Staunton, VA is STAN-ten
source: old Virginia roots - this time paternal grandmother's line
but why they pronounce McGaheysville ma-GACK-ees-ville I will NEVER grasp. And Montevideo, VA is pronounced mont-video, as in played on a VCR.
Printable View
Staunton, VA is STAN-ten
source: old Virginia roots - this time paternal grandmother's line
but why they pronounce McGaheysville ma-GACK-ees-ville I will NEVER grasp. And Montevideo, VA is pronounced mont-video, as in played on a VCR.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but adding an "r" sound between one word that ends with a vowel and a subsequent word that starts with a vowel is actually proper English and has a long history. It came to us from Britain.
So, for example, if someone is saying "I have no idea about that" it is not improper to insert the "r" sound in between "idea" and "about." It is not necessarily considered "standard American English," but it is not improper.
What IS wrong is using the "r" sound when there isn't another word that follows. For example, "I have no idear," is incorrect. The "r" was only ever supposed to be used in a sentence in which a word ending with a vowel was followed immediately by another word beginning with a vowel.
I agree with you that, in general, even when used properly, it falls on most American ears as grating, wrong, and annoying. But the truth is that it is only two of those three things.
It seems to be a Boston thing, particularly. However, Boston does other things to people, too, apparently. I had to hide my smirking back in high school, when our Bostonian world history teacher got to the period between the World Wars and began discussing the rise of the "Narzis". That unit was a fun couple of weeks for some of us, and it had nothing to do with WWII...
I had a secretary from Boston who, one day at lunch, carried on about her experience at the Central Ottery in Boston, and I was convinced they had some large otter facility there...until she told me she was talking about the Central Artery, basically I-93 thru Boston...
I toured the state prison for a class in college and the professor was told to take the keys to the "far tar". Perplexed, he place the keys on top of the back tire (he mistook the guard as saying "far tire"). The guard goes nuts and starts yelling "FAR TAR! FAR TAR!". I had to translate that he was yelling "Fire tower."
Yowntoo? Transition: Do you want to?
It just occurred to me that two words that irk or perturb me are irk and perturb.
people who live in Pennsylvania's largest city often refer to it as "Fluffia."