Not that Northern Wisconsin is perfect…
I know many folks up there who say “acrosst” instead of “across”
as in:
“Where ya going tomorrow, eh?”
“Oh, acrosst the way.”
Torsten
The Southern accent was borne (I think) of English, Irish and French accents… a mixture which has, over the last 200+ years, gotten way worse. hehe
Basic Southern Vowels (severity differs), shown in word pronunciations:
***Note: “uh” here will be used to signify the world-famous American schwa (or shwa):
A:
Hay = Hi
Hat = Hah’yut
Pa = Pa’ow (Paw, rhyming with “now”)
E:
Meet = Muh’eet
Better = Bitter
I:
High = Hah
Bitter = Bee’uhter
O
Hole = Howl
Good = Gee’ud
Toot = Tee’oot
Oil = Ole (rhymes with “hole”)
Hot = Howt (see “Pa/Paw”)
U
Fluid = Flee’wid
But = Boot (“oo” as in “book”)
The letter itself is pronounced “Yeew”
As you’ll see by pronouncing the words in this exercise, Southern vowels are almost invariably rounded.
Hi Torsten,
Being that I know what tapes you are referring to and that I’ve heard Ed Foreman speak in person, I do know that he is saying “Be where you’re at”. What he means by the phrase is to focus on what you’re doing. Concentrate on the task at hand. Don’t be thinking of all the other things that you have to do. It’s like a phrase that I like to use, “Be in the now”.
I’m not surprised that it sounds like “act”. When I saw him in person, I DID really have to concentrate because his accent was SO hard to understand.
Kim
Yes Kim, and at his seminars he speaks pretty fast which somehow is attracting because you have to concentrate constantly. By the way I like the little story where two friends are driving in a car and one asks: “What is that big new building over there?” and the other says: “I don’t know, it wasn’t there yesterday!” Sounds all too familar…[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC listening, photographs: On the river[YSaerTTEW443543]
Funny that you bring up that story, because I was going to mention it in my post. My friend and I always joke around about that story when we’re driving somewhere together.
Kim, how often would you say you have listened to that tape? Also, there is that part where he is talking about the rabbits that didn’t develop arteriosus sclerosis in that experiment? Come to think of it, those tapes are probably excellent materials for people who want to improve their listening comprehension skills because the information is very interesting.[YSaerTTEW443543]
TOEIC listening, photographs: The main pipe line[YSaerTTEW443543]
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OK-- Now I like Conchita’s ‘Be where you’re at’, since evidently the problem is having your mind somewhere else. Or we could go back to the 60s and say ‘Be Here Now’ (Yankee would have suggested that phrase if she were old enough to remember it.)
PS: Yipes! There’s a whole other page of responses here I didn’t even see. What happened to the email-notice-machinery?
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