I don't think "pull" and "pole" sound the same at all. They're probably more distinct in British English, but I still hear a difference. "Poll" and "pole" are homophonic, though
Same with "metal" and "medal" and "Plato" and "Play-Doh." The difference isn't as great as in British English, but it is wrong to claim there isn't one.
@@caulkins69 I'd say that we do pronounce medal and metal the same because we generally have a very soft t that sounds like a d. I do agree that Plato and Play-doh are distinct, although that is more of which syllable gets emphasized.
As an American, I found your wife's pronounciation of words with D and T in the same place (like "Medal" and "Metal") were clearly different. But I also found it funny how some of those words I would say identically, but with a different accent there are some of those words that sound way different (in my semi-northern accent). "Cot" and "Caught" are TOTALLY different words the closer your accent gets to Long Island where the word "Caught" is roughly 30 thousand times longer than the word "Cot."
Devin Nunes went into a tirade about somebody and he kept saying HE GOT COT. He was emphasizing the phrase repeatedly as he gave a list of things his victim was alleged to have done. From North Carolina, I saw caught, awe, and other words like that differently from cot and all.
Yeah, when phonemes converge, I think we adapt to hear the difference. I for one also tend to exaggerate the difference whenever there might be confusion.
@Mr. Rich B.O.B A couple of times the word he put on the screen was not the one he told her to pronounce. He spelled the wrong word, not the one he told her to say, when there were three possible spellings.
@@callabeth258 There’s a lot of subtlety to midwestern accents that hard to explain. It also means people can say something that sounds very sweet but is actually kind of mean. This is a specialty of grandmas.
The funny thing is that I have realized over the years that this is a hearing issue as much as a speaking issue. An American speaker could absolutely hear the difference between these vowel sounds, but an English speaker can't. It's the same reason Americans misplace my accent as English or Irish, and why I mistake a lot of South Africans for Kiwis.
@@wwaxwork Ugh! My first grade teacher actually taught those two as homophones, even though they are clearly different. It still upsets me, 40 years later. Lol.
'It's each to there own' I suppose. As an 'English speaker' I heard differences in a lot of Tara's pronunciations, but I'm Scottish so pronunce a lot of them similarly to the American way.
I'm actually with Tara with this - I'm hearing subtle differences in the way she's saying things for the most part. Think of it this way - even though I've watched shows like Top Gear and Graham Norton for years, I still can't tell the difference between someone's accent from the Cotswolds versus someone from Yorkshire for the most part, but can tell someone from North Philly vs South Philly vs West Philly. In any case, it's interesting to see the turnabout - threw Tara a sub for putting up with your shenanigans :D
This video showed how “the midwestern” accent pronounces some words the same. Would you consider a similar video where you have individuals from other parts of the U.S. pronounce the same set of words?
I’m from Ohio, but most of the words she pronounced the same, I pronounced differently. My family came from the South and I I lived NYC most of my adult life, so maybe my accent isn’t “Midwestern” enough!
I'm Midwestern, caught/cot aren't the same. They aren't for her, either. There's a subtle difference. But yeah, most Americans won't distinguish between metal/meddle
@@notmyworld44 In high school in Alabama I worked with a girl from... Brooklyn! "Welcome Back Kotter" and "All in the Family" didn't come close to preparing me for her how she said "fry oil". "Fry earl". I kid you not! LOLOLOL
She's lucky to even have him and should be eager to help, but instead she wont even take his name. There are certain demographics of people who are so sheltered and spoiled they don't even have a clue how good they have it until they ruin it with their selfish entitled attitudes. I hope this won't be the case for them.
Imagine the man who comes from a country where they pronounce an "f" in "lieutenant" deriving so much glee from someone else's pronunciation of simple words.
Fascinating topic! I would argue that although the differences are subtle, some of the words you heard as homophones are still pronounced differently by most Americans. We are definitely guilty of softening the 't' to a 'd' in many words we shouldn't. I've never heard "pull" pronounced like "pole" for instance. I was attending a spelling bee, and the official reading the words had to say "This word has a homophone. The word is lying." I could only think they must have meant it could be pronounced like lion. There were many more puzzling homophone and near-homophones which kept me entertained through the event.
Actually it DOES have a homophone that IS correctly pronounced the same. Lying as in; not telling the truth. And lying as in; just lying around the house. These homophones just HAPPEN to be spelled the same that's all, but they ARE homophones none the less.
@@juliebaker6969 A word having two definitions doesn't make it a homophone. Oþerwise, "pop" as in one regional name for carbonated beverage and "pop" as in a sound are homophones. Þe correct word is "homonym".
@@Demonic_Culture_Nut homonyms ARE homophones. Some categories ENCOMPASS other categories as WELL. A square for instance IS a square, AND a rectangle, AND a parallelogram all at once. Being a square DOESN'T negate any of the OTHER things it is. The same applies to homophones.
They're pronounced the same, otherwise they would not be homophones and linguists wouldn't say pole-pull or cot-caught-palm-father are merged. Lying-lion would only happen in accents with ng-coalescance (pronouncing -ing like -in), but that's not in the midwstern/General American accent she was speaking.
I'm not sure you were listening closely to her responses--for example "pole" and "poll" are generally homonyms in American pronunciation, but there is a difference in pronouncing "pull." I don't think I've ever heard an American say "I'll pole the door open"--well, unless they're using something like a battering ram for forced entry.
I'm definitely unmerged with cot-caught. Lawerence is definitely unable to notice slight differences in many of Tara's other combinations, such as Tudor vs tutor: "She's saying the exact same". No, she's not.
Was gonna say the same. I definitely pronounce the T in Tutor and D in Tudor (Metal and Medal also) but the consonant stops are both soft enough that if you're not listening carefully you won't catch it. There were other examples too. Caught and Cot in my region might sound very close but Caught will usually be slightly more drawn out with a softer consonant stop at the end, where cot is likely to be slightly shorter with a harder T. Very and Vary for sure had different long a vs short but it can be easy to mis if you're looking for a different vowel sound instead of a different vowel length.
@@metaempiricist There is no "correct" way. That's just the pronunciation rules in the British version of English. When a vowel is followed by an "R" it isn't pronounced. In the American version of English it is pronounced after a vowel.
@@metaempiricist What?? Not everyone pronounces the letter "R" the same and some countries speak a language or multiple that don't even have an "R". Not every language uses the roman alphabet like English does.
Most Americans (like myself) tend to reduce intervocalic Ts to just a tap or even a glottal stop. I firmly believe we hate Ts as much as Brits hate Rs. But we have merged a lot of the vowels although I swear I hear myself saying the L in palm. I would point out that the various vowel mergers are not applied evenly across the US and many of them also apply to Canada.
@@moonshadow--1207 I agree with Half. I definitely say "haff" but Calm and maybe Walk seem to have L sounds for me. I don't think I say it with walk but I may be saying "Wall-k" if someone listened to me.
@@julialyons4547 you are correct, not “mettle” as in backbone or fortitude. I was not paying proper attention to my typing as I was still watching the video-oops!
There were a few words that your bonny bride said that I could here the difference, that you apparently could not hear. Some were very clearly the same, but a few there that were quite different to me. My wife always teases me that my "pin" and "pen" sound the same, but I know that I say them differently.
I am only half way through so far, love it. But I do have to say; as a fellow Chicagoan I do hear her pronouncing words differently that you may not hear. Like “pawed and pod” I heard different and “awed and odd”. I personally say some words different than your wife, though. “Taught and tot” are so far the biggest ones. “T-awe-t and t-ah-t”. With that said, I’m fascinated
I live in the North East and a lot of these I could hear the differences too! My fiance grew up in South Carolina and couldn't hear a difference in any of them. Language truly is a fascinating thing!
Most of those are only homophones in Midwest US English. Various Southern accents make them very distinct (we're especially conscientious about pronouncing medial L - chalk and a chock are not confused south of the 36°30" line). West Coast accents also make distinction for most of those pairs.
Funny, though, I was thinking about words like boil and bowl or tire and tar which are homophones when a Texan says them. At least, to a non-Texan; I don't know if Texans hear a difference. But I agree with you that there are many regional differences.
Yes, precisely what I thought in listening to his wife's pronunciations. For example, "caught" and "cot" are distinctly different in most Southern accents, though ours is also the region whose speakers most frequently render "pen" and "pin" as homophones.
