xkcd #2942: Fluid Speech ( imgs.xkcd.com )

xkcd #2942: Fluid Speech

https://xkcd.com/2942

explainxkcd.com for #2942

Alt text:

Thank you to linguist Gretchen McCulloch for teaching me about phonetic assimilation, and for teaching me that if you stand around in public reading texts from a linguist and murmuring example phrases to yourself, people will eventually ask if you're okay.

papalonian ,

Sounds like I'm exclaiming that something is hot, then clarifying that it was a potato.

cobysev ,

See, my middle name ends with an S and my last name begins with an S... and my middle name is a pluralized name, so nobody hears the S when I say it in conjunction with my last name. So I've gotten really good at pronouncing the S, stopping for a beat, then saying my last name, without it sounding super weird or robotic.

So properly pronouncing "hot potato" while enunciating the first T doesn't seem too challenging to me.

asteriskeverything ,

This is some riddle shit I can't figure out

Yearly1845 ,

Something like "Adams Smith" probably fits the bill. People would hear "Adam Smith"

asteriskeverything ,

Thanks so much! I always sucked at riddles I couldn't come up with anything lol

MajorHavoc ,

Nice. There's lots of areas I've lived where the locals drop specific consonants from the names of places. So anyone who actually pronounces the place name "correctly" is immediately recognized as new to town.

Hamartiogonic ,
@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz avatar

I can only think if Toron(t)o. Never really thought about other towns doing the same thing.

lastunusedusername2 ,

Vangcouver. =]
Also every city in Australia.

Yearly1845 ,

Melb'n

Kernal64 ,

When I hear someone from that city say their city's name, it sounds like it should be spelled "Trono."

CDenno ,

Shibboleths are amazing! Calgary is almost universally pronounced "Cal-Gary" by non-locals, locals say "Calgree"

Kernal64 ,

I'm gonna have to disagree with you. Have you ever seen a Shoggoth? They're horrific and just because they're protoplasmic beings doesn't mean their mispronunciation of English should be celebrated.

Zagorath ,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

Like the other reply said, it's all over the place in Australia. You can easily tell a tourist—especially an American tourist—because they'll say "can-bair-a" instead of "can-bruh".

It's not unusual in the UK, too. Worcester is Wost-er, Magdalen(e) is mawd-lin, and Leicester is lester.

Hamartiogonic ,
@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz avatar

OMG, that makes it so much worse. If someone tells you about a specific place, and you want to look it up later, you have absolutely zero chance of ever spelling it correctly. Good luck typing lester or woster in Wikipedia or Maps.

Zagorath ,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

As it happens, that worked just fine:

https://aussie.zone/pictrs/image/d72c1bfe-aa4b-4b64-b408-c65ded5df617.png

Worcester is famous even outside the UK because of Worcestershire sauce (pronounced "woster-shuh" sauce), the condiment named after the region. And because the name is on the bottle, it's easy for people to remember.

ChexMax ,

We have a Bradenton nearby which gets shortened to branton (pronounced like brain-nton). Gotta have the long A or else you'll accidently send someone half an hour away to Brandon.

Hamartiogonic ,
@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz avatar

Oh that’s just great. Two similar place names like that, and they also happen to be relatively close to each other. I can see how that could cause some confusion.

Similarly, Kuhmo and Kuhmoinen (both in Finland) are about 446 km apart, but you can easily avoid the confusion as long as you know roughly which part of the country you’re talking about.

There’s also Helsingborg (town in Sweden) and Helsinfors (swedish name for the capital of Finland). What could go wrong.

ZDL ,
@ZDL@ttrpg.network avatar

Surely you mean "Trahnah"?

kender242 ,
@kender242@lemmy.world avatar

Oregonian checking in here.

Voyajer ,
@Voyajer@lemmy.world avatar

Louisville becomes Luhvul

LemmyKnowsBest ,

Haw'potado

metallic_substance ,

Phonetically, it's exactly right, but It visually reads like the name of a Vulcan side character from an episode of star trek

southsamurai , (edited )
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

I'm sorry, but this one fails hard. My country ass drawls like I get paid by the vowel length, and I've never once shortened going to, to a single syllable. Never heard anyone do it either.

And hot potato isn't difficult to say at all.

Is this one a joke rather than something that's supposed to be real?

Now, I'm not saying we don't have some mush mouthed mofos up in these here hills, we do. Just not to that degree at all.

Edit: for anyone coming late to the party, I did say it in a sentence, and even changed the sentence up to see if it was some kind of specific thing like that. Got kind of obsessed with it for an hour or two, calling up friends that know I'm strange about language oddities and don't mind.

No matter how fast I got, no matter what sentence I tried, there was still a distinct, split second pause with an inhalation between them that makes the t and p distinct from each other. There was no ha'patata effect, or anything similar. Just hot, that brief pause as the tongue shifts and the lips purse for the potato, then the potato in a sweet southern drawl.

