Red Heart Super Saver Yarn

Ah, yes, the Maine accent is entirely it's own. Then there are those Missourians who warsh their clothes.... I personally wash mine! Noreen

What, no maid? (Sorry, couldn't resist.) ;-)) Carey

No, but I DO have someone who vaccuums, and does windows! (DH!!!) LOL Noreen :D

There was a WalMart in Quebec that got unionised by a vote of the workers, so WalMart promptly closed the store. They are now being hauled up before the labour relations board in Quebec.. It is not yet resolved.

Roger.

Yes, the Boston accent is very British (south of England in fact, as there are a lot of regional accents in Britain too)

Roger.

The Kennedy's what? ITYM "Kennedys", a simple plural.

They just had a standard New England accent. The "r" and "a" at the ends of words are pronounced as a "schwa", which is a little symbol you'll find in a pronouncing dictionary that represents a sort of "blank vowel sound" that is not especially distinguished from any other vowel. It's just that when you are expecting an "r" and hear a "schwa", you mentally insert an "a", and vice versa. It's as much in the mind of the listener as in the mind of the speaker. A New Englander truly believes they are pronouncing those letters - it's just that we "hear" them in our heads, and that is _how_ we pronounce them.

Now that's just foolish. Nobody in the Kennedy clan or out of it would pronounce the "e" on the end of "horrible" that way. Or are you creating a new comparative adjective?

What gets to me is a UK problem: confusing "were", "wear", and "where" - many people from the UK pronounce them identically (I've heard them) and many can't tell the spellings apart either, to judge from their posts on the net.

=Tamar

But _which_ southern British accent? :-)

Generally, there are some similarities, enough so that, for instance, Welsh shopkeepers seemed to think I was English, but the intonation and rhythm of the sentences is almost entirely different.

I think there was an "upperclass drawl" that was popular in the late 19th century that may have affected the New England accent and then was dropped by the British. There are some elements that are similar up and down the Atlantic mountain ranges and yet there are major differences - when people try to write dialect, what they write for Southern accents could pass for some Northern ones, but when you hear it, it's very different. There are a few Southern accents that are totally incomprehensible to me unless I have time to translate them.

=Tamar

It's the intonation that gets me. I can guess words from intonation in American accents, but when the accent is on a different syllable, or different elisions are used, I'm lost. It's the difference between LAB-or-a-tor-y and la-BOR-uh-try.

=Tamar, who just got back from Scotland

But the sense of the sentence tells you which it is

O grumbles... noone told me you were here...........

Thanks for the correction; now that I actually see the difference with the "s" immediately after the "y" as opposed to an "appostrophe s" I'm surprised I made that error.

How interesting. But I certain seem able to distinguish the difference when I say, "Park the car in Harvard yard," as opposed to when I try to imitate the line" Pahk the cah in Hahvud yahd." Of course, maybe it *IS* all in my head, as you say. ;-)

My, the interesting insights we get from each other in the group.

--Carey in MA

Ah, but the Kennedys were/are Irish. Noreen

horriblah. Noreen LOLOL

~snipped~

nodding in agreement, specifically CAJUN accents, I actually have to read their lips! JM2C, Noreen horriblah! LOL

Ah, but that's a different problem, and not limited to the UK. Many people simply do not know how to spell. Period. For others it could simply be a typo - and we've all had those, no matter how good our spelling.

You see the same problem with "their", "there" and "they're".

Many times I've wanted to post corrections to various spelling errors, but it serves no purpose (other than your own satisfaction), and sometimes people are really offended.

Since we're talking about what makes people crazy - here's mine. People who post one sentence or one word at the bottom of a huge discussion without editing the post. There, I've said it. ;>)

Shelagh

Splort! Noreen

Not to mention... to, too and two, or your and you're. All of these examples are proper words so spell checkers don't catch them.

Heh. When a post gets too many lines, I don't bother to read it. And I generally trim one to only the pertinent remarks I'm replying to. Got into the habit when my newsreader would limit the length of posts and my comments (in the middle or at the end) would get cut off.

sue

At least those really do sound alike.

The difficulty with the "were", "wear", "where" problem is not just spelling - they also pronounce them identically. It's as though they don't realize there are three different words involved. The spellings seem to be used randomly. (I'm not even getting into the equally identical pronunciations of "we're" and "ware" in the same group.)

That's often true. Sometimes when I know the person will accept help with English as a second language, I will send a correction by email, but it's usually best not to post corrections publicly. Sometimes I take the chance but I know it's risky. I've committed my share of typos, too, so I try to be gentle about it. (I used to think my computer had a virus that misspelled words after I had typed them correctly!) My biggest difficulty is numbers - I can do math at home, but when I'm typing a post, something goes haywire and I can goof up the simplest arithmetic.

That used to be a big problem on AOL.

=Tamar

I was in Glasgow, for the World Science Fiction Convention. I didn't even get to a single yarn shop or museum. The convention took up all possible time.

=Tamar