i’m not orig from the midwest and i pronouce horrible that way (whore etc). so there.

Webster’s lists both pronunciations, but mine (and Dan’s and Julia’s) is first.

Jenny’s just doing the durrty south thing, right? “Huurrible”?

Harrible.

It’s the difference between a mid, back rounded vowel and an low unrounded one.

i was going to try to take that test again to see if i could get a different result, but i just can’t pick any different answers, because the other answers feel so wrong.

Your result: TEH MIDLAND

“You have a Midland accent” is just another way of saying “you don’t have an accent.” You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.

I also felt very confident about my answers, reprazent.

I’ve seen the whole “Mary, marry, merry” thing before as an example of differences in pronunication — but I can’t figure out how you would pronounce any of those words differently from each other.

I want to have a good voice for TV and radio. :(

hawrible.

whoore.

and jenny, i guess it’s because my accent is only at about 20% of it’s strength from what it was 7 years ago that i forget i may still have one. when i saw my younger sister at a family event last month she told me she couldn’t stand to listen to my accent (i think i was pronouncing my r’s).

I think, John, that I just like busting your chops about something so silly as how people from different regions of the country that have distinct regional accents pronounce a word.*

I don’t know how I say horrid. As I sit here in the computer lab whispering “harrid... whore-id” to myself, they both sound right to me.

I got South second to midland if I said that “pin” and “pen” sound similar. The fact that I could go either way there is, I believe, entirely attributable to Jeff. Anecdotally, a WV cousin of mine thought my name was “Ginny” until we ten or eleven because he’d never seen my name written out and “Ginny” and “Jenny” sound the same coming from people with southern accents.

*It’s the asterisk to nowhere...

That quiz is malarkey — you can’t know how you really pronounce things until you record yourself pronouncing them and use speech analyzer software to determine the height, length and roundness of vowels. Relying on people’s perception of how they say things only gives you results about people’s perceptions, not what they actually say. The quiz focuses almost entirely on vowels too, which is just one indicator of regional dialect.

Malarkey.

And I, in turn, enjoy getting overly defensive and self-righteous about something so silly.

Amanda — malarkey, but accurate for me, at least. Since I have, after all, lived in Chicago almost all my life.

i had a football coach who used to chide us for our “huss-shit effit out thay-yah.”

Weirdly my dad says “hawrible” and it’s always bothered me.

Wait, so you say “hahrrible” too??

No, I definitely say “whorrible”.

The Whorror would be a good band name?

“huss-shit effit out thay-yah.”

awesome. i miss those accents.

Kevin played football?

my best friend from back home went to UMaine and his senior year lived in a rented house north of orono (which is just north of bangor). his next door neighbor was this 70-something retired couple named herbie and barbara day, neither of whom had ever left the north woods in their lives. they spent their time sitting on their front porch getting sauced and speaking in the most impenetrable down east accents ever.

xpost- QB/WR/CB. i was actually much better on defense than offense.

Kevin, I can’t even parse that.

I am in the black for vacation time for the first time since June! I have .26 days of vacation.

So what’s the difference between “whorrible” and “hawrible”? The first pronunciation in Webster’s is “h®r-ə-bəl,” and when I looked up what “®” was, it said it was like the “aw” in “law.” The second pronunciation is “här-ə-bəl,” and the “ä” is like the “o” in “mop” or the “a” in “mar.” So I figured you either said “harrible” or “hawrible,” and that “hawrible” pretty much = “whorrible.”

(As I suspected, ILX doesn’t do O’s with dots over them.)

(Single dots, that is — not diareses.)

Kevin, I can’t even parse that.

Quarterback, wide receiver, cornerback.

So basically Webster’s doesn’t list “whorrible” as a pronunciation?

xpost, I meant his coach’s accent

Oh sorry — it took me a while, too: “Horseshit effort out there.”

So basically Webster’s doesn’t list “whorrible” as a pronunciation?

Yes, but I’m having trouble distinguishing between “whorrible” and “hawrible” myself.

HI DERE

Or, if you prefer:

The vowel sounds of American English

Aha.