Maybe it was the "this fails hard" part that set off the parade of "yes it does" regardless of the fact that someone is saying that not only do they not do it, but other people with the same or similar regional accent don't either. And that's the case. The only two people I could rope in to try it out that did it came from Pennsylvania originally, and haven't developed a proper way of speaking yet (and if anyone doesn't recognize that as a joke, bugger off).

Shit, I was enthusiastic about this little quirk of speech. But damn, people maybe not keep repeating the same fucking thing when someone is making a good faith conversation about an oddity of language that should be interesting rather than another chance to feel superior by sticking to a generalization in a fucking comic strip.

Zoot ,
@Zoot@reddthat.com avatar

You slow down for the t in hot? If you say hot potato aloud, in a sentence, you'll likely drop the T. This also really depends on your accent.

Atleast when I slowed down to say it aloud, it sounded quite unnatural to purposely slow down for that T sound in Hot

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Nah, no need to slow down. Molasses flows faster in winter unless I'm pissed off and swearing. The t and p are distinct. The o vowels in potato get drawn out, and essentially turn into puhtaytuh, unless I'm paying attention and speaking formally but the t and p are separate. I've been annoying my wife trying to make a sentence where it happens, even asked my dad to do it so I could hear him.

I plan to annoy other family and friends tomorrow because it seems weird for something universal enough to end up in an xkcd to not happen at least enough to have encountered it, but because "hot potato" is a game, and a slang term, I've heard it a lot. I can't think of any time there wasn't at least a partial stop between the t and p, with the t being distinct. Plenty of mangling potato until it sounds like a foreign word, but that's a different thing

Maybe it's regional? Gods know the Appalachian dialect is full of some weird quirks.

phdepressed ,

You're not supposed to just say hot potato. Use it the middle of a sentence then say it fast.

notabot ,

Turning 'potato' into 'puhtaytuh' is an example of what they're talking about. Saying 'puhtaytuh' involves less mouth movement than saying 'potato'.

Try using 'hot potato' in a sentence and you'll probably notice that the glottal stop at the end of 'hot' gets toned down or dropped. The 't' sound will still be there, but your tounge wont move as much as if you say 'hot' on it's own.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

I keep fucking saying that I've been doing that, and it doesn't fucking happen.

Y'all motherfuckers apparently never come into the mountains where speech is slooooow by default.

Even speeding up on purpose, it doesn't happen. Which is why I made the original comment in the first place. Wouldn't waste my fucking time otherwise. Jfc people can be assholes over nothing at all

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

If you can't say "tellyahwat" in one syllable you're not country enough

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Y'all need to gitonupouttahyuh

xhieron ,
@xhieron@lemmy.world avatar

It's a broad generalization, but it's not really a matter of opinion. We can scan people's mouths and faces when they talk (and have in order to demonstrate this stuff). I think the last example probably only applies that way in particular circumstances though, since English speakers automatically group, contract, and arrange certain phonemes in certain orders (e.g., I'm not, I ain't, but never I amn't--and in real speech "I ain't" is almost always one syllable). In this example, more frequently my country ass contracts the first syllable of "gonna" away instead of the second, so "I'm 'na head to the store; y'all need anything?"

The hot potato example just stands for the premise that in real speech the t at the end of hot and the p at the beginning of potato slur together, and if you deliberately enunciate both consonants, you sound like you're reading to a transcriber. Compare the way a normal person says "let's go" to the way you sound if you force separate the words: you sound like you're doing a Mario impression.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

I'm sitting here sounding like an idiot repeating the phrase, and doing a full sentence. There's a distinct, split second pause in between the t and p, no matter how fast I try to go.I can't seem to say the hot without that t being crisp, with the tongue against the upper part of the mouth, then the shift for the p causing a tiny pause in between.

If anything, there's a brief inhalation, which is kind of a sound that links them. Is that what it's supposed to be? We can't be that far off around here. My dad says it the same way I do, I bugged him about it earlier.

When I force it into one mouth movement, it turns into a "tup" sound, but that feels alien to me.

tigeruppercut ,
@tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip avatar

Prob applies most to the GenAm accent

Ephera ,

I had to think of a ghetto accent "I'm ga'a fuck you up, mate".

So, it's not like there's no movement in that single syllable. A mild attempt is made at pronouncing two syllables, by having the back of the tongue shortly touch the roof of the mouth. But for properly pronouncing an "n", the front of your tongue needs to touch the roof of your mouth, and that's certainly not happening.

ZDL ,
@ZDL@ttrpg.network avatar

Yes. You a special snowflake who is the only human being on planet Earth who doesn't do sandhi. You should go to the nearest university's linguistics department and show off your linguistically unique trait. You could probably make a decent living as a guest speaker at linguistics conventions too.

🙄

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Hey, suck a dick buddy

ZDL ,
@ZDL@ttrpg.network avatar

I'll leave that to the expert.

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