Accent/language differences

[melarie]

Does anyone else tend to have playful arguments about how to pronounce things or what to cal certain things because of your different accents or just having different words for things.

For example, the thing that prompted me to make this was us arguing over pasta. Being American, I say paw-stuh. He, being English, say past-uh. Which all good and well, except he keeps telling me there's an 'r' sound in my version, and that I'm saying parsta. Which I've now understood is because English people don't pronounce r's. (faster becomes fasta, par becomes paw, etc.) But I can't explain to him that his -ar- is my -aw- so there's is no 'r' in my pasta.... It's a confusing mess lol.

Anyway! What do you guys argue about, if anything?

[differentcountries]

Being Turkish, he pronounces accept as escape. I just cant make him say it right.

He likes to call me his girl in Norwegian, which cracks me up because he pronounces it funny.

He does not know all the nuances in English, so I sometimes have to remind myself he is not saying bad stuff on purpose.

[kittyxuchiha11]

Whenever we skype my girlfriend constantly teases me about the way i say words. She has the habit or repeating my words in this really weird accent and then laughing about it for ages. it's kinda become a thing we both do now. we just sort of make fun of each others accents in a jokey way.

she is forever making fun of me because of the way i make things sound like there's a R on the end of it. for example- idea-r. i'm not really sure if that's a British thing or if it's because i have a really weird accent haha

[NerdyChick]

My SO and I have a blast finding the differences in how we pronounce things. After reading your post I asked him how he pronounces pasta, and we see it now I say "paw-stuh" and he says "past-uh." We've had several occasions of finding out different ways we each pronounce things, or even words meaning completely different things. Such as a "purse" to me means the same as a handbag, to him that means a female wallet. So the first time I asked him to pass me my purse he just looked around all confused and I had to point at it, and he goes "oh! Your handbag." and I just said "yes my purse" he had to explain how it was different for him, and we both had a good laugh. I think the most interesting one was we were on video and he was fixing something and he goes "One second I need to go get a torch" and he went off screen, I was just so confused, because in my mind a torch is a wooden club with fire on the end of it He came back with a flash light and I just burst out laughing, after explaining it to him he laughed too. Meal names are also different, like pigs in a blanket is different for him, than the American version. While visiting the first time he said his mother was making "toad in the hole" and my first thought was well...cooked frog ^_^" I eventually asked him what was in "toad in the whole" and it was just basically sausages and batter. he laughed when I told him I thought it was going to be an amphibian dinner. His mother got a good laugh out of that too. But yeah, we get a kick out of our differences in pronunciation, we always find it fun, and though I'll probably never call a shopping cart a 'trolley,' I will always respect his terminology, just as he respects mine

[piratemama]

We're both in the states, but I'm in the South and have a distinct drawl. Sometimes, my SO will jokingly ask, "What did you say?" I pronounce many words differently, but he thinks it adds to my charm. My daughter is even worse, and sometimes her words blur together and you can't even tell what she's saying. Hers may be laziness!

[squeeker]

Yes I love joking about the different ways to say things. And a lot of times we end up saying things like each others way of saying things.

I say pasta like "paw-sta" if I'm feeling kind of fancy but normally I just say "pasta" so we don't really have that difference. I like to call things the British version of things.. like saying biscuits instead of cookies, chips instead of fries, crisps instead of chips, etc.. but then I tend to, to make it clearer, say "chip/fries" or "biscuit-cookies" and sometimes when I talk to my mom or something, I will start to say "biscuits" and then remember.. and say cookies like normal for a Canadian to say. :P But it's fun to joke around with it and argue who is right! lol

Yesterday, my boyfriend was teaching me how to roll my R's because I'm trying to learn Welsh and there are a lot of complicated words.. and it can be hard to get them right. I know he sometimes picks up things in the way I say things.. like because he knows there's a Canadian accent stereotype of saying about as "aboot".. if I ever say about and he thinks it sounds like 'aboot' he will point it out lol..

Oh and trolley.. I remember coming back from the UK one time and I went grocery shopping with my mom and was talking about calling it a trolley. :P And since knowing my boyfriend, there are a lot of Harry Potter references that now make sense.. how they called the thing they carried their trunks on a trolley.. that they called their suitcases a trunk.. that a trunk isn't the back of a car that you put things in (that's a boot) and that pudding is just basically a dessert.. and what we think of as pudding is actually custard to them.. oh and then it made me realize that Teletubbies was actually a British show and that's why the sun talked in British accent and that they called it "Tubby custard". lol :P It's a circle of British references! lol.. so many fun an interesting differences between the cultures!

