Sometimes it's not what you say, it's how you say it.
One of this summer's projects is re-roofing the 83-year-old summer place. As you can see, we're taking off green rolled roofing tarpaper stuff (technical term) to expose boards that used to serve both as ceiling and as roof. When we're done with them, they will be merely ceiling. We're putting in a layer of plywood and then more rolled roofing.
My pronunciation problem is with "roof" because I am "supposed" to pronounce it with the "ooo" as in "ooo la la." In contrast, I drop the vowel in "roof," not to the point of "ruff" but somewhere between "ooo la la" and "ruff." I catch crap for it up here, in much the same way I catch crap for pronouncing "route" to rhyme with "doubt" instead of "boot."
So (having enough crap in my life without catching more) I am trying, sometimes consciously and sometimes not, to adjust my pronunciation. (I tend to talk like the people around me, which can get embarrassing when I travel, especially in the Deep South.) In any case, my vowel is ascending. But I stutter with it: "re-roofing," in particular becomes "we-woofing."
This past week or two, I've been pursuing my new hobby of "de-roofing" (I love to pull nails out of boards), also known as "pre-re-roofing." It's a lot of time in which not much is happening in my brain, which has taken the opportunity to go on walkabout and bring back things for me to ponder.
Something that surfaced recently is another "problem" word: niche. I grew up pronouncing it "nitch," but then again, I grew up in Oklahoma, where "route" rhymes with "doubt" and the word "root" doesn't sound like "boot" but instead has a lower, nearly "yuh" sound in the middle. Anyway, "niche": In the U.S., I used to hear more "nitch" than "neesh," but then again, I left as "oh MAJ" (grr) became popular. Up here, I've heard only "neesh" and no "nitch," which one might expect in a country where some people actually learn French.
I recently checked pronunciation guides. In the U.S., "nitch" is preferred, followed by "neesh." And according to my Concise Canadian Oxford Dictionary, "neesh" is the ONLY way to pronounce it up here.
This means that every time I say "niche," I tell Canadians yet again that I am not from around here. Fortunately, it's not a large part of my vocabulary. Plus, I think they can somehow tell I'm not from around here just by looking. I'm still working on exactly how they do that.