But what part of the Midwest are you from? My husband is a born and bred Ohioan, so he talks much like Tara does. The pull/pool and pin/pen confusion drives me crazy. I am a Midwesterner by birth, but moved around before settling in Ohio. I don’t talk like Tara.
@@lolacorinne5384 I'm from central Indiana, and say hairy and Harry the same, ditto pole and poll (but pull is different). As for pin/pen, I think it depends on how fast I'm talking. But I definitely don't do the caught/cot thing, they're totally different (cawt and caht). I pronounce butter and budder differently, but more similarly than typical Brits do (my intervocalic t's are flaps, similar to the sound that some old-fashioned Brits make for intervocalic r's -- as in "veddy, veddy British"). I've heard that someone who studies this sort of thing can tell you where you're from within a very short distance, just by listening to you talk. (Even the brief NY Times quiz that Laurence posted a while back got me within one or two hundred miles.)
Americans, at least those here in New Mexico, tend to soften a center T sound into a modified D sound. For instance my last name is Teeter, and is not usually pronounced Tee Ter but Tee Der. I have to really pronounce the central T when speaking on the phone if I want people to understand. Alternately I just say Teeter like teeter-totter. And please, pull is NOT pronounced the same as pole/poll. His lovely, and very patient wife did not pronounce them the same either.
That was pretty funny!! I like it when you two are together, mostly because it's almost always good for a few laughs. Not unlike what most of us do with our spouses, it's just much funnier when it's someone else!!
I have an interesting set of words for you: Mary, marry, merry. I was raised in Queens, NYC, and I pronounce and hear them as different words. My former boyfriend was raised in the Midwest and said they all sounded the same to him.
It's interesting. I'm from Illinois and I absolutely agree with her that your "one" and "won" sound the same. But there was a few times you said she sounded the same on both words and there was a noticeable difference. Like "tutor" and "tudor" for example sounded different to me when she said them. Also pull sounded different from pole and poll when she said it.
Socal all my life here so primarily neutral American accents. All the words Lawrence pronounced sounded distinctively different to me due to the British accent. It was easy to differentiate without context, which we would need with our American pronunciations.
Depends on the emphasis. Since one discribes a singular thing its spoken in a quick, clipped manner. Since won denotes a victory its elongated a bit to give it more importance.
The differences in vowel sounds are not as different/distinctive in American English as they are for you. Many of the words that sound the same to you as spoken by your lovely wife... however with an American ear I hear more differences that you identified. You are a blessed man to be married to such a patient lady who does not give you a smack for giggling at her.
I'm an American who pronounces those all the same, and I didn't hear any difference when she said them in a sentence. When she said them in isolation she didn't always pronounce them as she normally would. Don-dawn sound exactly the same, as do do-dew, cot-caught-father-palm, merry-marry-Mary-airy-fairy, etc. They don't cause confusion because of context.
@@sluggo206 It was different. She pronounced the "o" in cot and tot as "ah" or "ä". And the "augh" in taught and caught sounded like "awt". But it might be something only midwestern's would notice.
@@labj143 Exactly. I grew up in the midwest, and when I say "caught" I drop my jaw more, resulting in the "awt" sound. When I say "cot" my jaw barely drops, resulting in the "ah" sound. Metal and medal are slightly different too. The d and t have converged and sound the same. But "metal" is pronounced with more open space above your tongue, resulting in it sounding more like "meduhl". While "medal" sounds identical to "meddle", and very close to "middle."
You know, of course, that if you’d asked me those questions you’d have gotten different results. There is no single answer to “how do Americans say ...?” We are a pretty big country settled by people from all over the world, and it shows in our regional speech patterns. Why regional? Well, that’s a topic for a different video.
You’re making me think of the classics like: “Do you pahk your cah in Harvahard Yahrd? It’s “wicked” fah.” I don’t even notice my own accent unless I talk to my sister that moved to Florida years ago and subsequently lost her accent.
It's much more varied in the UK than it is here in America. So Americans pronounce everything relatively the same compared to English people. (But I understand there's differences).
@@TheRealBatabii Tara, as in Tara, the plantation in Gone with the Wind, home of Scarlett O'Hara, and the Hill of Tara, ceremonial site in ancient Ireland. Tara is moderately common woman's name in English.
Ask her about Don and Dawn. I lived in the PNW for a couple years before moving back to Northern Illinois and I pronounced them the same, but my teacher and the local kids didn't. BTW, I think some of the words she pronounced were subtly different, but you didn't pick up on them. Oh, and she was saying "meddle and metal", not "medal and metal". And "pole and poll" sounded the same, but she did pronounce "pull" differently.
It is clear from that many of us heard subtle differences, even when you could not. And, a number of the words your lovely wife pronounced differently than, say I would, being from the southwest. There exist regional differences, take for instance the pronunciation of the word "water". Depending from what part of the country you are from, it can range from sounding like "waiter" to "wader" to "whattor" and more. The most entertaining aspect of this exercise were your own very English pronunciations. Your overly stressed "H" in the name Harry over Hairy was quite remarkable. Otherwise, the words would've sounded the same. In American English, consciously stressing a particular consonant or vowel over and above the norm comes across as an affectation. It's what some of us find enjoyable about listening to a proper English accent. But, when it comes to proper names, those words seem to have a convention which is universally accepted. I remember watching an interview by the people who created The Tombraider video series. The creators were English, of course, who stated they chose the name "Lara" over "Laura" because "Americans can't pronounce the name". It wasn't that we can't as we can, but choose not to over empathize the U in Luara. Which to us again sounds like someone is trying too hard, whereas they took it as a national speech impediment.
Hairy vs. Harry: he pronounced the vowels differently as well. A few dialects still make a three-way distinction among MERRY-MARY-MARRY while others will merge two of them or all three.
As someone who had a speech impediment as a kid, I learned quickly to differentiate my homophones so that I didn't have people asking me what I meant, at least more than I needed to with my speech handicap. I would enunciate the 'dd' or the 'tt' in words like metal and meddle. I would also substitute entire words if I came across those words in a problematic sentence that lacked sufficient context clue.
Most people don't usually just spew out words like metal or meddle like a random cuss word. There's usually a sentence to go with it and we learn very young to figure out how to differentiate words from the context of the sentence. Although as a child I had a southern auntie and she was from Sucksass (which of course ALWAYS brought on a fit of giggles) it was years before I grew up enough to figure out the town was actually called Success.
So, we all know LARRY/LAIRY Lawrence knows the ways in which words are pronounced differently in the various US regions -you know, since he’s a linguist and referred to the caught/cot merger. But it’s fun to see and play around w/ it! I say most of them differently (w/ my midwest accent)except one/won; Hairy/Harry; have/halve (and when I’m lazy metal/medal and petal/pedal). One that drives me crazy is when people can’t say the names Don/Dawn because I always think they’re talking about a different person of a different gender or possibly of the morning if I’m not really listening to their story.
In fairness, the various d & t pairs (eg medal and metal) *were* pronounced distinctly by your wife. Apparently, your ears are not tuned to that particular distinction. Also, I think her pronunciation of poll, pole, and pull was distinct BTW almost everyone will mess up: Juan won one woe.
I had no trouble with the tongue twister. Then again, being in the Southwest and knowing a lot of Spanish speakers I pronounce “Juan” with a voiceless labial-velar fricative “Hw” sound instead of the simple “W” sound a lot of English speakers simplify to. So the twister is for me [ʍɑ:n wən wən woʊ] This is despite the fact my natural dialect does not use /ʍ/ for “when” “where” and “why,” and thus ONLY uses it for loanwords.
Regional differences show up in all of the words you used. Merry, marry and Mary, to me, are all different (raised on Long Island) and the “airy” sounds are different to me from “arry” sounds. Some of the vowel sounds are so slightly different that they’re hard to hear differences but the differences are there.
I agree. I grew up near Boston and those words are pronounced very differently when I say them - merry, marry, Mary sounds like Meery. This was a fun video to watch, especially to hear Lawrence giggling and see Tara being a good sport :)
@@cheryl1338 thanks for mentioning how Mary is pronounced near Boston. I’m from an area where Mary and merry are the same, and wondered how they differed elsewhere.
The funny thing is that how your wife pronounces those is actually pretty rare for the Great Lakes region. We missed the caught cot merger for the most part.
I pronounce the "L" in walk and stalk. And she may have gotten the wrong "medal" or "metal" because she was talking about "meddle". I definitely say many of those differently.
