

Melbourne.

Now most will read that and go Mel bourn. But in Australia we say Mel Bin.

A really easy way to tell if someone isn't an Aussie while there.

Elemen-tary or documen-tary

The tary pronounced like Terry. Apparently this is unusual outside of this region.

Boston area doesn't use "r".

The famous: "Can't pahk(park) your cah(car) in Havid(Harvard) Yad(yard)".

When I was in school, I had a teacher who insisted on pronouncing the word "across" as "acrosst".

I lived in Louisville, KY briefly, and the official pronunciation is apparently “Luuhwuuhh”. You will be mocked if you get it wrong.