Numero Cinco ,'The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
Ok, that's so something I had missed in nearly 30 years, despite hearing many many stories of my dad's mystification at his car being called a cahmengear and various other NE-ese stories. And knowing my dad grew up without Js.
Never occurred to me it was an accent. Huh.
Just emailed what I hope is another lost friend (in her case, I lost all her contact info in a computer disaster.) It's like a plague!
mystification at his car being called a cahmengear
Hey, now, my marmee drove a cahmengear.
Granted, I made this up out of my head, but it makes sense, doesn't it??
cahmengear
I was following along nicely with all the pronunciation talk until this word. I can't deaccentize it.
Hey, now, my marmee drove a cahmengear.
Hee. See, my parents were from the midwest (my dad, a swedish immigrant community, hence the lack of Js) and educated in SoCal. So when dad had a postdoc at Harvard, it was a wee bit confusing.
Boston also made dad stop driving to work from Scituate(? Either that or Felton, but I think that was where they lived in CA amidst the redwoods. I get confused. It was near World's End.) Dented his grill the first day, he did, in insano traffic. Mind you, this was probably 35 years ago.
Hey, now, my marmee drove a cahmengear.
I used to drive a cahmengear.
(Jen it's a Karmann Ghia, made by VW.)
Jen, Karmen Ghia. (or however that is spelled.) A really cute little car my dad loved that alas, didn't have a back seat. My arrival and Mass's salting (and thus bad rust issues) prompted him to sell it. And he STILL talks about that car.
Karmann Ghia
Oh!
(I was trying to get that into a NY accent, and had all the right sounds, but couldn't figure out any way for those sounds to arrange into words.)
Scituate
That's MA. I have fambly there!
Karmann Ghia
Oh, OK, I feel better now. Because I'd never heard of that before. Thank you.
Sadly, though I know I've posted this before, I'm going to repeat it here, because there is, as of yet, no Groundhog Day Thread (discussion of which now belongs in that thread. Weird): my mispronunciation that caused the most stunned stares of disbelief was Chatham, MA. I said, I think, KAY-thum. It's CHAT-um. It was funny.