Nobody pronounce the L in walk or stalk. “Stalk” (STAWK) is still different from “stock” (STAHK or STOK), but not the way Laurence differentiates them, so he missed it.
I absolutely ❤ love your channel. I remember as long being able to remember loving British humor. I'm referring your what I would call small sarcasm..hilarious. Your videos are so well put together. I love how you determine, come up with your content. Great work. I wish I could be a patron. Currently applying for our disability,
I'm American. I agree with her on most, but 'pull' has a 'U' in it so it rhymes with 'bull', not bowl. And Ts and Ds are pronounced differently, even when they are in the middle of words. I even pronounce the Ts in 'butter'. I don't say budder. The 'merry,' 'Mary,' and 'marry' difference that you invoke is so indistinguishable that it appears to actually be an issue of pride rather than an actual difference that's worth bothering with.
You have made a point of proper grammatical pronunciation most of us Americans don't. There was a Canadian family out in California that would say the T really hard in the middle of words like metal. It was amusing because we have the laziest way of talking except for certain parts of the South.
It gets really frustrating when you hear about "polling data" vs "pulling data". Both of these words could apply to what a device does to read data from another device.
Your beautiful patient intelligent wife has a Midwest accent. You should ask how Americans from other parts of country pronounce those words. We don't all speak alike.
A midwest accent? Compare how people talk in Chicago, Des Moines, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis (all Midwestern cities) and then tell me there is a "Midwest accent."
Tara is not speaking with a "Midwestern" accent. I'm from Wheeling, WV and say all of these exactly the same way. It's called the Midlands dialect, as in not northern or southern (see various maps on the net) and is not restricted to the Midwest.
Reminds me of a little story I heard years ago. Guy was camping some place down south. While registering for the site, he was asked all kinds of questions. Then, he was asked if he had any pits. He was stumped, so asked, what do you mean by pits? He was given a strange look, and told, you know, dogs or cats. I've heard people pronounce oil and Earl the same. So, Earl puts oil in his car.
Im very disappointed you cut the camera when she got up to pop you one! LMAO!!! The way you giggled at her pronunciations is hysterical! You two are adorable together!
I hear differences in most because I was always a good speller in school and because my son had speech problems. As his parent I learned speech patterns and sounds in order to help him at home and to reinforce what his speech therapist was teaching him.
I don't pronounce the words with which you tested Tara the same as she did. There are so many regional differences that most words are pronounced differently from place to place. This was a really cute video Laurence. Thanks for the giggles.
I tell my fiancee (Ukainian) that English is probably the hardest language to learn, because in most other languages, the words are pronounced as they are spelled. If you can pronounce the letters of the alphabet of German or Russian, for instance, you can muddle through the words. In English, however, that is not always the case. For example, reed and read. Red and read. Blue and blew. Through and threw. Or, they don't follow the pattern. Rough (ruff), through (not thruff, but thru). If you throw in regional accents, slang, it's hard as hell to understand.
Coming from an English-speaking background, Vietnamese feels impossible to learn. The sounds of letters in the romanticized transliteration of Vietnamese is so, so different from English, *and* there are a bunch of diacritical marks to learn. This is in part because the language was first transliterated by the French, who also have very different pronunciations from English.
The first statement is simply not true. There are many languages that are not pronounced exactly as they are spelled. Gaelic languages almost make it up as they go along at times. French adds letters and then decides to pretend they are not there. Turkish just decides the end of words don't exist.
This was great! I commented before I got all the way to the end, so I erased my other comment to comment again with a fresh comment. lol Thank you and this was great! I'm glad you're still together 😁👏😉
Laurence, I think you should do this with people from other places with different accents. Also show them the written words so they aren't influenced by your accent. I'm from the southwest and I definitely pronounce the "L" in walk but I do drag it out a little bit more than just one syllable.
Just go to the South and short “e” sounds become short “I” sounds. Therefore words like pen sound like pin and ten sound like tin. You could say “I have ten pens” and “I have tin pins” and they’d sound exactly the same. I once had a coworker withhold a writing utensil until I said pen “properly”. I had to sound it out like a six year old. My mouth just doesn’t make that shape.
Fun video! And a lot more fun than just having her read sentences like I’ve seen a few other channels do that relate to accents. There were some on this list that I didn’t know were homophones in any of the varied American accents. A few of them your wife says as homophones while others I could hear a difference between the words, though it wasn’t as distinct a difference as when you said them to her. While there were plenty of words you gave her that I, too, say similarly to her (which indicates that my pronunciation of words may be more heavily influenced by my midwestern family than my family in other parts of the US; although to be fair I saw/see them and my western family more often throughout the year than my southern, New England, etc family), there were some that I pronounce differently to both you and her with a pronunciation somewhere in between. So I found that fascinating to realize about myself! Great video and got to see you two interacting again which is always fun to watch, too!
This is so endearing to see Laurence having a great time with our homophones. I have thought it's pretty much a one-way street where we Americans can't get enough of the British accents.
That's not universal, British accents drive me crazy in the bad way. I can watch Laurence's videos because I love him but it would be easier on me if he had a different accent.
Although most words that sound the same are made clear via context, there are slight differences - not in the way they're pronounced, but the cadence of the word. The inflection is on "Tu" in the word "Tudor" and a slightly longer first syllable. The word "Tutor" is said with equal time spent on each syllable and no stress on either syllable.
1:17 Japanese friend - "You tried Yakiniku! What kind did you get?" Me - "Horumon" Japanese friend - "Oh, did you know that's offal?" Me - "Yes, it really was." Also, I pronounce pin and pen differently 90% of the time, but when I'm in a hurry, I pronounce them the same. I pronounce been, bin, and Ben differently about 50% of the time, but all 3 the same the other 50. Caught and cot are always the same, as are bought and bot, wrought and rot, etc.
I love her! She's amazingly patient! I do maintain that the American (lost) T isn't completely lost, it becomes a tongue stop... so there *is* a difference that might be lost on some... just like I could never enunciate the difference between "haw" and "hor" for the English ear. (And before you rail on about inconsistencies, explain the British pronunciations of "schedule" and "school"...)
As to pronunciation, there are some words I vary slightly, but mostly they're about the same. Of course, there are differences in pronunciation in North vs. South and East vs. West here in the US. Some of us do differentiate, but it's been my experience that most of us don't. Please tell your wife that she's a saint for putting up with you, because that would drive me crazy. And her makeup looks lovely.
After watching most of the video and getting too bothered to finish I'm quite curious. When she said pole, pull and pole. Or awful and offal did they sound the same to you? I'm trying to see if it's just Lawrence or maybe a difference in what Brits vs Americans listen for Hearing her say things differently 3/4s of the time and him not not noticing was rather shocking...
The regional differences in the US are amazing too. I have a friend from NY and he asked me to guess his middle name, which stars with A. I started with "Aaron," and he said "No." Eventually I gave up and asked what it was. "Aaron," he said. "That's the first thing I guessed!" "No, you guessed Erin." *confused look* "yes... Aaron." "That's not my middle name." "You JUST said your middle name is Aaron." "Yes, it's Aaron, not Erin." *more confused looks* "You seriously just said your middle name is Aaron not Aaron. I am so confused right now." Apparently the proper pronunciation of Aaron is with an a that sounds like "at." I still cannot hear the difference unless the speaker is over-emphasizing (and neither can the coworkers who introduced themselves at a recent Teams meeting as "Girl Erin" and "Boy Aaron"). 🤷♀
To my ear, there's a definite difference between Erin and Aaron, but it's not the initial vowel that's different. There's a difference in the length of the R and way the o and I sound, but for some reason the O and I difference is more subtle to my ear than the R.
If you're from western Pennsylvania, well, wail and whale are pronounced the same. It got confusing when I was younger my friend was drinking from the faucet and it was well water. He said he forgot it was well water and spit it out in the sink. I was picturing water made from whales. I don't think I pronounce them the same but I know a few people that do. Don and Dawn sound the same so does Mary, Marry and Merry.
I could hear the differences between the “homophones” most of the time. We just emphasize certain parts of the word for shorter or longer. But it’s very subtle. “Awed” has a slightly longer “ahhh” sound than “odd.”
Some of the pronunciation differences between Laurence and his wife are due to our American tendency to pronounce consonants less crisply than Laurence does. Some of her pronunciations, "caught" in particular, are different from what is typically said here in New England.
