Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Differences in vowel sounds are what principally differentiate one "accent" from another...
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I recently finished reading
Cryptonomicon. When one of the protagonists first went to England, the other men in a meeting kept referring to
woe-to-hice. It took the protagonist a while to realize they were referring to him; his name was
Waterhouse.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
...how people pronounced the three words "marry", "Mary", and "merry". In British English those three words have distinctly different vowel sounds, but in most American accents two of the three - or even all three! - use the same vowel.
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I'm in the southern U.S. I just said all 3 words aloud (why are my co-workers are looking at me a bit stranger than usual
) and, yep, they all come out about the same.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cassidym
...The more German beer you drink, the better you speak German....
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Or maybe it's, "the more German beer you drink, the better you
THINK you speak German"