18 June 2009

The Utah Accent

A while back I wrote a post in which I mentioned the peculiarity in Utah speech, and Bart commented that he was curious to know what I meant by that. Finally, the post that has been in my head for months has come to fruition.

And so it begins.

In Utah this:
is pronounced the same as this:
And this:
is pronounced the same as this:
I find this aspect of the accent particularly interesting because it is the opposite in country music. For instance, the place of fire and brimstone is pronounced the same as the weather phenomenon in which balls of ice falls out of the clouds.

Surely I'm not the only one to notice this?

8 comments:

Science Teacher Mommy said...

My ears burned for weeks after I came back from Australia.

Packrat said...

No, you aren't the only one to notice this. It is the same in Idaho, except that my grandparents and parents wouldn't let us say our words that way. Whenever we met someone new, they thought we were from some place else.

Noelle said...

Oh no, we totally mock it as well. But you have to add pellow and melk to the list too.

Bart said...

I guess my problem with this assessment is that most people from Utah don't speak like this. Some may, but the overwhelming majority do not. At least that has been my experience. That said, I certainly enjoy listening to people who DO have funny ways of saying things, wherever I may find them.

heidikins said...

The one I can't stand is when feel and fill sound the same. Drives. Me. Crazy.

And then, of course, there is "mountain" coming out like "mou'in" and "bitten" coming out like "bi'en" and "get" coming out like "git".

Sigh.

xox

John said...

My southern-Utah native mother-in-law pronounces 'farm' as 'form'. There are so many many others.

Jillian said...

No you're not the only one who noticed. I could hardly understand people when I first came back from the UK. I had to ask them to say things twice. They'd look at me all weird because I came from a place that had spoken "the same language" after all.

Wrong. Very wrong. It's not the same. At all.

Ana said...

I have a friend who was studying at BYU-H and one time some kid had jumped on one of the tour carts and was drivin' it around crazy. So she calls PCC security and can't get them to understand her cos she's saying "cart" with a kiwi accent and they keep thinking she's saying "cat" because of her apparent lack of "r", which naturally results in a hilarious misunderstanding with the security folk thinking that some kid is running rampant around the Polynesian Cultural Centre on an out of control cat (the mind boggles) and her getting increasingly frustrated to the point that she eventually screamed "There's a kid on a caRRRRRRRRt!!!" down the phone in a heavily put-on American accent with plenty of "r" attitude.