Help! Our Youth Have Lost Their T's

Help! Our Youth Have Lost Their T's


More & more these days I'm hearing the 'youth' of America not pronouncing the t's in their words...most recent was the college-degreed NYC weather lady (from FL!) who pronounced Manhattan... "man-ha-in," where the 'a' in 'ha' is pronounced as 'a' in 'pat.' Should be as:
[video=youtube;56wfX1QVm2U]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56wfX1QVm2U[/video]

Is this "no-t' phenomenon bothering just me or does it 'nails-on-the-chalk-board' others? Makes the youth of today sound ignorant or ghetto!

A letter asking the same question:

http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t109-120.htm

 

My entire generation is sad, especially if this is the new trend.

 

The funny thing is that if you talk to some of these kids, often you have to repeat yourself as they are listening for 'their accent.'

Having a mid-western to western accent in general (I can dial up Texan when I get around Texans) being raised as a military dependent and traveling all thru the states as well as Europe. I know in places that had a distinct accent, often after speaking to one of the locals, I would get "You arent from around here, are you?" Not an insult, but a query as often, again, I had to repeat myself as I wasnt speaking their 'expected' accent!

I now live in AZ and dont have that problem..ha ha

 

It's the nature of youth to rebel, and especially if doing so will make their parents uneasy. The major difficulty being that since the 1960s it's become increasingly difficult to shock parents -- enrage and disgust then, yes; shock them, no. Oddly enough, sounding as if all that time, effort, and in some cases -- where private schooling is concerned -- money was essentially flushed down the loo, just might serve to shock the hell out of parents. You never know about the psychology of that sort of thing.

The amusing part -- to an old cynic such as myself -- is that arrogant youth assumes that it's just a matter of sheer will power to 'give up' the bad habit and return to speaking years later as if they'd indeed received a half decent education, being unaware that essentially they are programming their subconscious and that in the future as mature or seasoned adults a stress situation will inevitably see them returned to sounding like crack-heads. Glorious!

 

Don't blame the youth - Americans tend to pronounce the 'T' when it occurs in the middle of a word as a 'D', and have seemingly always done so. Water become waarder, and writing becomes riding. You need to aspirate and use the thorax to pronounce vowel sounds, and the 'T' sound, efficiently, and as American speech is very nasal, it becomes difficult. I hear some of the same characteristics in broad Australian speech.

 

Yeah accents are funny things. I'd never been outside of Texas before entering the service and so I hadn't realized that I spoke with an accent (one of the variations of a Texas drawl) until I entered boot camp. Later on, however, I found myself slipping over to the accent and speech pattern of whatever group was dominant for a time. Not any of it was a conscious decision on my part. So anyway the upshot of this was that whenever I returned home on leave my parents and friends sounded really strange to me for a day or two until my sub-conscious found the correct speech pattern file and accent data and dropped me back into it.

 

Yeah, my gen started 'rebellious' R&R and each gen since then has taken it to another level! And for outrageousness, look at the 70's....today you couldnt get me in a disco full-polyester shirt and leisure suit! Same with today's movies---more blood, guts, & gore, and 1/2 sec frame switches to simulate 'action' where today's viewer cant 'study' a scene as in the past.

Thk goodness for rocker/recliners, sonny...ha ha

 

One thing I've seen in areas like WI, TX, and NY, the older one gets living in those areas, the more pronounced the accent!

When I moved to the N. TX burbs at 15 yo (coming from MT), the native-born Texans in HS had an accent but not too pronounced. But then I met some of their parents, and the exaggeration of the accent was profound-then after 10 yrs there, I moved out to W. TX...no more needs to be said. ha ha

 

Shudder! I wore things during the 1970s that should have been labelled 'crimes against society' or at least 'hard on the eyes'.

 

"Oh no, you dint!"

You went there..ha ha Yeah...GUILTY, and I spent 1 yr in England living on the economy growing up

 

Aesthetically I'm okay with the generic Texas southern drawl type of accent but what has always sounded cool to me was the 'Georgia Peach' accent when one of their ladies was actually trying to get a -- er -- rise out of a fellow. Whew! Talk about generating a sensual atmosphere using only one's voice! Ah but then the ubiquitous television and internet markets will probably one day relegate all such regional habits to the dust bins of history -- eventually anyway. I suspect that in another century all such regional accent habits will be pretty much gone.