Tara looks convincingly unimpressed 😂 This video reminds me of the Don & Dawn running joke in Mad Men. I'm Australian, and we pronounce the two names quite differently from each other. If I hadn't been exposed to American accents via decades of US TV and movies, I wouldn't get the joke at all 😅
Lawrence this was frustrating to watch as you just don't seem to have an ear for the differences. I understand it can be subtle but saying Americans say words the same simply because you cannot hear the difference is rather odd.
I have an interesting linguistic & pronunciation background. I was reared in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. When I when away to college, I was kidded relentlessly because of my hill Billy accent. In less than 6 months, I had transformed my accent into what I called my midwestern radio announcer voice. I did it by listening to announcers & listening tog myself on a taped recorder
I would love to see a video on the very strange English word: Data. Some in the US say Day-ta whereas others say Da-ta, and here in the UK we say both Day-ta and Dar-ta. That begs the question, which is the "correct" American way of saying it? And why are there 2 different ways? Normally its down to the UK/US variants but in this case there are 3 different forms! Please investigate...
Like many words in the US, there is no one "correct" way... it will be down to regional differences. This is one word that I switch back and forth on, with no real reasoning why. I say day-ta and often as I say da-ta. I also switch between ee-ther and eye-ther/nee-ther and nie-ther. I'd say it depends on the day, but I've been known to switch mid-sentence. I've lived all over the US and that may play into it.
Im from the US and personally choose to say dayta because I think the other way sounds too much like Dada like a child would call their dad and it seems weird to me.
I am a programmer and we use this term frequently. The most common pronunciation has the first syllable rhyming with cat. Second most common is the long a, like day-ta. Very uncommonly someone will say dah-ta.
I have a family member from Kentucky... She was telling us a story about a pilot crashing an airplane. She worked in a factory where they had stacks of pallets. And if you asked her where to put some trash, she would say to 'pile it over there'. Pilot, pallet, and pile it. All identical.
Air (what we breathe), Err (an error) , Heir (an inheritor) , Aire (a tune), Are (100 square meters), Ere (before), E'er (ever), Ayr (town in Scotland), Eyre (Jane's name).
Laurence has cadence and an amazing sence of humor the fact that I can't find any stand-up comedy is a tragedy... he would murder... he has the talent to be one of the best comics of all time. He has the look and facial expressions too.
I think Tara’s pronunciations are the same because she’s Midwestern. I’m an Alabama native. Some of these pairings sound alike when I say them, but a lot of them are pronounced differently in other parts of the country.
Great content! Very fun. As an American language enthusiast, I just want to say that the cot/caught merger and merry/marry/Mary mergers are common but far from universal in American accents. I personally do both, but my grandparents didn't! (Incidentally, they said "rubbish" instead of trash, so that was a thing in New England until only recently.) Can we talk about the sauce/source merger a lot of you Brits like to rock?
Love your little ditties my grandmother was English moved over here after WWII I get a kick out of your bits quite a bit. Just caught the one on grocery stores two years ago do you want to see a big grocery store come to Southern Wisconsin go to Woodman's grocery stores they are the size of a Walmart but it's all groceries enjoy
I don't think "pull" and "pole" sound the same at all. They're probably more distinct in British English, but I still hear a difference. "Poll" and "pole" are homophonic, though
Same with "metal" and "medal" and "Plato" and "Play-Doh." The difference isn't as great as in British English, but it is wrong to claim there isn't one.
There were a lot of pairs of word she said differently that he said she said the same. He wasn't listening carefully.
I say pole the same way everyone does, but I do have a difference from poll.
@@caulkins69 I'd say that we do pronounce medal and metal the same because we generally have a very soft t that sounds like a d. I do agree that Plato and Play-doh are distinct, although that is more of which syllable gets emphasized.
@@caulkins69 don't forget mettle
As an American, I found your wife's pronounciation of words with D and T in the same place (like "Medal" and "Metal") were clearly different. But I also found it funny how some of those words I would say identically, but with a different accent there are some of those words that sound way different (in my semi-northern accent). "Cot" and "Caught" are TOTALLY different words the closer your accent gets to Long Island where the word "Caught" is roughly 30 thousand times longer than the word "Cot."
Devin Nunes went into a tirade about somebody and he kept saying HE GOT COT. He was emphasizing the phrase repeatedly as he gave a list of things his victim was alleged to have done. From North Carolina, I saw caught, awe, and other words like that differently from cot and all.
Yeah, when phonemes converge, I think we adapt to hear the difference. I for one also tend to exaggerate the difference whenever there might be confusion.
@Mr. Rich B.O.B A couple of times the word he put on the screen was not the one he told her to pronounce. He spelled the wrong word, not the one he told her to say, when there were three possible spellings.
I have some relatives who pronounce cat and cot the same.
@@mkshffr4936 That would be one funny shaped feline
Doubly laughing because sometimes Lawrence hasn't noticed that his wife pronounced the words with two different vowel sounds.
Or that the double Ds and Ts sound subtly different.
To me as an Australian besides hostile and hostel they all sounded the same
@@callabeth258 There’s a lot of subtlety to midwestern accents that hard to explain. It also means people can say something that sounds very sweet but is actually kind of mean. This is a specialty of grandmas.
@@callabeth258 Me too!
@@Contreramanjaro yes, I’ve learned a lot watching the “it’s a southern thing” RUclips about being sweetly mean!
The funny thing is that I have realized over the years that this is a hearing issue as much as a speaking issue. An American speaker could absolutely hear the difference between these vowel sounds, but an English speaker can't. It's the same reason Americans misplace my accent as English or Irish, and why I mistake a lot of South Africans for Kiwis.
My husband can't hear the difference between pin and pen no matter who is saying it and says them both the same way and he's a Midwesterner.
@@wwaxwork lol. I’m an east Texan. People from the north or west can’t differentiate my “pan” “pen” “pin”.
@@wwaxwork Ugh! My first grade teacher actually taught those two as homophones, even though they are clearly different. It still upsets me, 40 years later. Lol.
'It's each to there own' I suppose. As an 'English speaker' I heard differences in a lot of Tara's pronunciations, but I'm Scottish so pronunce a lot of them similarly to the American way.
Most American speakers with the mergers can't hear the difference. They're the same phoneme.
“Are they not the same word?” 😂 the amount of patience she’s showing is incredible
Maybe we're about to find out the differences between American and British divorces.
every time he cackled I was expecting bloodshed
She's also playing up her midwest. Not all of those examples are the same elsewhere in the US.
There were definitely some examples such as caught and cot that she pronounced differently but Lawrence proclaimed that they sounded the same.
If I was filming my wife while she putting on makeup, she would definitely show me the difference between offal and awful.
I'm actually with Tara with this - I'm hearing subtle differences in the way she's saying things for the most part.
Think of it this way - even though I've watched shows like Top Gear and Graham Norton for years, I still can't tell the difference between someone's accent from the Cotswolds versus someone from Yorkshire for the most part, but can tell someone from North Philly vs South Philly vs West Philly.
In any case, it's interesting to see the turnabout - threw Tara a sub for putting up with your shenanigans :D
This video showed how “the midwestern” accent pronounces some words the same. Would you consider a similar video where you have individuals from other parts of the U.S. pronounce the same set of words?
I’m from Ohio, but most of the words she pronounced the same, I pronounced differently. My family came from the South and I I lived NYC most of my adult life, so maybe my accent isn’t “Midwestern” enough!
I'm Midwestern, caught/cot aren't the same. They aren't for her, either. There's a subtle difference. But yeah,
most Americans won't distinguish between metal/meddle
YES! Have somebody from North Carolina say the words OIL and ALL. They will sound identical!
@@notmyworld44 In high school in Alabama I worked with a girl from... Brooklyn! "Welcome Back Kotter" and "All in the Family" didn't come close to preparing me for her how she said "fry oil". "Fry earl". I kid you not! LOLOLOL
I am from the Midwest and there are differences in most of these words.
You could really tell how much Laurence really enjoyed this. He seemed genuinely giddy. 😂
Ohhhhh, she is so patient, Lawrence. You're really fortunate that she is willing to put up with you.
Yes, he should be careful or he might be doing a segment on the differences between British and American divorce laws.
She is
How would it play out if the camera wasn't there? She might have thrown something.
@@zuzax1656 ha!