“whorrible” = “or”

“hawrible” = “arrrrr”*

*pirate

Because most times you encounter an O, it’s going to be one of these three sounds:

bot

boat

bought

I’m suggesting (and this is what I think Webster’s is doing) that the O in “bore” is not a unique sound — it the “aw” of “bought” plus an R.

xpost Okay, Jordan, I was misunderstanding. The pirate sound is what all these East Coasters (Jenny, Jeff, Sarah, and Nick) say — what I was previously writing as “hahrible” or “harrible.”

Next time we hang out for a few beers, if I get buzzed enough I’ll do the UP accent and BLOW YOUR MINDZ

Right, so we’re on the same page. That is what I do NOT say.

In Apocalypse Now, Brando says “the harrur”, right?

In keeping with Kevin’s football coach quote, my hockey coach used to say things like “Ya gotta get da fuuck up dere on da wing and hit dem sissy faggots ‘fore dey cross da line fer dachrissakes!“

I think the first time I heard “harrible” and “harrur” was from my high-school drama teacher, who was from Pennsylvania.

All I know is I went to college with someone from Philly who said “ahrange juice” and called me “Law-rel”. I rhyme horrible with oar. Or whore. But not “hoor”.

called me “Law-rel”.

i’ll just call you shirley.

Surely not.

you’d prefer lavern perhaps?

or something without vowels maybe. lrl.

How are “bot” and “bought” pronounced differently?

boo-ought, i would guess.

i was saying “boo-ought.”

Depends on how much you flatten out the “o” in bot, I think. In mid-Michigan, it’s more or less already “baht”, so there’s slightly more O-ish-ness in “bought”. As in “bough”, not that anyone ever says bough anymore.

Haha, Amanda’s going to kill me, she keeps telling us we need to learn to use the alphabet indicators thingies, and I just described a sound as O-ish.

Sometimes it’s what’s called an “open o” as in the way that English people pronounce “bought”, “caught”, “ought” and BOT is pronounced either with an “ah” sound (represented by “a” in the bottom right of the “sounds of American English” diagram upthread. It’s the difference between a sound that is tense (open o) and one that is lax (‘ah’).

The IPA can be used to describe any language, which is why it’s handy when doing phonological transcriptions or interpreting phonological transcriptions of languages that we may or may not know. If you know the IPA and you see a transcription of a language you have no idea how to pronounce, it gives you everything you need to pronounce the word. It won’t tell you what it means or how it’s written (its orthography) but it will give you an idea of how to say it. You can also analyze patterns that way. It’s also why it’s futile to try to describe sounds as “flat” or “weak” or “wrong” or by using other vague/subjective adjectives. The IPA uses places and means of articulation to determine the differences between sounds.

Sorry about that.

FUCK!

So, today my old boss (who is way cool) and the two other guys I work directly with were going to go have lunch, bullshit, piss & moan, have a beer or two, etc. Well, today one of the higher-ups is in town, and co-opted our lunchtime. So, instead, we were going to lunch with my new boss, the higher-up, and a couple others. This option was slightly less appealing to me, but still, the prospect of a free lunch somewhere new was enticing.

So, I was sitting around waiting for a particularly nasty file to distill, and I heard people getting ready to go behind me. I figured they’d say “hey, let’s go” when they were ready, and we’d go. Then I looked around and EVERYONE is gone. I got completely ditched! Now I don’t have a clue what to do... I think I know where they went, but it’s a ways away, I don’t have my car, so I can’t just go over there. What do I say when they get back? I’m fucking pissed about this.

Open O is also slightly higher than ‘ah’. This is also visible on the diagram, which represents the shape of your mouth. Roughly.

That sucks, Dan.

Does anyone have a cellphone? Could you call them and say WHY YOU DITCH ME?

I assume they do, but I don’t know any of their digits.

Wait a second — I’m not sure it’s about tense and lax at all, but if there’s something more tedious than discussing pronunciation on the internet, please don’t tell me what it is. I don’t wanna know.

How about them [sports team]?