It's funny to me how in the UK they measure their speeds by miles per hour.. like they do in the US.. I always had this impression that they were like Canada with that and would measure it in kilometers per hour! lol I'm glad they use Celsius though like Canada. I remember one time listening to a US radio station (right on the border of US/Canada) and hearing 80 degrees and thinking WOW THATS HOT! And yes it is hot.. but its normal summer heat hot! lol

[Firefly]

The way we say things is pretty much the same. There are a few exceptions. For example, for 3:45pm he'd say "Quarter of four" and I say "Quarter to four". That was confusing at first.
For the letter Z, I say "Zed" and he says "Zee".
There are a few things he pronounces differently. He pronounces room "rum" and that makes me giggle. Being Canadian, I pronounce the "U" in words a bit differently than he does. He says house more like "Howz" where I emphasize the "U" more. I'm not really sure how I'd type that out.

[lucybelle]

My SO says "sheeter" like "shitter" (and because of his job he says it a lot, it's a type of machine he works with). Funny every damn time.

[melarie]

The way we say things is pretty much the same. There are a few exceptions. For example, for 3:45pm he'd say "Quarter of four" and I say "Quarter to four". That was confusing at first.
For the letter Z, I say "Zed" and he says "Zee".
There are a few things he pronounces differently. He pronounces room "rum" and that makes me giggle. Being Canadian, I pronounce the "U" in words a bit differently than he does. He says house more like "Howz" where I emphasize the "U" more. I'm not really sure how I'd type that out.

Where is he from? He must have an odd accent because I don't think I've ever heard any of those things. Especially quarter of four.

Time is another thing that used to confuse me to no end. Whenever he said "half 4" I thought he meant it was 3:30. Until he explained that it was like saying half past 4.

Another one that we used to argue about was shirts. In the US we basically call all tops and t-shirts shirts. And they only call them shirts if they button up apparently.

I also didn't know that zed was an actual thing (other than in other languages) for quite a while. There was a member on the forum we met on whose name was xyz and I thought xy-zed was just a nickname or something whenever he talked about her.

[Firefly]

Where is he from? He must have an odd accent because I don't think I've ever heard any of those things. Especially quarter of four.

He's from New Hampshire.

[squeeker]

Oh speaking of time, that's another thing that was a bit different. My boyfriend often would use 24 hour time to speak, so it helped me get better with my 24-hour time.. which eventually helped me out at work when our front counter tills got changed and the time was in 24 hour.. it can be confusing especially with 17:00 and things.. because if you aren't used to it or are really tired, it can look like 7pm.. but it's really 5pm! And so that was kind of cool. And then when I was in the UK, if we were at a train station, usually the times would be in 24 hour time.. so I realized that it was more common there.

The whole Z/zed/zee thing is something that connects with me being Canadian.. I try to say Zed because I know that's how it's supposed to be pronounced in Canada and I think the UK does it like that too. But usually if I am not trying, I will say Zee.. and I blame it on the fact that my kindergarten and grade 1 teacher was American... lol :P

[Freebird]

We make fun of each other's accent all the time (I will admit he is better at it than I am). And sometimes I find myself asking him to repeat himself more than I'm willing to admit- haha!

But really, I think his British accent is amazingly sexy...

[kittyo9]

My SO makes fun of the way I say "burrito" and "llama" in English, but no fights about pronunciation. I think we both adore each others' accent.

[kittyo9]

My SO says "sheeter" like "shitter" (and because of his job he says it a lot, it's a type of machine he works with). Funny every damn time.

omg that reminds me-- the way my SO says "bear" and "bird" are almost identical, it cracks me up and I have no idea which one he's talking about. He sent me a picture a couple weeks ago with a bunch of animals on it that had been discovered recently or something and he was like, "I like the br" and I could not for the life of me figure out whether he was referring to the bird or the bear no matter how many times he said it.

He also pronounces all his short 'i's like double e (ee), so pig -> peeg, sit -> seet, etc., and there was one word he kept saying like that months ago that needed to be pronounced a certain way in order to make sense in its context and he just was not getting it.

[snow]

The way I say mirror, exactly how it's spelled, is apparently totally adorable and my man won't tell me how to pronounce it properly, because we call each other mirror and it makes him feel special with my accent :P

I also pronounce pizza pit-sah instead of pii-tsa, my man and his family loves it lol