She's lucky to even have him and should be eager to help, but instead she wont even take his name. There are certain demographics of people who are so sheltered and spoiled they don't even have a clue how good they have it until they ruin it with their selfish entitled attitudes. I hope this won't be the case for them.
I think my favorite part is Laurence's delighted giggle as he hears the not-different pronunciations.
Imagine the man who comes from a country where they pronounce an "f" in "lieutenant" deriving so much glee from someone else's pronunciation of simple words.
You mean "correct pronunciation".... 😉
Don't forget "aluminium" 😅
@@nzinaz but aluminum and aluminium ARE spelled differently.
Worcester. Gloucester.
The pronunciation misses a whole syllable. HOW?
Funny how English people can't speak English Hay?
Fascinating topic! I would argue that although the differences are subtle, some of the words you heard as homophones are still pronounced differently by most Americans. We are definitely guilty of softening the 't' to a 'd' in many words we shouldn't. I've never heard "pull" pronounced like "pole" for instance. I was attending a spelling bee, and the official reading the words had to say "This word has a homophone. The word is lying." I could only think they must have meant it could be pronounced like lion. There were many more puzzling homophone and near-homophones which kept me entertained through the event.
Actually it DOES have a homophone that IS correctly pronounced the same. Lying as in; not telling the truth. And lying as in; just lying around the house. These homophones just HAPPEN to be spelled the same that's all, but they ARE homophones none the less.
@@juliebaker6969 A word having two definitions doesn't make it a homophone. Oþerwise, "pop" as in one regional name for carbonated beverage and "pop" as in a sound are homophones. Þe correct word is "homonym".
@@Demonic_Culture_Nut homonyms ARE homophones. Some categories ENCOMPASS other categories as WELL. A square for instance IS a square, AND a rectangle, AND a parallelogram all at once. Being a square DOESN'T negate any of the OTHER things it is. The same applies to homophones.
They're pronounced the same, otherwise they would not be homophones and linguists wouldn't say pole-pull or cot-caught-palm-father are merged. Lying-lion would only happen in accents with ng-coalescance (pronouncing -ing like -in), but that's not in the midwstern/General American accent she was speaking.
Who says we shouldn't? There are hundreds of variations of pronunciation in every country, including England.
Poor Tara! She should start over-enunciating every single word and see how long it takes to annoy Laurence! 😂
I wonder if in her head she's saying "low rents' when she's referring to "Laurence".
He's British. You cannot possibly irritate them with this game unless your accent is considered to be more highbrow than theirs.
@@cc1k435 😂
Why? Lawrence can't even say his R sounds without sounding like he has a speech impediment. "say tudah" lol amazing now say "tutah".
@@metaempiricist 😂 True.
I'm not sure you were listening closely to her responses--for example "pole" and "poll" are generally homonyms in American pronunciation, but there is a difference in pronouncing "pull." I don't think I've ever heard an American say "I'll pole the door open"--well, unless they're using something like a battering ram for forced entry.
You mean homophones
@@2JobsStillPoorUSA Yes--sorry--my brain took a mini-vacation.
I'm definitely unmerged with cot-caught. Lawerence is definitely unable to notice slight differences in many of Tara's other combinations, such as Tudor vs tutor: "She's saying the exact same". No, she's not.
Was gonna say the same. I definitely pronounce the T in Tutor and D in Tudor (Metal and Medal also) but the consonant stops are both soft enough that if you're not listening carefully you won't catch it. There were other examples too. Caught and Cot in my region might sound very close but Caught will usually be slightly more drawn out with a softer consonant stop at the end, where cot is likely to be slightly shorter with a harder T. Very and Vary for sure had different long a vs short but it can be easy to mis if you're looking for a different vowel sound instead of a different vowel length.
Well to be fair Lawrence can't even pronounce those two words correctly anyway. He said tudah, and tutah.
@@metaempiricist There is no "correct" way. That's just the pronunciation rules in the British version of English. When a vowel is followed by an "R" it isn't pronounced. In the American version of English it is pronounced after a vowel.
@@elijahsmall5873 Kids in other countries that can't say their Rs get sent to speech therapists.
@@metaempiricist What?? Not everyone pronounces the letter "R" the same and some countries speak a language or multiple that don't even have an "R". Not every language uses the roman alphabet like English does.
Most Americans (like myself) tend to reduce intervocalic Ts to just a tap or even a glottal stop. I firmly believe we hate Ts as much as Brits hate Rs. But we have merged a lot of the vowels although I swear I hear myself saying the L in palm.
I would point out that the various vowel mergers are not applied evenly across the US and many of them also apply to Canada.
I say the L in palm but not in half.
Definitely right about the Ts here in the US -- I live in Atlanta, which nearly everyone around here seems to say as "Atlanna' and not 'Atlan-tah'. ;)
@@NicoleM_radiantbaby
I live in St. Louis, Missouri. St. Lewis, Missouree. We get a double whammy with St. Louee, Missourah. Drives me bonkers.
@@moonshadow--1207 I agree with Half. I definitely say "haff" but Calm and maybe Walk seem to have L sounds for me. I don't think I say it with walk but I may be saying "Wall-k" if someone listened to me.
We don’t hate Rs. We just pronounce them differently to you!
She actually did "meddle" and "metal" because you weren't actually listening to what she asked you...you just agreed. ;)
She said "meddle", as in to meddle in someone else's business.
@@julialyons4547 you are correct, not “mettle” as in backbone or fortitude. I was not paying proper attention to my typing as I was still watching the video-oops!
There were a few words that your bonny bride said that I could here the difference, that you apparently could not hear. Some were very clearly the same, but a few there that were quite different to me. My wife always teases me that my "pin" and "pen" sound the same, but I know that I say them differently.
I am only half way through so far, love it. But I do have to say; as a fellow Chicagoan I do hear her pronouncing words differently that you may not hear. Like “pawed and pod” I heard different and “awed and odd”. I personally say some words different than your wife, though. “Taught and tot” are so far the biggest ones. “T-awe-t and t-ah-t”. With that said, I’m fascinated
I live in the North East and a lot of these I could hear the differences too! My fiance grew up in South Carolina and couldn't hear a difference in any of them. Language truly is a fascinating thing!
Exactly
From a British ear this is very funny , harry baals 😂
@@markbradley7323 my sister worked at a hospital with a Dr. Harry Weinermann
Most of those are only homophones in Midwest US English. Various Southern accents make them very distinct (we're especially conscientious about pronouncing medial L - chalk and a chock are not confused south of the 36°30" line). West Coast accents also make distinction for most of those pairs.
Funny, though, I was thinking about words like boil and bowl or tire and tar which are homophones when a Texan says them. At least, to a non-Texan; I don't know if Texans hear a difference. But I agree with you that there are many regional differences.
Yes, precisely what I thought in listening to his wife's pronunciations. For example, "caught" and "cot" are distinctly different in most Southern accents, though ours is also the region whose speakers most frequently render "pen" and "pin" as homophones.
@@toddgranger1002 How's that inkpen going? I mean, thats what most people say, to avoid confusion...
As a fellow Midwesterner, I heard the correct pronunciation when Tara spoke your examples! 😺😺
But what part of the Midwest are you from? My husband is a born and bred Ohioan, so he talks much like Tara does. The pull/pool and pin/pen confusion drives me crazy. I am a Midwesterner by birth, but moved around before settling in Ohio. I don’t talk like Tara.
@@amyschmelzer6445 I’m from Minnesota.
@@lolacorinne5384 I'm from central Indiana, and say hairy and Harry the same, ditto pole and poll (but pull is different). As for pin/pen, I think it depends on how fast I'm talking. But I definitely don't do the caught/cot thing, they're totally different (cawt and caht). I pronounce butter and budder differently, but more similarly than typical Brits do (my intervocalic t's are flaps, similar to the sound that some old-fashioned Brits make for intervocalic r's -- as in "veddy, veddy British"). I've heard that someone who studies this sort of thing can tell you where you're from within a very short distance, just by listening to you talk. (Even the brief NY Times quiz that Laurence posted a while back got me within one or two hundred miles.)
Same
Totally agree with Corinne. There were definitely different pronunciatons. But, I am from Minnesota as well.
Americans, at least those here in New Mexico, tend to soften a center T sound into a modified D sound. For instance my last name is Teeter, and is not usually pronounced Tee Ter but Tee Der. I have to really pronounce the central T when speaking on the phone if I want people to understand. Alternately I just say Teeter like teeter-totter.
