Same number of not-quite-random things as have always made up a post.

[mrissa]

1. Did someone else from Minnesota say that it's cold here tonight? Because it is. In case you didn't hear. Cold. Yah.

2. It's always more amusing than helpful when a nonfiction author, trying to be helpful, tells the reader that a word is pronounced like "____" or "_____," which are not, to my way of thinking, pronounced the same way. Latest example: "deuce" and "moose." That is not the same vowel. I know a lot of Americans would say "doose, moose, it's the same." The deuce it is. It's a subtle difference. This is not the same as no difference. Which is why people who try to "sound Canadian/Minnesotan/Northern" by saying "aboot, hahaha," are grating and wrong. There is another option than "bow" and "boo" for that noise, people.

3. Now I feel very sorry for Doc Tichy bellowing, "Marry merry Mary!" at someone in high school debate class and having her obediently repeat, "Mary Mary Mary," back at him for quite a stretch of time. (Note: "someone" was not, in this case, code for "me." I don't actually remember which of the possible suspects it was.)

4. Over lunch:
mrissa: "...so I told him that in his lj, because apparently this is what passes for a compliment in my mind."*
timprov: "There are some sentences only you have. No one else has that sentence."
mrissa: "It's a perfectly good sentence!"
timprov: "I'm not complaining."

5. Despite having a headache I can't quite shake for the second night in a row, I am having an awfully good time writing The True Tale of Carter Hall tonight. This makes me suspicious. Specifically I am suspicious whenever I think I have been funny, because there are few things more awful than having to slog through a passage the author clearly found hilarious when that author was wrong. I know for a fact that some people are not going to find this book funny, which doesn't bother me, because nothing is appealing to everybody. But if it's otherwise the right audience and I've missed on the funny, then we have a problem. On the other hand, if I definitely didn't think it was funny, that's not a very good sign for the reader thinking so, either.

Deadpan is not a full solution to this problem. Which you wouldn't know from the amount I use it. But that's not really a fully conscious choice so much as a genetic imperative. Maybe it's an environmental imperative. Either way, we know the result.

Does anybody else remember some of the Mary Poppins scenes--real Mary Poppins, not Disney--where they are waltzing with all the animals or the stars or whatever? Writing this chapter feels like that. Only without the bit where the children can wake up in their beds and have to figure out some kind of proof that it really did happen. And a lot more risk of death. And funnier. Um.

*Sorry, snurri. It really did sound more complimentary in my head.

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I sure can't hear any difference in my vowel sounds for "deuce" and "moose."

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Do your lips make the same movements for both? Mine don't. (I'm Canadian.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I believe that the author who wrote that sentence pronounces them with the same vowel.

Unfortunately, that doesn't give me much guidance as to which of my vowels I am to choose for the word he was trying to teach me to pronounce that way, and (like rezendi) my mouth is doing something very different for the two.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

They are totally different to me. Deuce is like ewe and moose is like oodles.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I believe that some people pronounce ewe by sticking a consonant y on the front rather than by changing the vowel--so it'd sound like "yoo."

I note this behavior not in approval but in description.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Right, that's the only even potential difference I could think of between those two words.

[avocadovpx.livejournal.com]

>> "deuce" and "moose."

I think I know this one. Is it the little bit of "y" before the "oo" sound in deuce? As in, I stepped in dew, not doo.

>> abowt, aboot, Minn. about

I can hear this one too.

>> "Marry merry Mary!"

I cannot reproduce this one mentally. This makes me sad. I will have to pay more attention or ask someone from (the right) Not-Around-Here.

Bonus butterdammerung points for subject line.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly: "I stepped in dew" and "I stepped in doo" are really quite distinguishable sentences when I say them, and not just from the look on my face.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I cannot remember the sentence my voice teacher gave me for when what might be 'oo' is pronounced 'ew'. New, dew, pew probably, few, hew but not hue (not in the sentence, but an important distinction).

I realized some years ago that part of the reason people think I enunciate so much is that I am trying my very best to pronounce words differently, the way they are in my head... but they're the way they are in my head because they are spelled differently. Knight/night/nite are not the same, even if I can't quite pronounce them right.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, also when geeks from the Upper Midwest--even the Lower Upper Midwest--enunciate, we really enunciate. Like nobody's business, that enunciation. Uff da.

[redbird]

Northeast US should get you the marry/marry/merry distinction. Also caught/cot (and dawn/don, which is the same vowel pair).

I'm not sure of whether "moose" and "deuce" are the same vowel for me; very close, if not.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

One summer I was doing research, I had friends in the same social circle called Don and Dawn. We sometimes exaggerated the vowels so that they were Dahhhhhn and Dawwwwwwn so that it was clear to everyone who was being referred to.

I might say ...

[freelikebeer.livejournal.com]

rather quickly:
Mah-ehr-ee, meh-er-ree, mair-ee
Or something close to it [marry is very hard to phoneticize accurately for me]. I would not have been able to make that distinction before I moved to NJ.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

"Marry" has an entirely different sound from the other two, but try as I might, I can't make "merry" and "Mary" sound different unless I deliberately flatten the vowel in "Mary" too much and then it starts to sound like "marry." Pah. Then again, I'm from the part of the world where "pen" and "pin" are the same word, so.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Also: When someone from Minnesota says it's cold, it's COLD.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

One more cuppa before bed, and on goes the electric mattress pad.

Seriously. Not warm.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

It's a bit chilly out there, yeah.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I took it as a compliment, never fear :-)

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Waltzing with animals, stars, sea life ... I get the feeling Travels really *liked* writing those scenes.

[themagdalen.livejournal.com]

It's really more like "a boat" isn't it. The "aboot" thing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Errm.

If I say, "about, a boot, a boat," there are three different vowels there. But "float your boat with your goat" is one of those phrases that's a ready gauge for how well someone does a thick Minnesota accent: it's a much rounder vowel than the Nebraska one that goes in the same words.

So keeping boats as well as boots in mind is good--depending on where you're from, "a boat" might well be closer--but they're still different vowels for me.

We just plain have more vowels here. We have all the ones they have in Nebraska and California but also some others.

[themagdalen.livejournal.com]

"o" as in "Kenosha"?

--that is-- I am guessing "float your boat with your goat" contains three "o" as in "Kenosha" sounds-- whereas "about" sounds like when someone on network news says "a boat".

(I almost wrote "when *I* say 'a boat' but that would depend if I've been hanging around with my Southern relatives, in which case all bets are off on the diphthongs.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. "Float your boat to Kenosha." Yah, you're right, it's closer to the network news "a boat" than to the network news "a boot."

[profrobert.livejournal.com]

I say "doose" for deuce, but "dyoo" for dew, and I alternate "doo" and "dyoo" for due depending on other words in the sentence and how fast I'm speaking. (My accent is "New York Neutral," which tends to hit all the syllables and avoids slurring, e.g., the number after 19 is "twen-ty," not "twenny."