I am not generally a person with many pet peeves, and until about a year ago, there wasn't hardly anything that bothered me enough to complain. It has recently come to my attention that people, especially in Utah, leave out their T's in many of their words. I had never really thought about this fact, and it never really bothered me until I participated in our school musical. I was in the orchestra and our director would constantly stop the performers and make them say their T's. After having to repeat scenes over and over again for one letter, it started to really bother me. Not only did it bother me when people didn't say their T's, I also started to notice it more than I had before. This pet peeve of mine has almost escalated over time. Ever since then, I make very big effort to say T's myself. When my close friends and family don't say their T's I always get on their case. I would not be surprised if I was one of their pet peeves. You all probably know what I am talking about with the T thing but just for clarity I will give a couple of examples. Probably of one of the best examples is the word mountain. The word mountain is often pronounced moun'ain. Now I realize that a lot of people say it like this, and not just people from Utah. However, it seems to be more prominent in people from Utah. Another example of missing T's happen when there are T's at the end of words. Most of the time the T sound is left of off these words completely. After living in Utah for so long I'm surprised myself, that I have not picked up this slang. It is more surprising that I feel so negatively towards it.
You may not think of this as a big, annoying problem, but “missing T's” drive me absolutely crazy. I am constantly correcting people and I am even caught yelling at the T.V. occasionally. This may seem like a different and weird pet peeve, but for me this is just one of those things that makes my skin crawl. I am not one of those people who corrects every random person, every time I hear something that I don't like. I slip up and leave out T's too. I do not expect anybody to read this and suddenly care about how they talk and whether or not they are saying the elusive T. I just wanted to bring awareness to my odd pet peeve, and explain why this bugs me so much.
Weird, I don't think I noticed the "T" thing. For me, I get annoyed when people say the wrong vowels. For example, Tues"dee" instead of Tues"day." It might be technically correct, I try to ignore it. Do you have other language-related pet peeves besides the t's? I don't think I've even heard of the "t" thing before, but I've heard that in Utah some people talk with r's at the end of words, but I haven't heard people talk like that much, if at all.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't calling you weird by the way. I meant I was unfamiliar with that dialect. As for the musical, maybe people just talk that way to talk fast, to leave out Ts, or because people sometimes talk naturally in a lazy way (even like contractions like "I'm" and "Shouldn't"). On the radio, people have to pronounce consonants clearly, so maybe the director wanted the performance to be clear and more professional in that way, less like conversational talk.
ReplyDeleteI was born and raised in Utah and I know for a fact that this post could not be any more accurate! I'm sorry that the Utah accent annoys you. I'm even more sorry that I have it. This post made me laugh because I've been teased by my parents my whole life about my inability to correctly pronounce the word "mountain." Make a Utahn say that word and it will come out something like "moun-n." If I wasn't used to it, not to mention participating in it, it would probably annoyme too. At least it's not as bad as a Boston accent...right?
ReplyDeleteI have lived here my whole life and I will be the first to admit that this is true. Although, I think there that there is worse. Most people can at least understand us.
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