And please, pull is NOT pronounced the same as pole/poll. His lovely, and very patient wife did not pronounce them the same either.
That was pretty funny!! I like it when you two are together, mostly because it's almost always good for a few laughs. Not unlike what most of us do with our spouses, it's just much funnier when it's someone else!!
I have an interesting set of words for you: Mary, marry, merry. I was raised in Queens, NYC, and I pronounce and hear them as different words. My former boyfriend was raised in the Midwest and said they all sounded the same to him.
@Austin Gee Depends where you are. They are 3 distinct words in MA.
It's interesting. I'm from Illinois and I absolutely agree with her that your "one" and "won" sound the same. But there was a few times you said she sounded the same on both words and there was a noticeable difference. Like "tutor" and "tudor" for example sounded different to me when she said them. Also pull sounded different from pole and poll when she said it.
Yup. I can only conclude Lawrence is slightly deaf. Or is it Laurence?
Socal all my life here so primarily neutral American accents. All the words Lawrence pronounced sounded distinctively different to me due to the British accent. It was easy to differentiate without context, which we would need with our American pronunciations.
Depends on the emphasis. Since one discribes a singular thing its spoken in a quick, clipped manner. Since won denotes a victory its elongated a bit to give it more importance.
For me almost all of them sounded different, subtle but different. I agree one won 'n one but this was rather frustrating.
Yes!
I agree with Lawrence’s wife that he pronounced “won” and “one” identically, too.
The differences in vowel sounds are not as different/distinctive in American English as they are for you. Many of the words that sound the same to you as spoken by your lovely wife... however with an American ear I hear more differences that you identified. You are a blessed man to be married to such a patient lady who does not give you a smack for giggling at her.
I'm an American who pronounces those all the same, and I didn't hear any difference when she said them in a sentence. When she said them in isolation she didn't always pronounce them as she normally would. Don-dawn sound exactly the same, as do do-dew, cot-caught-father-palm, merry-marry-Mary-airy-fairy, etc. They don't cause confusion because of context.
@@sluggo206 It was different. She pronounced the "o" in cot and tot as "ah" or "ä". And the "augh" in taught and caught sounded like "awt". But it might be something only midwestern's would notice.
@@labj143 Exactly. I grew up in the midwest, and when I say "caught" I drop my jaw more, resulting in the "awt" sound. When I say "cot" my jaw barely drops, resulting in the "ah" sound.
Metal and medal are slightly different too. The d and t have converged and sound the same. But "metal" is pronounced with more open space above your tongue, resulting in it sounding more like "meduhl". While "medal" sounds identical to "meddle", and very close to "middle."
Your wife is amazing...and so patient! Did you have to edit out the part where she showed you a good ole American cussing out?? 🤣
You know, of course, that if you’d asked me those questions you’d have gotten different results. There is no single answer to “how do Americans say ...?” We are a pretty big country settled by people from all over the world, and it shows in our regional speech patterns. Why regional? Well, that’s a topic for a different video.
I agree because there are things that she pronounced in a way that I would not have and I'm an American I just come from a different state.
You’re making me think of the classics like: “Do you pahk your cah in Harvahard Yahrd? It’s “wicked” fah.” I don’t even notice my own accent unless I talk to my sister that moved to Florida years ago and subsequently lost her accent.
Much the same as across the UK. But then that wouldn't make content
A video that he has already made.
It's much more varied in the UK than it is here in America. So Americans pronounce everything relatively the same compared to English people. (But I understand there's differences).
Tara is amazingly tolerant. Lawrence is missing that Tara is pronouncing meddle and metal differently, along with most of the others.
There was a few that he apparently didnt noticed here saying them differently.
@@TheRealBatabii Tara, as in Tara, the plantation in Gone with the Wind, home of Scarlett O'Hara, and the Hill of Tara, ceremonial site in ancient Ireland. Tara is moderately common woman's name in English.
@@TheRealBatabii Gone With the Wind was a movie masterpiece that, however, pandered to a much more racist 1930s US.
The W is silent in “Laurence”.
Ask her about Don and Dawn. I lived in the PNW for a couple years before moving back to Northern Illinois and I pronounced them the same, but my teacher and the local kids didn't.
BTW, I think some of the words she pronounced were subtly different, but you didn't pick up on them. Oh, and she was saying "meddle and metal", not "medal and metal". And "pole and poll" sounded the same, but she did pronounce "pull" differently.
Agreed. I unfortunately pronounce "Don" and "Dawn" the same (as well as "yon" and "yawn"), but not all Americans do.
I pronounce Don with an "on" . Dawn with more of an "awe" sound . From northern Ohio .
I could totally hear the difference in like 99% of her pronunciations
Oh my gosh! Laurence’s giggle! So adorable. 😄😄😄
Poll, & Pole are said the same.
While pull is made the an "u" sound🙂
Same
I say the U when saying "drawer pulls" but I often say "pole" the drawer open... I like to keep people guessing haha!
No, pull is pronounced pll, no vowel sound at all.
@@CAMacKenzie Speak for yourself. Lol
@@factsoverfeelings1776 I am, though it's as I hear most Southern CA Anglos speak. Hispanics generally say something like pool.
It is clear from that many of us heard subtle differences, even when you could not. And, a number of the words your lovely wife pronounced differently than, say I would, being from the southwest. There exist regional differences, take for instance the pronunciation of the word "water". Depending from what part of the country you are from, it can range from sounding like "waiter" to "wader" to "whattor" and more. The most entertaining aspect of this exercise were your own very English pronunciations. Your overly stressed "H" in the name Harry over Hairy was quite remarkable. Otherwise, the words would've sounded the same. In American English, consciously stressing a particular consonant or vowel over and above the norm comes across as an affectation. It's what some of us find enjoyable about listening to a proper English accent. But, when it comes to proper names, those words seem to have a convention which is universally accepted. I remember watching an interview by the people who created The Tombraider video series. The creators were English, of course, who stated they chose the name "Lara" over "Laura" because "Americans can't pronounce the name". It wasn't that we can't as we can, but choose not to over empathize the U in Luara. Which to us again sounds like someone is trying too hard, whereas they took it as a national speech impediment.
Hairy vs. Harry: he pronounced the vowels differently as well. A few dialects still make a three-way distinction among MERRY-MARY-MARRY while others will merge two of them or all three.
As someone who had a speech impediment as a kid, I learned quickly to differentiate my homophones so that I didn't have people asking me what I meant, at least more than I needed to with my speech handicap. I would enunciate the 'dd' or the 'tt' in words like metal and meddle. I would also substitute entire words if I came across those words in a problematic sentence that lacked sufficient context clue.
Me to
With me it was Rs
I would say bird and board and it would sound the same
Spaceshiplewis-That's a great idea!
@@marktracy1721 Yep Rs are hard for me too, still is the case today. I learned a lot of bird names. "See that PIGEON LOOKING FELLA over there?"
Most people don't usually just spew out words like metal or meddle like a random cuss word. There's usually a sentence to go with it and we learn very young to figure out how to differentiate words from the context of the sentence. Although as a child I had a southern auntie and she was from Sucksass (which of course ALWAYS brought on a fit of giggles) it was years before I grew up enough to figure out the town was actually called Success.
So, we all know LARRY/LAIRY Lawrence knows the ways in which words are pronounced differently in the various US regions -you know, since he’s a linguist and referred to the caught/cot merger. But it’s fun to see and play around w/ it! I say most of them differently (w/ my midwest accent)except one/won; Hairy/Harry; have/halve (and when I’m lazy metal/medal and petal/pedal). One that drives me crazy is when people can’t say the names Don/Dawn because I always think they’re talking about a different person of a different gender or possibly of the morning if I’m not really listening to their story.
In fairness, the various d & t pairs (eg medal and metal) *were* pronounced distinctly by your wife. Apparently, your ears are not tuned to that particular distinction. Also, I think her pronunciation of poll, pole, and pull was distinct
BTW almost everyone will mess up: Juan won one woe.
I agree with you :)
I had no trouble with the tongue twister. Then again, being in the Southwest and knowing a lot of Spanish speakers I pronounce “Juan” with a voiceless labial-velar fricative “Hw” sound instead of the simple “W” sound a lot of English speakers simplify to. So the twister is for me [ʍɑ:n wən wən woʊ] This is despite the fact my natural dialect does not use /ʍ/ for “when” “where” and “why,” and thus ONLY uses it for loanwords.
