in which i am once again dorky

[schmerica]

I have a half-hour between classes on Tuesday and Thursdays. Today I went to the student union, bought an apple fritter and a soda, and sat in the big window-y front area with the tables and chairs and clear view of the clock, and read Sunshine and wrote tiny snippets of random dialogue till it was time to leave for Medieval Judaism.

K: Fraser, in case you didn't notice, I'm avoiding you.

F: I did notice that, in fact.

[pause]

K: Well?

F: Hmm?

K: You're making it a little hard for me here.

F: Oh! Right you are, Ray. Pardon me.

And then during my walk to class I starting repeating "right you are" in my head until it sounded funny, and then "I want you" and "get you" and other such phrasings, and trying to figure out if the pronunciation of you as 'choo' after a word ending with a T is a regional dialect thing, and if so how broad a range it had. I came to no conclusions, however, as I realized I really have no clue who does and doesn't say it like that.

Comments

[cimness.livejournal.com]

people only say "choo" when they pronounce the t in "get". i don't know (remember?) the name for it, but i think it's one of those changes in pronunciation that occurs cause the word was harder to say in its original form, or less convenient for the tongue or whatnot. that doesn't mean it's not regional, though. i was thinking of the deep southern accent around alabama where i grew up, and how "ge' ya" is a more common pronunciation, but i'm pretty sure you hear "choo" occasionally (from dialect speakers) there too. okay, actually, "choo" is almost unknown i suppose but "get CHA" is pretty common.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's definitely a very good point. the change to "ch" is definitely a feature of the supposedly neutral broadcast american english accent, but I don't know about other dialects of English.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

i speak very much like that but without any of those special, distinctive midwestern markers. i think it's because i grew up in the south, but was kept from getting the accent because a) my parents aren't from there and b) i really didn't want to pick it up.

but i grew up with many kids in the same situation, or else the children of highly educated southerners who spoke similarly without or nearly without accent. and most of them still didn't do that harsh "ch"--i think because even if you don't speak Southern, if you live in the midst of it it's the strongest influence on your "musical ear", and southern speech is very relaxed, often very slow--the southern tongue is lazy and always seeks the shortest distance between two points, slurring over whole sentences, dropping as many consonants as necessary... .