Boo Dan! That once happened here to another clerk and going to a hearing. The attorney asked her to go, the clerk said yes, and then a half hour later called her from the hearing asking where she was. The attorney had just left without getting the clerk or telling her she was leaving...

Bot = baht

Bought = bawt

I say ARRR-nge. I draw the line at Lawrel, although I could easily lapse into it.

oh yeah, i bought pretzels at jewel last night and learned two things: 1) they don’t taste any better in the toaster oven than they do in the microwave and it’s much faster to microwave them; and 2) the circuit in my kitchen can not handle me running both the microwave and toaster oven concurrently.

Oh Kirk Cameron, how low you have sunk. Did he have a meth problem?

No, he has a Jesus problem.

Barack Obama keeps sending me emails telling me how many days it is until election day.

Dear Barack Obama,

I HAVE A CALENDAR.

—AK

Oh yeah, I knew that, I just thought a meth problem could have led to the Jesus problem.

Barak must read ILX, ’cause he keeps sending those messages to my yahoo spam address too.

OK, that’s the best one yet. Truly, I am E.T.

I got two post cards from Todd Stroger yesterday.

ET was really the grand finale. I can’t think of anything else.

There’s a craigslist ad that says “we currently have 2 males and 2 females in the apartment and we want to keep a balance, so we’re looking for a male roommte.” THEN GET A DOG, YOU DUMB JERK.

shouldn’t they be looking for a hermaphrodite in that case? or is one of the males moving out?

AH! Jordan has inspired me.

And speaking of comics... They’re making a movie from 30 Days of Night? That had better not suck or I will destroy a small Alaskan village out of revenge.

I still haven’t read that.

It’s really good! And the art is super creepy. Although, I’m not sure if I finished the first series or not.

turkey sub made me sleeeeeeeepy.

Laurel: we are currently scheduled for 7:45 on Friday, smack dab in the middle of the lineup. However, the band before us, I Need Sleep, is pretty awesome, so it might be worth trying to get there by 7, and then John’s band is playing a couple of hours (?) later.

All right, 7pm is the plan. My parents are seeing a Bway show at 8pm and they gave me the night off from parent-sitting duties so I’ll get there sometime. If I email you my mobile phone no will you text me so I have yours?

yep—email to naamme at yahoo.com

Oh, I myspaced you already. Whatev.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic

Fuck the hataz. Just ’cause they have short attention spans...

I just glanced at my dictionary, which is still open to “horrible.” Apparently “hop o’ my thumb” is a term that dates back to 1530 meaning “a very small person.” Etymology: “earlier hop on my thumb, an imperative issued to one supposedly small enough to be held in the hand.” WTF.

I still like Lost! Actually, the last show that I purposefully watched during its regular season was The Simpsons/X-Files Sunday line-up. Oh, well and Project Runway. And soon Battlestar Galactica, when I catch up.

Dag. I watch a lot of TV.

I don’t understand that comic.

It’s simultaneously making fun of bad stand up comics and the TV show Lost.

Yenny, is there anything you want me to bring for the presentazione tonight? I will make the copies before you get there, so don’t worry about that. Snacks? Costumes?

I can’t think of anything. Is it going to bother the stoods that I got a little bit of burrito on my pants, do you think?

Nah, you can even sit down if you want! We can arrange the desks in a circle. Or you can spray burrito on their pants and everyone can start on an even playing field.

I knew my Burrito Super Soaker would come in handy one of these days.

“Good evening everyone! Today we’re going to try something a little different...”

The combination of the words “presentazione” and “snacks” has made me crave calzones somethin’ powerful.

i can’t wait to go home tonight and eat more pretzels.

This is my favorite webcomic about stand-up comedy.

The fact that you even have a favorite web comic about stand-up comedy is fascinating.

This is my favorite comic about food:

Did anyone ever watch Undeclared? I know it’s probably not as good as Freaks and Geeks, but I have a feeling that when I’m done with F&G (Disc 6 arrives in a couple of days) I will be jonesing for more lovable Apatow dramedy.

Haha.

I need an inexpensive and decent digital camera. I will take the first suggestion given to me.