Do you say pen and Pin the same? You're a Texan.

[rwsmith]

Anybody heard this?

My Dad (northern FL, south GA) told us to 'wrench' off the dishes after we washed them. I've never heard anybody else use that pronunciation.

 

[kthom]

That's the way I say it, rwsmith. I wrench off my hands or wrench out a bucket, etc. And I guess from having heard it said a lot when I was a lad, I would also say,"If you don't straighten up right now, I'm gonna wrang your neck, boy!" And we used to wrang lots of chicken's necks during the summer time. Then again, I also say winder instead of window. No "r" there either!!

 

[tcon]

Gotta go know. Fixinta go warsh some clothes...

Kentucky here. My wife had a coworker who enlisted in the US Navy. The first day, his fellow sailors heard him refer to a wash cloth a "worsh rag". Guess what his name was from that point on?

 

[tops]

Kentucky here. My wife had a coworker who enlisted in the US Navy. The first day, his fellow sailors heard him refer to a wash cloth a "worsh rag". Guess what his name was from that point on?

I was in New London in the early 60s and several made fun of the way I talk. I started mocking them and using their pronunciations and expressions the best I could. In a few days most of them realized they sounded just as goofy to me as I did to them and we got along just fine. One I remember was "youse guys" instead of "y'all". Larry

 

[4011]

lady years ago family gave me heck for backards.

 

[lowriderfxr]

Pen and Pin, Ten and Tin, Ant and Aunt, all the same in this part of Louisiana. My sweetie has a Boston accent, sometimes we almost need a translator. I do know that a bum isn't always a person now.

 

[XD40inTX]

The bit that gets/gits me is when less polished people ask for an Ink pen. What other pen might they want? Maybe a safety pin?

As a born, bred, and forevermore Texian, I can explain that one. An ink pen is a pen into which one occasionally has to put ink--i.e., a fountain pen. A ball-point is a generic Bic.

I can't imagine how one would say pen and pin differently, but that's me. The one I had trouble with for years was substituting the vowel "a" for the correct vowel "o." For example, that animal that Roy Rogers rode was a "harse."

Many years ago (circa 1960) I spent two years as the midnight-to-five a.m. DJ in a radio station. They spent about a year trying to teach me to say "horse" instead of "harse" and "mortician" instead of "martician." I guess I finally learned or they gave up.

 

[Old Corp]

Lifelong Tarheel, and many generations before me, including some that met the Euro white folk.
No difference in 'pen' and 'pin' pronunciation.
My wife, from upstate NY has to serve as translator when we visit her family there. Her sisters keep asking her in incredible rapid-speak "Whatdesay? Whatdesay?"

Always been interested in linguistics. Found it interesting when reading an article years ago that professional linguistic scholars can generally place a person's region by how they pronounce the girl's name "Mary".
Something about how they articulate the dwell and tone of the vowel.