 

Will be some blending/toning down, but..after 8 yrs long-haul trucking, & having spent 20 yrs in TX/OK, I still had a hard time on the CB understanding AL & some NC, add in Georgia (sound like dogs barking)---but as the bigger cites like Atlanta grow there is mixing the out-of-staters w/the locals.

I like the E.TX accent and was allowed to use 'aint,' as I was forbidden most of my life..ha ha

 

"My aunt ain't et ants yet." Heh, now try saying that three times fast.

 

Well, "if'n I hed tha slo West Texass 'gait' I might cud"

Think you mentioned in another thread that you were of Hispanic heritage living in TX (?)

Did you get the "Messican" pronunciation by the white S. Texans? In the W. TX oilfields it was SOP to refer to Hispanics as that with no 'personal' insult intended...

 

No, actually I am of Italian descent, but Sicilian in background so that my skin-tone is naturally rather dark and odd enough looking that in my childhood I was more readily accepted by equally dark toned Hispanics than by lighter skin-toned Caucasians of northern European descent. But yeah, most 'Whites' thought I was Messican. It was . . . interesting. The upshot of it all was that I ended up having no conscious prejudices against any race or ethnic minority and yet I also don't buy into the kneejerk leftwing notion that all minorities MUST be saints simply because all White (for some reason, though, only Whites Right of Center) are EVIL. I was too often the unnoticed insider/outsider to buy into that sort of false rationalization. People are just people and all races and ethnic categories have among them both the good and the bad and the spiritually ugly as hell.

Sorry for the off topic digression. I seem to be in a bit of an odd mood this morning. Perhaps I need a second cup of tea.

 

No prob. Amen to that

Btw, where I as a 'Caucasian' (a light-skinned 1/2 Italian/1/2 Scots-Irish w/blue eyes) felt some discrimination was when I joined the service and spent 1 yr in S. Miss---a white person if not from that area with 'their' accent was treated as an 'alien!' ....as not of their world!

But I hear Miss has mellowed out since then...wonder what 'accent' the US will settle on over time with ppl moving around---I'd say Western, which is almost a 'lack of an accent.'

 

Oh yeah I understand that. As a native Texan among people north of the Mason-Dixon line I was automatically assumed to be ignorant -- though due to my skin color -- I was immune to being considered racist.

Then by the time I got out of the service and returned to Texas I discovered that society and culture had changed to the extent that NOW I was considered by most White Texans of northern European descent to be . . . White. That was a bit surrealistic. But whatever.

I read about thirty years ago that due to the habit of television news station to always hire on air people who either come from the nation's midwest or can fake the general accent of the region everybody is sounding just slightly more midwestern in accent and speech patterns as the years turn into decades.

 

I like to pronounce "fire" as "far," the redneck way, really as "relly," the Valley Girl way, and some other words the Rhode Island way, the Brooklyn Jewish way, or the British way to keep myself guessing Who TF I relly am.

 

I grew up pronouncing 'aunt' as 'ant' and it was only when I entered the service that I discovered that some people actually try to include the 'u' vowel sound in the word. But the funniest thing was that I grew up thinking that the correct pronunciation of 'Barbed Wire' was 'Bobbed Wire." Nice!

 

When I was a kid and visited my relatives in WI, I learned a new word only used up there--"haint." Like I haint going to do that.

If "I'm not" is 'aint', what is the contraction 'haint' for? Just another local word for aint?

 

It aint?!! But then as a kid I also thought the Pledge of Allegiance had the words "....for Richard Stands.."...but I never learned who Richard Stands was!

 

Or for that matter the Christmas carol "One horse soaping sleigh." Why would a horse be soaping down a sleigh and how would it do that anyway? Childhood misunderstandings are always the most precious of gifts to adults . . . though it becomes a bit embarrassing to discover as an adult that one still misunderstands meanings.

 

Ha ha, yeah, My nephew at abut 3-4 yo one day couldnt think of the name of that 'fried batter' we had with fried fish, and so said he wanted some "shut up dogs."..........for Hush Puppies.

 

And then you have the youth making 'declarative' statements that have an ending inflection as if it were a question.....finger-nails-chalk-board!! Aargh..

 

LOL, you misunderstood my post as implying that (by comparison) all the English pronounce words correctly and well - not so. The English (depending upon the location and demographic) commit the most reprehensible atrocities upon the language imaginable. If you lived in England, you would be familiar with the dreaded Estuary English, and people who say Sarf Lahndan, not to mention the unintelligible Geordies. And as for the letter 'T', it is completely elided by some street accents. Water becomes wah'er and letter becomes leh'er. Grammaticide is an international practice.