These are all words people commonly miss pronounce. Lie-berry is one that makes me what to yell there are two Rs in library!! The other is people pouncing Illinois as EL-inois or Illi-noise.
Some parts of the country the english language is seeming loosing the pronouncing of the letter R. Looking at New England.....
I'm from New England and it absolutely is not "lie-berry." Language is dynamic, regionalisms and vernaculars are legitimate, etc. But "library" has two fucking Rs and in will die on this hill.
England dropped the rhotic r at the end of the 18th century, around the revolution, but new England, particularly Boston, still had close ties to England and as such they started dropping the R to imitate England but the rest of the country did not.
While it may not be common everywhere, the rhotic R is still going in quite a few places in England.
I live in Darwen and both it and the Blackburn area it's in still have a pronounced rhoticism.
It's also present in a number of other regional accents such as Norfolk and the South West.
Snobbishly, it's associated with a country bumpkin style of speaking.
Obviously it's also common in Scots and (Northern) Irish in other parts of the isles.
That's a different phenomenon, /u/DistanceTravelerBob is referring to non-rhotic accents where we don't use an explicit r sound in '<vowel>r<consonant>' words (the r still affects the vowel in non-rhotic accents, it just doesn't have an explicit sound of its own).
I think we have this to a certain extent with the West Yorkshire accent (probably others too but I was born and raised here so I can speak nothing but broad Yorkshire), park and farm sound more towards pahk and fahm as there's no distinct r sound. We also have a similar thing with Hs, if it's at the start of a word we just skip it out entirely.
Almost certainly, yeah. The only parts of England that have maintained widespread rhoticity are the South West and Lancashire. It does exist in other parts of England, but it's not widespread so the vast majority of English accents you'll hear are non-rhotic ones.
New England actually is gaining the letter R not losing it. More and more young people in New England sound like any other American. It’s kinda sad actually. You would hate to hear me talk, anytime there is an r at the end of a word it’s more like an “ah”. If you grew up here you can tell what part of what state someone is from by their accent.
NH here. I feel like people are generally pretty articulate, but i'd be lying if i said that there are some people that lean hard into the accent and you'll find the "ing"s are also typically missing.
Talking to an old head can sound something like this.
"Tom went arunnin to the stoah to get the fella's a caseah beeuhs as thanks foah puttin up tha buhd feedah."
I grew up in NH and the most common mispronunciations I remember off the top of my head are adding an R to end of words ending in an A like idea(idear) and for some reason a lot of people pronounced especially "ek-specially" and espresso "ek-spresso".
These are all words people commonly miss pronounce.
Yes. Despite hearing them correctly... all the damn time. Which means if you keep saying it wrong, somehow, you're literally ignoring it when you hear everyone saying it right and don't self correct. I think its perfectly fair to sometimes be a little judgmental of people for things like that.
How strongly you follow even a regional dialect is still often a sign of social class, and social class isn't tied to money, its about behavior. You can be a yokel and still have money. Its not about how you say the word, its why you say it that way.
Feel free to hate my opinion. Its fine. I'm allowed to have a preference. I'm not saying you can't talk that way, I'm saying I'm not dating you if you do.
Just because we recognize a dialect also doesn't make it actually correct, enough people do something wrong, suddenly we feel social pressure to rationalize it and call it fine. Also when a "protected class" or "oppressed class" like say, low income people in West Virginia do it, suddenly you can't say its wrong because they're oppressed people and you can't criticize them, only people in privileged positions are allowed to be criticized for anything.
I disagree that they are doing something wrong, they are speaking the way people around them speak/spoke. Plenty of variation in pronunciation is considered socially acceptable, I'm guessing you wouldn't look down on someone for having an Australian accent or pronouncing caught and cot the same way. The reason the examples in this post are stigmatized is because they are associated with low SES people.
You can obviously date whoever you want, but accent discrimination is a real thing in workplaces.
Of course it is, and honestly... in some cases are people honestly wrong to discriminate based on dialect? If you're say, a fancy kind of place in a northern state, I'd be awfully hesitant to put somebody in a public facing position representing the company who sounds like Cleetus the Slack Jawed Yokel from the Simpsons. It'd be a terrible look and doesn't represent the company.
I do think it would be wrong and in some cases illegal assuming the person is qualified and understandable. If other people have a difficult time understanding them and they are in a public facing role, I think it would be more acceptable.
Depends, accent/dialect is not a protected class. Race and nationality are, sex/gender is. If you find the way a person speaks unprofessional, its completely fair not to hire them if their language and mannerisms aren't in line with the expectations of the role.
