It drove me crazy when I first moved out of New Jersey and heard so many people “mispronouncing” vowels like this. See also “pen” pronounced as “pin”, “Laura” and “Lara” being pronounced the same, etc. The “e” to “i” vowel shift in particular has become extremely prominent throughout much of the US.
Going to school in NJ, I had a teacher whose first name was “Dawn” and she hated it. I didn’t understand, I thought it was a pretty name.
But then I grew up, left the state, and wondered why everyone referred to the morning as “don.” That’s when it all clicked (or, you could say, it dawned on me.) Other states don’t pronounce the “aw” part, making “Dawn” and “Don” sound the same. In New Jersey, they are distinct. Now I see why having that name could be upsetting.
That one, especially, has also driven me crazy. That poor woman.
Unpopular opinion 1: the us should invite some Brits and learn to speak regular English again.
Unpopular opinion 2: the us should split up and adopt their local version of English as their official language.
US English is , in some cases, more conservative than British English. A lot of words in the us were used by those from the UK that came. But later fell out of fashion in the UK
The US has one of the oldest living dialects of English. Linguists argue whether Appalachian English is a mostly preserved dialect of 16th century Elizabethan English or an unusually conservative dialect of 18th century Colonial English.
Y’ont folks ta git back ta talkin right have em talk hillbilly.
You think English in the UK hasn’t evolved in the last few hundred years?
Not to mention that despite the impact of TV and radio, UK accents are wildly variant and it’s pretty much a guarantee that there’ll be corners that don’t make distinctions between at least two of these words.
There’s no such thing as “regular English” in the UK; the Thames Estuary accent is prescriptivism, not regularity.
