American pronunciation

[chokeout]

On American names I still don't understand how they got to pronouncing Craig as Creg and Graham as Gram

[Chest Rockwell]

2 minutes ago, chokeout said:

On American names I still don't understand how they got to pronouncing Craig as Creg and Graham as Gram

Colon powell trumps those and confused me for a long time.

[Carbomb]

18 minutes ago, chokeout said:

On American names I still don't understand how they got to pronouncing Craig as Creg and Graham as Gram

The one that I find interesting, and not sure which I prefer, is how we pronounce "Bernard" as "BURR-nud", and they pronounce it more like the French, "bur-NAARD".

[Steve Justice]

If we're talking American pronounciations, it always amuses me that they pronounce Iraq, Iran etc. as if they're some kind of Apple device. 

[Your Fight Site]

Don’t get me started on American pronunciation of names. Craig? Nah, it’s “Creg”. And to this day I still don’t know if Americans are saying “Graham crackers” or “gram crackers”. Like, I’ve seen it written down as “Graham crackers” but when I hear it, I just question everything again.

Also, my name (Martin) in American just gets abbreviated to some single syllable “Mrtn” noise.

[Chest Rockwell]

2 minutes ago, Your Fight Site said:

I just question everything again.

Likewise, I am now questioning everything again since I questioned it an hour ago when chokeout said the same thing...

[deathrey]

The American pronunciation of mirror always annoys me, they turn it in to a noise 'mrrrr'.

[Devon Malcolm]

Their worst one is not being able to pronounce Anna properly.

[Steve Justice]

Ahnah. 

Stupid Murica. 

[deathrey]

And why can't they pronounce the names of herbs correctly? It's not difficult.

[air_raid]

29 minutes ago, deathrey said:

And why can't they pronounce the names of herbs correctly? It's not difficult.

‘Erbs.

Also how they pronounce Robin Hood goes through me like a dentists drill.

[Carbomb]

29 minutes ago, deathrey said:

And why can't they pronounce the names of herbs correctly? It's not difficult.

The way they say "erb" is the one that mystifies: a lot of American spelling and pronunciation seems to follow a trend of being based more directly on Latin and Classical Greek, rather than on the French like British English. But they decide to go with French pronunciation for that one word?

I will say I think we pronounce "oregano" wrong, as the Americans pronounce it just like the Italians do.

[thevestofdeanambrose]

Birmingham as BirmingHAM and all the other hams. Grinds my gears. 

[deathrey]

To be fair, lots of people from Birmingham pronounce it 'Birminum'

[Carbomb]

Edinburgh as "Edinburo", but Glasgow as "GlasGAU".

One thing I find intriguing about American pronunciation is the difference in stresses, largely because these tend to fly under the radar. I've only recently noticed some of them because my sister has been watching LOADS of US TV recently, and the differences in stress have creeped into her own speech. First one that comes to mind is the word "adult" - we say "A-dult", but they say "a-DULT". She's also been pronouncing "tuna" as "toona" rather than "tyoona". Then there's also that general pattern in American speech of de-stressing the final "-ile" in certain words, saying "docile" as "dossle", "missile" as "missle", and "sterile/fertile" as "sterrel/fertel".

EDIT: Just remembered that, until recently when American TV figures started pronouncing it properly, the only time I'd ever heard an American pronounce "Glasgow" the way the British do was Sean Mooney.