Not for me, she seems to be saying Ts every time where I heard the difference when he said it.
@@IONATVS Me too! I'm from California and I found I do the same thing with the voiceless labial-velar fricative "Hw"...never even noticed it before!
The d & t's sounded the same to me.
The fact that you giggle every time she stops talking is absolutely hilarious😂
Regional differences show up in all of the words you used. Merry, marry and Mary, to me, are all different (raised on Long Island) and the “airy” sounds are different to me from “arry” sounds. Some of the vowel sounds are so slightly different that they’re hard to hear differences but the differences are there.
I agree. I grew up near Boston and those words are pronounced very differently when I say them - merry, marry, Mary sounds like Meery. This was a fun video to watch, especially to hear Lawrence giggling and see Tara being a good sport :)
@@cheryl1338 thanks for mentioning how Mary is pronounced near Boston. I’m from an area where Mary and merry are the same, and wondered how they differed elsewhere.
I am from Buffalo and merry, marry, and Mary are pronounce the same.
The funny thing is that how your wife pronounces those is actually pretty rare for the Great Lakes region. We missed the caught cot merger for the most part.
I pronounce the "L" in walk and stalk. And she may have gotten the wrong "medal" or "metal" because she was talking about "meddle". I definitely say many of those differently.
I don't exactly pronounce the "L", but my vowel sound in those words is distinctly different from wok and stock.
@ehrichweiss what part of the country are you from?
Nobody pronounce the L in walk or stalk. “Stalk” (STAWK) is still different from “stock” (STAHK or STOK), but not the way Laurence differentiates them, so he missed it.
@@laurie7689
You must be one a them folks what knows how ta read.
I absolutely ❤ love your channel. I remember as long being able to remember loving British humor.
I'm referring your what I would call small sarcasm..hilarious.
Your videos are so well put together.
I love how you determine, come up with your content. Great work.
I wish I could be a patron. Currently applying for our disability,
I'm American. I agree with her on most, but 'pull' has a 'U' in it so it rhymes with 'bull', not bowl.
And Ts and Ds are pronounced differently, even when they are in the middle of words. I even pronounce the Ts in 'butter'. I don't say budder.
The 'merry,' 'Mary,' and 'marry' difference that you invoke is so indistinguishable that it appears to actually be an issue of pride rather than an actual difference that's worth bothering with.
Absolutely, thank you. This is a massive country and I know there any many accents but the thumbnail alone tilted be a bit.
If ts are in the middle of a word I pronounce it as a d sound. Metal becomes medal.
But if it is two ts like in butter I pronounce it as a t sound.
I’ve never met anyone who says butter with a T
You have made a point of proper grammatical pronunciation most of us Americans don't. There was a Canadian family out in California that would say the T really hard in the middle of words like metal. It was amusing because we have the laziest way of talking except for certain parts of the South.
@@eboone Martha Stewart lol
I love that, when you go over ferry/fairy, you start giggling like you're in a pilsbury commercial. Adorable.
“Poll” and “pull” definitely sound different. I’m from Virginia Beach, VA for (lack of) accent reference.
The drop in the "u" is very pronounced
Same I was raised in Northern VA and they both sound different
It gets really frustrating when you hear about "polling data" vs "pulling data". Both of these words could apply to what a device does to read data from another device.
I'm just amazed he can still come up with subjects that are educational and entertaining. Love you Lawrence and Tara.
Your beautiful patient intelligent wife has a Midwest accent. You should ask how Americans from other parts of country pronounce those words. We don't all speak alike.
A midwest accent? Compare how people talk in Chicago, Des Moines, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis (all Midwestern cities) and then tell me there is a "Midwest accent."
@@StoneE4 Spot on.
@@StoneE4 ikr!
Your involving of your wife was wonderful! Do more videos with her! She’s great!!!
Tara is not speaking with a "Midwestern" accent. I'm from Wheeling, WV and say all of these exactly the same way. It's called the Midlands dialect, as in not northern or southern (see various maps on the net) and is not restricted to the Midwest.
Spot on ^
Reminds me of a little story I heard years ago. Guy was camping some place down south. While registering for the site, he was asked all kinds of questions. Then, he was asked if he had any pits. He was stumped, so asked, what do you mean by pits? He was given a strange look, and told, you know, dogs or cats.
I've heard people pronounce oil and Earl the same. So, Earl puts oil in his car.
Thanks for the vid. Im willing to bet most Americans can hear the difference in pronunciation from her, at least I can for most of them.
Im very disappointed you cut the camera when she got up to pop you one! LMAO!!! The way you giggled at her pronunciations is hysterical! You two are adorable together!
I hear differences in most because I was always a good speller in school and because my son had speech problems. As his parent I learned speech patterns and sounds in order to help him at home and to reinforce what his speech therapist was teaching him.
I don't pronounce the words with which you tested Tara the same as she did. There are so many regional differences that most words are pronounced differently from place to place. This was a really cute video Laurence. Thanks for the giggles.
I tell my fiancee (Ukainian) that English is probably the hardest language to learn, because in most other languages, the words are pronounced as they are spelled. If you can pronounce the letters of the alphabet of German or Russian, for instance, you can muddle through the words. In English, however, that is not always the case.
For example, reed and read. Red and read. Blue and blew. Through and threw.
Or, they don't follow the pattern. Rough (ruff), through (not thruff, but thru).
If you throw in regional accents, slang, it's hard as hell to understand.
Coming from an English-speaking background, Vietnamese feels impossible to learn. The sounds of letters in the romanticized transliteration of Vietnamese is so, so different from English, *and* there are a bunch of diacritical marks to learn. This is in part because the language was first transliterated by the French, who also have very different pronunciations from English.
Famously, one can pronounce 'ghoti' as 'fish'...
French can be tricky....-eau, -eaux, -ot, -ots, -au, aux....all sound the same
@@tinnagigja3723 I thought those were just two spellings of the same word, no?
The first statement is simply not true. There are many languages that are not pronounced exactly as they are spelled. Gaelic languages almost make it up as they go along at times. French adds letters and then decides to pretend they are not there. Turkish just decides the end of words don't exist.
Loved this. Your wife is adorable when she is annoyed with you.
Just love the giggle Laurence. Expat Brit in NZ. Don't get me started on the NZ accent. My kids go to Beard 😆
This was great! I commented before I got all the way to the end, so I erased my other comment to comment again with a fresh comment. lol
Thank you and this was great! I'm glad you're still together 😁👏😉
Ok, Lawrence, let's hear you pronounce "mare" as in a female horse and "mayor."
He lives in Chicago so that's a double whammy for him.
I'd like to hear him say Mark and Mack.
@@StoneE4 Tis example doesn't make sense. Even in a non-rhotic accent, those two words have different vowel lengths and would sound different.
@@marmac83 _"Tis"_ example? This(?) example? What example doesn't make sense?
Laurence, I think you should do this with people from other places with different accents. Also show them the written words so they aren't influenced by your accent. I'm from the southwest and I definitely pronounce the "L" in walk but I do drag it out a little bit more than just one syllable.
I'm from NYC. I don't have the cot caught merger (which was at play in a bunch of these), but pretty much the rest of these, I agree with your wife.
Love to see you two working together. Enjoyed
Just go to the South and short “e” sounds become short “I” sounds. Therefore words like pen sound like pin and ten sound like tin. You could say “I have ten pens” and “I have tin pins” and they’d sound exactly the same. I once had a coworker withhold a writing utensil until I said pen “properly”. I had to sound it out like a six year old. My mouth just doesn’t make that shape.
You are correct. I am from the south and I pronounce those words like pin and pen the same.
Fun video! And a lot more fun than just having her read sentences like I’ve seen a few other channels do that relate to accents. There were some on this list that I didn’t know were homophones in any of the varied American accents. A few of them your wife says as homophones while others I could hear a difference between the words, though it wasn’t as distinct a difference as when you said them to her. While there were plenty of words you gave her that I, too, say similarly to her (which indicates that my pronunciation of words may be more heavily influenced by my midwestern family than my family in other parts of the US; although to be fair I saw/see them and my western family more often throughout the year than my southern, New England, etc family), there were some that I pronounce differently to both you and her with a pronunciation somewhere in between. So I found that fascinating to realize about myself!
Great video and got to see you two interacting again which is always fun to watch, too!
This is so endearing to see Laurence having a great time with our homophones. I have thought it's pretty much a one-way street where we Americans can't get enough of the British accents.
