Reply To: Confused from the UK!

[fstopper89]

I have always thought the Coke vs. Soda thing was strange!

One word I made a conscious effort to start pronouncing right is “milk.” I grew up pronouncing it like “melk.” A few years ago someone brought it to my attention and I forced myself to change.

Around my town, we have several small towns out in the country that started with a church and a feed mill, known collectively (and affectionately), as “The Holyland” for them being named such things as Marytown, Johnsburg, Mount Calvary, St. Peter, St. Anne, among various Biblical names, and almost all of these were German settlements (My great-great grandparents were given a plot of land during the Homestead Act). As you can imagine, people in these small towns generally stuck close and usually married into families within the Holyland. German used to be spoken in the schools there. There are pockets of hard Americanized-German accents and/or grammatical shortcomings. SO MANY people from this area say “I seen him at the store.” among other things. Unfortunately those traits keep getting passed down as the parents don’t know it’s improper. It drives me nuts hearing adult professionals saying that!