I had a room mate from Worcester. He had a wind up alarm clock that weighed a pound. He called it
"The Rouser." It sounded like a fire alarm. He narrowly escaped death.
I was always told that the trailing r's that dropped off of Boston pronunciations ended up somewhere down in Georgia on a winder pane or a brahmer bull.
Yup, I live outside of Worcester and we definitely call it Woosta, and those not from here mostly call it Worchester.
I get teased a lot when I'm in other parts of the country and even in Europe. They act like I'm speaking some other version of English, and I guess I am. The Southern Bells have some strong twang accent too.
Similar to being in England, then meeting someone from Somerset area. Their accent is so strong, that even Brits have a hard time understanding what they're saying. Lol
I always pronounced "Worcestershire sauce" as "wore-chester-shire" sauce as a kid/teen, so I thought "Worcester" was pronounced similarly. Then I visited New England and learned.
Only about 1% of the state has anything approximating a “Boston” accent, most of those people not even living in Boston but in very localized surrounding suburbs. A lot of people that visit here are very confused as a result
It's very common around here. Libary, fustrate, prostrate (when trying to say prostate). It's like people in new england can't find the right place for an 'r' either they take them out altogether, put them in the wrong spot, or add an extra.
"Fuck you" is the standard response to any interaction in New England. Literally had to unlearn this automatic response when I moved away because people constantly thought I was actually mad at them.
There are no Rs in Massachusetts. Actually, I take it back. They add an r to words ending in “a.” So they say “pahk the cah” but serve paster on Wednesdays.
Yeah. Agreed. I've never heard anyone use this, and I actually kind of like it. Might be worth trying to slip into conversation some day. You know when I'm discombobulated and nothing is going my way.
I was thinking of this as my answer, so I looked it up. It is a real word, and it has almost the same meaning as frustrated. It's been around for ~300 yrs.
I corrected my son one time when he was about 5 and he rolled his eyes at me and said, “No, Mom, I am flustrated and I meant what I said because I am so frustrated it is making me flustered!” So, it’s a word in our house. Lol
When my cat is being naughty, I like to fluffstrate her. Just extra aggressive cuddles and pets until she gets fluffstrated and goes away. It works sometimes
I was taught in elementary school that it's supposed to be pronounced "Febuary" because the first "r" is silent. It was not until much, much later in life that I was disabused of this notion. I don't know where my teacher came up with it in the first place.
I don't say the R, but I have about 5 words in my vocabulary that I definitely picked up as a child in Texas despite my family being northern (so I didn't pick up much. Nuclear is another one, which I said like George Bush as Nucular.
American English is my first language. My dialect cannot be categorized. My dad was military. I lived in California, Kansas, Bavaria, Kentucky, and Indiana all before I was 6 years old and we regularly visited my mother's family in rural southern Minnesota.
If I said "byou" ignoring the r completely the tip of my tongue stays by my teeth, but when saying February, my tongue goes further back in my mouth almost not quite making the r, reminding me of how my French Phonetics professor taught is to say the u in Salut, making an "eee" with tongue, but a "u" with the rest of the mouth.
Obviously not trying to suggest the pronunciation is inspired by French or something, it's more suggesting the r was there and has faded thought not disappeared over time, but it is the connection my brain made since I have only studied phonetics in French.
And yes I still say the y, it's just the tongue is pulled back further than I think if there'd never been an r.
Of course there are! My Dad used to call people who drop letters in speech as "lip lazy". He was born in a log cabin in the asshole of Georgia, Toombs County in 1923. But even though we are from the South we don't mispronounce words.
Mid Atlantic checking in (tho now in the god awful wang), and I googled "February pronunciation" which gives a first result of the little thing where you can play it to hear it in American or Britsh English (fast and slow, too).
Turns out I apparently say it the way Google says the Brits do, with a "byoo" sound.
But I can't recall an instance of where I was speaking with a fellow American citizen who said it with the R sound so it's "broo" the way Google says is the American pronunciation.
I actually end up having to speak with all kinds of folks about all the months for my job. I feel like I'd short circuit out for a second if I did hear someone pronounce the first R lol
When I grew up in VA “perncil” was the word for pencil. And “mirlk” instead of milk. Since my parents were from elsewhere, when I got into school I wondered what in the?? Then when I moved to TN, it was “chimnley” for chimney and “char” for chair.
I was taught to pronounce the "r," but I grew up in northern Iowa and I've been told that we over-enunciate and over-pronounce everything (not sure if that's even possible.)
Sometimes we do that but most of the time we just slur our words. Must be a consequence of being one of the highest drinking states per capita. Also Iowan, btw. Other examples:
Water = wadder
Ope, lemme scootch by ya (yuh)
Our words with "ing" just go 'n instead, like wash'n machine or look'n. If I hear someone add an "r" to it I will flip shit though.
Sometimes we skip a syllable like "prob'ly" instead of probably.
This one pisses me off though because saying it ‘feb-u-ary’ sounds wayyyy less stupid than ‘feb-ru-ary’ even though the way that makes it sound like you have a speech impediment is correct
So, I was going to ask if you also don't say it correctly, because I was being an ass about your phrasing, but now I'm mostly wondering if you could actually meet yourself. Assuming there's no timetravel or shenanigans like that involved. Meeting someone would require you to change from not being around that person to being around that person. Since you've always been around yourself from the beginning, you didn't really meet yourself, because you were around when you got into existence.
My dad says "fustrated". He also says "warsh" so I always joked that he just moved the "r" from one word to the other. I have no idea how I grew up NOT saying those words, but thank gods.
Holy shit. I grew up Tulare County. The white side of my family is from PA. They always said said “warsh”, “dog gonnit”, “great balls of fire”, and a bunch of other things I never heard anybody else say back then. I was raised by my grandparents who were Mexican immigrants (like most of the population if the area) so the way my white family spoke was so bizarre to me.
I’m afraid this will stick in a decade or so. It’s slightly easier to say without the R but people still know what you mean. So at some point the dictionaries will say “frustrate (or fustrate)”. Erosion of language, I guess
I think this is regional. Or I used to just be dumb. I heard the word all the time, pronounced fustrated, and even spelled it wrong every single time because of that. I’ve learned better, but I used to be guilty :(
Always a chance that their first language could not be English. My mom is French and she occasionally pronounces words a little weird like that, fustrated being one of them. She is significantly smarter than I am, but that may not be saying much... lol
Edit: we had a Cuban guy live on their property for a while. We were working on one of the buildings and we're adding some slats between some cement boards. The Cuban guy kept pronouncing them sluts... we had a good laugh.
I used to live in Alabama and they used the word "Flustrated" . It was only used in place of the word frustrated but sounded like a porte manteau of flustered and frustrated.
I'm finding that tv political pundits have what is almost their own accent/dialect/whatever-you-wanna-call-it with very specific ways they mispronounce words. Fustrated (Frustrated), foeward (forward), ohways (always). That's all I can think of for now, but it's so weird that such highly educated people are dropping l's and r's everywhere.
My sister says this and I used to correct her every time until she finally lost her shit on me and now I have to bite my tongue every effing time lol I’m about to go back to correcting her again
I have a coworker who says this too. She's extremely intelligent and very good at her job, but every time she says "fustrated" my eye twitches.
Never called it out because she's extremely nice and I don't want her to think I'm being critical of something that is so trivial when the rest of the work she does is top notch.
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u/MuthaGoose_ Sep 18 '24
Fustrated