That's not universal, British accents drive me crazy in the bad way. I can watch Laurence's videos because I love him but it would be easier on me if he had a different accent.
Although most words that sound the same are made clear via context, there are slight differences - not in the way they're pronounced, but the cadence of the word. The inflection is on "Tu" in the word "Tudor" and a slightly longer first syllable. The word "Tutor" is said with equal time spent on each syllable and no stress on either syllable.
Good point.
Yeah! It's a very subtle difference in the length of the vowel sounds!
I love Tara's indefatigable patience. She's a gem.
1:17
Japanese friend - "You tried Yakiniku! What kind did you get?"
Me - "Horumon"
Japanese friend - "Oh, did you know that's offal?"
Me - "Yes, it really was."
Also, I pronounce pin and pen differently 90% of the time, but when I'm in a hurry, I pronounce them the same. I pronounce been, bin, and Ben differently about 50% of the time, but all 3 the same the other 50. Caught and cot are always the same, as are bought and bot, wrought and rot, etc.
I love her! She's amazingly patient!
I do maintain that the American (lost) T isn't completely lost, it becomes a tongue stop... so there *is* a difference that might be lost on some... just like I could never enunciate the difference between "haw" and "hor" for the English ear. (And before you rail on about inconsistencies, explain the British pronunciations of "schedule" and "school"...)
It must be fantastic being among your friends. The two of you have so much charm.
As to pronunciation, there are some words I vary slightly, but mostly they're about the same. Of course, there are differences in pronunciation in North vs. South and East vs. West here in the US. Some of us do differentiate, but it's been my experience that most of us don't.
Please tell your wife that she's a saint for putting up with you, because that would drive me crazy. And her makeup looks lovely.
Very amusing for me, a Brit who's lived in the States for 42 years!
After watching most of the video and getting too bothered to finish I'm quite curious.
When she said pole, pull and pole. Or awful and offal did they sound the same to you?
I'm trying to see if it's just Lawrence or maybe a difference in what Brits vs Americans listen for
Hearing her say things differently 3/4s of the time and him not not noticing was rather shocking...
The regional differences in the US are amazing too. I have a friend from NY and he asked me to guess his middle name, which stars with A. I started with "Aaron," and he said "No." Eventually I gave up and asked what it was. "Aaron," he said. "That's the first thing I guessed!" "No, you guessed Erin." *confused look* "yes... Aaron." "That's not my middle name." "You JUST said your middle name is Aaron." "Yes, it's Aaron, not Erin." *more confused looks* "You seriously just said your middle name is Aaron not Aaron. I am so confused right now." Apparently the proper pronunciation of Aaron is with an a that sounds like "at." I still cannot hear the difference unless the speaker is over-emphasizing (and neither can the coworkers who introduced themselves at a recent Teams meeting as "Girl Erin" and "Boy Aaron"). 🤷♀
Aaron earned and iron urn
I had a problem when a Kansan wanted a keg. I thought she wanted a cake.
To my ear, there's a definite difference between Erin and Aaron, but it's not the initial vowel that's different. There's a difference in the length of the R and way the o and I sound, but for some reason the O and I difference is more subtle to my ear than the R.
If you're from western Pennsylvania, well, wail and whale are pronounced the same.
It got confusing when I was younger my friend was drinking from the faucet and it was well water. He said he forgot it was well water and spit it out in the sink. I was picturing water made from whales.
I don't think I pronounce them the same but I know a few people that do.
Don and Dawn sound the same so does Mary, Marry and Merry.
To me, Dawn is slightly longer than Don.
I could hear the differences between the “homophones” most of the time. We just emphasize certain parts of the word for shorter or longer. But it’s very subtle. “Awed” has a slightly longer “ahhh” sound than “odd.”
Some of the pronunciation differences between Laurence and his wife are due to our American tendency to pronounce consonants less crisply than Laurence does. Some of her pronunciations, "caught" in particular, are different from what is typically said here in New England.
Lawrence says mayor as a single syllable. Most Americans would have it as two separated by a consonant “y”.
I like that you appreciate that American English is different instead of criticizing it.
Tara looks convincingly unimpressed 😂 This video reminds me of the Don & Dawn running joke in Mad Men. I'm Australian, and we pronounce the two names quite differently from each other. If I hadn't been exposed to American accents via decades of US TV and movies, I wouldn't get the joke at all 😅
I’m from the southern US and those 2 names are very different to me as well. But I also think an outsider might think I say them the same.
But have you ever been caught and gone to court?
That's properly the funniest video I've ever seen, your wife is a good sport.
Lawrence this was frustrating to watch as you just don't seem to have an ear for the differences. I understand it can be subtle but saying Americans say words the same simply because you cannot hear the difference is rather odd.
I have an interesting linguistic & pronunciation background. I was reared in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. When I when away to college, I was kidded relentlessly because of my hill Billy accent. In less than 6 months, I had transformed my accent into what I called my midwestern radio announcer voice. I did it by listening to announcers & listening tog myself on a taped recorder
I would love to see a video on the very strange English word: Data. Some in the US say Day-ta whereas others say Da-ta, and here in the UK we say both Day-ta and Dar-ta. That begs the question, which is the "correct" American way of saying it? And why are there 2 different ways? Normally its down to the UK/US variants but in this case there are 3 different forms! Please investigate...
Like many words in the US, there is no one "correct" way... it will be down to regional differences. This is one word that I switch back and forth on, with no real reasoning why. I say day-ta and often as I say da-ta. I also switch between ee-ther and eye-ther/nee-ther and nie-ther. I'd say it depends on the day, but I've been known to switch mid-sentence. I've lived all over the US and that may play into it.
Im from the US and personally choose to say dayta because I think the other way sounds too much like Dada like a child would call their dad and it seems weird to me.
Day-da
Da-da
Day-ta
Da-ta
All of these I can understand, but where does anyone get dar-ta from?
I am a programmer and we use this term frequently. The most common pronunciation has the first syllable rhyming with cat. Second most common is the long a, like day-ta. Very uncommonly someone will say dah-ta.
And then there are people like me who change between day and da for no reason at all that I can discern. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Whim maybe? 😆
I love how giddy Laurence was with each pronunciation!
English is one of the hardest languages to learn or understand 😂 P.S. in our heads we heads they sound different 😬
Imagine how dyslexics feel 😳
Dyslecexics see word jobbled up for example, the word RED would look like dre or der , has nothing to do with sounds
I have a family member from Kentucky... She was telling us a story about a pilot crashing an airplane. She worked in a factory where they had stacks of pallets. And if you asked her where to put some trash, she would say to 'pile it over there'. Pilot, pallet, and pile it. All identical.
It’s even more interesting that you think you’re pronouncing sone things differently but your not.
That was fun. Thanks for playing along Tara.
Air (what we breathe), Err (an error) , Heir (an inheritor) , Aire (a tune), Are (100 square meters), Ere (before), E'er (ever), Ayr (town in Scotland), Eyre (Jane's name).
All your videos are made possible by your wife's patience!
Laurence has cadence and an amazing sence of humor the fact that I can't find any stand-up comedy is a tragedy... he would murder... he has the talent to be one of the best comics of all time. He has the look and facial expressions too.
I think Tara’s pronunciations are the same because she’s Midwestern. I’m an Alabama native. Some of these pairings sound alike when I say them, but a lot of them are pronounced differently in other parts of the country.
LOL your wife is so fun. Great video glad I subbed!
🤣😂 I love it when you laugh!!!! You are hilarious! When I need 'a lift' I always click on you! Lots of love
Your giggles are great!
Glad you sent out the gentle reminder on your wife’s account! For some reason it had me as not following when I definitely had been previously 😑
The way you kept giggling was hilarious!
Family favorite is how some of us say "crown" and "crayon" the same...
Great content! Very fun. As an American language enthusiast, I just want to say that the cot/caught merger and merry/marry/Mary mergers are common but far from universal in American accents. I personally do both, but my grandparents didn't! (Incidentally, they said "rubbish" instead of trash, so that was a thing in New England until only recently.) Can we talk about the sauce/source merger a lot of you Brits like to rock?
Love your little ditties my grandmother was English moved over here after WWII I get a kick out of your bits quite a bit. Just caught the one on grocery stores two years ago do you want to see a big grocery store come to Southern Wisconsin go to Woodman's grocery stores they are the size of a Walmart but it's all groceries enjoy