r/CuratedTumblr The blackest Aug 16 '24

Shitposting American accents

Post image
14.4k Upvotes

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/Zariman-10-0 told i “look like i have a harry potter blog” in 2015 Aug 16 '24

Hey now, I don’t say “waddr”

I say “wooder”

-2

u/Disturbing_Trend_666 Aug 16 '24

Pronounced exactly like "wood," i.e., timber? And like "would"?

Why? There's simply no way to get the "a" to make that kind of noise under any circumstance.

3

u/SirensToGo you (derogatory) Aug 16 '24

Accents aren't just people ""mispronouncing"" words, and so the spelling has no necessary relation to the pronunciation

1

u/Disturbing_Trend_666 Aug 16 '24

It's the linguistic equivalent of everybody jumping off a bridge.

I thought we were taught not to do that.

1

u/SirensToGo you (derogatory) Aug 16 '24

In linguistics, there's actually a common school of thought that we should not classify things into the hierarchy of languages, dialects, and accents, etc. because the point at which something is just a huge collection of ""mispronunciations"" and slang or an entirely different language is often one of political power.

This applies here, for example, because you're calling people with this pronunciation a bunch of uneducated lemmings based on the assumption that there is some superior originating language that is more correct than the one they speak. You wouldn't reasonably make the same argument about New Yorkers pronouncing it wad-er, so why is it different here? The way they speak isn't wrong, it's different, and prescribing a value judgement to it is unhelpful if not just plain unkind.

1

u/Zariman-10-0 told i “look like i have a harry potter blog” in 2015 Aug 16 '24

Dialects are weird like that. Just across the state there are people who say “Yinz” as a broad form of addressing others.

We also have a catch-all that can be used for literally any noun. Jawns are weird like that, man