Wednesday, March 12, 2008

The Utah Accent

Utahns like to talk funny. It's true. What's funnier is that Utahns don't think they talk funny. That's because most words are pronounced correctly, but the ones that aren't really stand out - kinda like nails on a chalk board.

This was a topic of conversation at work a while ago. In a nutshell, there are a few rules to correctly pronounce words like a true Utahn:
  1. All dipthongs become single vowels. Examples: Sales is pronounced "sells", mail is pronounced "mell", crayon is pronounced "cren" or "cran".
  2. Ts are not pronounced unless at the beginning of a word and are replaced with glottal stops. Example: Bit is pronounced "bih" with a glottal stop at the end, kitten is pronounced "ki-uhn" with a glottal stop in the middle.
  3. Eliminate middle vowels. Examples: Mirror becomes "mirr", family becomes "famlee".
  4. If you live away from the Wasatch Front, then you have additional options available to you. Measure becomes "mayzhure", milk becomes "melk", norman (or mormon) becomes "narman" (or "marman"), fork becomes "fark" -- the possibilities are endless.
  5. All of the rules above can be combined.
One of my favorite examples of this to prove my point came up recently while talking with some folks at work. The conversation went something like this:

Utahn 1: "Jeff went selling on his vacation."
Utahn 2: "Why would he want to sell stuff while on vacation?"
Utahn 1: "What do you mean? He was selling a boat."
Utahn 2: "He had a boat for sell?"
Utahn 1: "No, he went out selling on the lake."
Utahn 2: "Did he go like boat-to-boat or something?"
Utahn 1: "Huh? No, like a sell boat."
Utahn 2: "Oh, you said selling! I thought you were saying selling."

And Utahns don't think they have a problem.

And then there's the made up swear words Utahns use that make no sense. Like "Oh my heck" and "What the crap" or flip/fetch/freak or just plain old 'F' in lieu of saying f**k.

To use some non-Utahn vernacular, just drop the F-bomb or get off the pot.

21 comments:

Maddy Hamilton said...

Brilliant.
SOOO True.
I caught myself saying them as I read it.
LOL. I loved it!

Unknown said...

"mayzhure"! YES! my co-worker is from utah and this article is dead on.

welcome to bobaethan's website said...

You forgot if we ever say a word with a t in the middle we cut it off like mountain is mounnin and MALK

Vaganova said...

Wait, what is family supposed to sound like? :)

Unknown said...

Funny but ive lived here my whole life and i dont talk like that.

said...

I have lived in Utah my whole life and very few people I know say fark instead of fork. And NEVER have I heard marman! However I never realized I said mirr :) I thought no I don't then said it and then, yup I say that :D

dawsoc said...

this sounds like how my grandparents talk... I'm glad my parents never taught me to talk to like that when i was little.

dawsoc said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Cali said...

lol so true I talk exactly like this except for the fark and malk part, i'm not that country

Cali said...

lol I talk exactly like this except for the fark or malk part, I'm not too country

Cali said...

lol I talk exactly like this except for the fark or malk part, I'm not too country

Unknown said...

fark? malk? mayzhure? i've never left utah and have never heard anyone say these words the t part is true tho i really don't notice it thing is people everywhere talk differently and everyone thinks their accents are weird

ALLENTOWN said...

Ezra Taft Benson said Book of Marman every 6 months for years and years in conference. Guess that person wasn't raised LDS. All of these were accurate to my recollection. I laughed out loud just remembering.

Unknown said...

Lived in UT for 5+ years now and it's so true and annoying. Was kinda funny at first though.

Unknown said...

You forgot a few thing's. Barely is pronounced as like barley. The'uh' in much is exadurated M-Uh-ch. Scrapbooking sound's like sh-crap-book-EEn. Children sounds like ch-ell-drun. I could go on lol! My husband and I had no idea that we have southern Utah accents until we moved to Colorado haha. I have heard some call it the Mormon accent. We are 'mor-muhn' lol but i think that is not likely to play a part in an accent. It would be 'ah-sum' to know if it did though! We have confused friends by calling movies 'shows' and making Hawaiian haystacks, funeral potatoes and mixing mayonnaise with ketchup which we call fry sauce! Stereotypes are funny when they turn out to be true!

Anonymous said...

Another thing is we tend to say dil instead of deal. And spot on we never say our t's

Gramma Bimbo said...

I have lived in Utah for 54 years. Never have I heard marmon instead of mormon or fark instead of fork. Many oddities attributed to Utahns on Google simply do NOT exist. Amazingly, I watched 2 local news stations parrot nonsense they picked up on the Internet, so outsiders please know that our newscasters lack credibility. But we do drop T's that do not occur at the beginning of a word, drop many consonants at the end of words, use contractions almost exclusively, pronounce fam-i-ly as fam-lee, and most shamefully say yur rather than your. Using euphemisms for crass words is classic Mormon, which cracks me up. I'm pretty sure if there is a God, he knows we are dropping an f-bomb in our head when we say frick! Lol

Gramma Bimbo said...

I have lived in Utah for 54 years. Never have I heard marmon instead of mormon or fark instead of fork. Many oddities attributed to Utahns on Google simply do NOT exist. Amazingly, I watched 2 local news stations parrot nonsense they picked up on the Internet, so outsiders please know that our newscasters lack credibility. But we do drop T's that do not occur at the beginning of a word, drop many consonants at the end of words, use contractions almost exclusively, pronounce fam-i-ly as fam-lee, and most shamefully say yur rather than your. Using euphemisms for crass words is classic Mormon, which cracks me up. I'm pretty sure if there is a God, he knows we are dropping an f-bomb in our head when we say frick! Lol

Unknown said...

Everything is so true and on point besides #2 for me but then again you said if you live far from the wasatch front which I don't so that makes sense haha so yeah this is all so true

Unknown said...

Everything is so true and on point besides #2 for me but then again you said if you live far from the wasatch front which I don't so that makes sense haha so yeah this is all so true

Claire said...

There's a huge difference between the way rural and especially Southern Utahns speak and those of us who live along the Wasatch Front.