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:
- All dipthongs become single vowels. Examples: Sales is pronounced "sells", mail is pronounced "mell", crayon is pronounced "cren" or "cran".
- 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.
- Eliminate middle vowels. Examples: Mirror becomes "mirr", family becomes "famlee".
- 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.
- 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.