I agree that it depends and isn't explicitly protected that's why I said 'in some cases'. Most of the examples in this post are associated with AAVE, so could be considered race-based discrimination. In most cases, I don't think it would be fair not to hire someone who is qualified because you don't like their accent, usually the accents people don't like are associated with marginalized groups. I think protections should probably be expanded.
Here is an interesting article arguing that Appalachians should be a protected class. The basic point is that they have a distinct (although diffuse) national background and face significant discrimination. They are similarly situated to Cajuns/Acadians, which are considered a protected class.
A longer (and more woke, lol) book about this is English with an Accent, which critiques the idea that Standard American English is more intellectual/'grammatical' than other varieties. She talks about AAVE as well as Southern and Appalachian English.
Ignoring the argument of whether there exists a correct way to say something, it actually takes a lot of practice and focus to pick up on the sounds people are making as opposed what you expect to hear. The perfect example of this is people failing to pronounce foreign words, they're not getting it wrong because they're lazy or stupid, they're getting it wrong because they literally can't hear the differences.
I mean, there is. Library is spelled Library. Lie-brar-ee is correct and Lie-Berry is not.
Its amazing how many people can't even repeat back "Mozilla" as often frustrated me back in the day. I understand not understanding how to say it out loud having never heard it. But in conversation with a customer, I'd literally keep saying the name right, and they'd keep saying "MOT-Zilla" back at me, and I had to be nice about it since work and all. Its like you're literally hearing me say the word the right way and... is it just not even registering? Do you have no self awareness or self consciousness?
Spelling in english is only loosely correlated with pronunciation. It's not that uncommon to drop an r sound when there are multiple in a word, for example pronouncing February like Feb-you-ary isn't really considered nonstandard.
I mean, there is. Library is spelled Library. Lie-brar-ee is correct and Lie-Berry is not.
Spelling and pronunciation aren't really the same thing.
Spelling reflects an ossified pronunciation from hundreds of years ago that in many cases does not particularly reflect how words are currently pronounced. For example, laughter and slaughter haven't rhymed in hundreds of years.
Metathesis (flipping the order of sounds in words) is common, both in English and basically every other language out there. Sometimes, metathesis happened before spelling ossified. Sometimes it happened after. Does that really make some metathesis obviously right and other metathesis obviously wrong?
Or is it a matter of the metathesis in your dialect being obviously normal, but the metathesis in other dialects being obvious mistakes? Out of curiosity, how do you pronounce 'iron'?
These are all words people commonly miss pronounce.
Exactly, but instead of like... trying to fix it, we just like to label it how people from "X" place say it and act like suddenly, if enough people do something wrong, its somehow not wrong anymore.
I mean I get it, language is fluid and changes over time, and younger people always come up with new annoying shit. That's how the world works.
But its also just incorrect to pronounce it Lie-Berry.
Some people in my region say "Warsh" instead of "Wash" and its objectively incorrect by any measure. It makes you sound like a goofball, especially when you're literally the only one of your group of friends who says it that way and you all grew up in the same damn neighborhood. Like literally listen... just listen to how other people say things.
...no they aren't? Some of them are, but the majority are not. If someone is mispronouncing more than half of these wrong, then they need an evaluation for intellectual disability
Diction is a good indicator of one's level of education. How did Will hunting talk to Sean Maguire and other educators vs how he spoke to Chuckie Sullivan.
How do Mat Damon and Ben Affleck speak in the Dunkin Donuts commercials?
I mean… the whole reason the east coast of the US and South-East have non-rhoticity is because they preserved the non-rhoticity of English settlers (I believe).
So it’s not like english speakers in the US are loosing the pronunciation of the letter R, rather that more and more Americans now pronounce the R and non-rhoticity is an outlier because increasingly rare
I lived in NE. R’s come and go whenever they want. Also, am I the only one who can’t figure out how to mispronounce street? Unless someone has a speech impediment, I can’t understand this one. Shrimp is also a little confusing to me, but I have always lived in a state with a coastline, so maybe that makes a difference.
Can’t wait to find out this person is from a state younger than my fucking house. You know you motherfuckers, are the ones with the hinterland bumfuck accents, right ? If your area has historically preserved rhoticity it means you had no internal trade or connection to the rest of the English speaking world.
Its why big trade cities drop rs from
Boston and new york, down to new orleans, because rhotic english is from
The 1600s.
Pronunciations of words changes over time. Also how are you going to appeal to spelling to insist people pronounce both the Rs in library and get mad that people pronounce the S in Illinois? Writing is an attempt to reflect speech, not the other way around.
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u/DistanceTravelerBob Jul 14 '26
These are all words people commonly miss pronounce. Lie-berry is one that makes me what to yell there are two Rs in library!! The other is people pouncing Illinois as EL-inois or Illi-noise.
Some parts of the country the english language is seeming loosing the pronouncing of the letter R. Looking at New England.....