Is the "t" in "often" Silent?

[rdavenport]

I've heard of the use of "while" for "until" in Lancashire too.

[A Lark Ascending]

7 hours ago, kinuta said:

The use of 'uz' for 'our' - "we're gonna ger uz bags and ger uz buzzes and ger 'om' - was a common one. 

Indeed, but 'uz' is also used in place of 'me' as in 'Gee uz a kiss luv'. In Sheffield ' 'Aar' is also used in place of 'our' , 'Aarouse' for our house and ' Aarkid' for my elder bother, in which case it is also used for singular 'My'.  Language is a wonderful thing.

To my ears the accent and language of Yorkshire sounds identical to that used by the kids where I used to work on the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border, west of Mansfield. Yet when we used to take them to the National Mining Museum near Wakefield they used to fall about laughing for weeks afterwards at the accents/expressions of the former miners who acted as guides underground.

I can only just distinguish a Yorkshire from a Lancashire accent - No problem with a North-East one though! 

[BillF]

58 minutes ago, A Lark Ascending said:

To my ears the accent and language of Yorkshire sounds identical to that used by the kids where I used to work on the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border, west of Mansfield. Yet when we used to take them to the National Mining Museum near Wakefield they used to fall about laughing for weeks afterwards at the accents/expressions of the former miners who acted as guides underground.

I can only just distinguish a Yorkshire from a Lancashire accent - No problem with a North-East one though! 

The big giveaway about whether an accent is Lancs or Yorks is that in the former an 'r' in the middle of a word (burn, person, etc) is sounded, but not in Yorks. Here's an learned account of what's happening:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English

In this respect Lancs speech has more in common with that of of the US than with Yorks!

Edited May 29, 2016 by BillF

[JSngry]

1 hour ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Now how do all of you pronounce "oftentimes"?

One t, two t's or no t?

 

Depends on the desired rhythmic flow relative to the context of whatever else is being said on either end of the word.

[A Lark Ascending]

I did not know that. 

I am cursed by an aural memory from the 60s of The Clitheroe Kid, my usual reference point when trying to decide if the accent is Yorkshire or Lancashire (Gracie and George work too!).  

[JSngry]

8 hours ago, kinuta said:

 

You can imagine why I'm puzzled when, not once but many times I've heard American tv characters say ' Don't forget to bring your books', and, to a person about to go home, 'Bring this cake home with you'.

Another widely heard tv show expression that bugs me is ' reach out ', I really dislike that term. What happened to 'contact' or ' speak to' ?

 

"Reach out" is a term I first encountered in the corporate world, and then only after leaving the night shifts for the daytime. At first I thought it was some kind of a joke that everybody was in on, but nooooooo..... Apparently the connotation is that you are the one doing the reaching, and that you are doing so as a gesture which will signify the need for the reach-outee to be there, it's all about recognizing the value of others and connecting as a TEAM, nobody succeeds in isolation, but there must be a consciously proactive move to break the isolation, so, REACH OUT! god that world is so full of its own shit...trying to make the corporation the community, noting that you spend more time with your coworkers than you do your family without irony or disgust, just as justication for expanding the trend to make it "feel" more humane in the process. All I can think of is that putrid Diana Ross song, yuck. Reach out and touch somebody's hand, eeeewwwww.

In the other example, although, I think a distinction has to be made about chronoplacement of the expressions. If you're leaving my place and I tell you to bring this cake home with you, well, that's kinda jacked. However, if I'm on the other end of the phone with you, or if I'm going to meet you later at your house, then bring this cake home makes sense, because then we are looking at both ourselves and the cake in terms of where it will be in the future thanks to our actions. If we do not bring the cake to the desired future location, we will have no cake, and what will we have taken is a lesson about the need to get the damn cake to where it needs to be by any means necessary. Although, it's just cake, hardly a dig deal, not like pie would be.

Same thing with the books, if Little Johnny's teacher asks him where his books are, he will say that he forgot to bring them. His mother will have told him to NOT forget to bring them, once again proving that listening to your mamma is gonna be a Best Practice far more often than not.

[A Lark Ascending]

Corporate-speak is a world unto itself. At some point in the 90s teachers stopped teaching and started 'delivering the curriculum'. 

Another supremely irritating one is to 'interface with'. 

[BillF]

23 hours ago, A Lark Ascending said:

Corporate-speak is a world unto itself. At some point in the 90s teachers stopped teaching and started 'delivering the curriculum'. 

Another supremely irritating one is to 'interface with'. 

Have you started saying "going forward" when you mean "in the future", Bev? Or are you just unfashionable, like me? 

Edited May 30, 2016 by BillF

[rdavenport]

I started a new job in February, and a  great many of my colleagues and customers / clients use the word "perfect" with gay abandon eg "Do you have a reference number?", "XYZ 3000", "perfect, how can I help?". "Here's your brew", "Perfect, thanks" etc.

 

I think I'm the only one who notices it, but I am older than most

Edited May 29, 2016 by rdavenport

[kinuta]

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

"Reach out" is a term I first encountered in the corporate world, and then only after leaving the night shifts for the daytime. At first I thought it was some kind of a joke that everybody was in on, but nooooooo..... Apparently the connotation is that you are the one doing the reaching, and that you are doing so as a gesture which will signify the need for the reach-outee to be there, it's all about recognizing the value of others and connecting as a TEAM, nobody succeeds in isolation, but there must be a consciously proactive move to break the isolation, so, REACH OUT! god that world is so full of its own shit...trying to make the corporation the community, noting that you spend more time with your coworkers than you do your family without irony or disgust, just as justication for expanding the trend to make it "feel" more humane in the process. All I can think of is that putrid Diana Ross song, yuck. Reach out and touch somebody's hand, eeeewwwww.

In the other example, although, I think a distinction has to be made about chronoplacement of the expressions. If you're leaving my place and I tell you to bring this cake home with you, well, that's kinda jacked. However, if I'm on the other end of the phone with you, or if I'm going to meet you later at your house, then bring this cake home makes sense, because then we are looking at both ourselves and the cake in terms of where it will be in the future thanks to our actions. If we do not bring the cake to the desired future location, we will have no cake, and what will we have taken is a lesson about the need to get the damn cake to where it needs to be by any means necessary. Although, it's just cake, hardly a dig deal, not like pie would be.

Same thing with the books, if Little Johnny's teacher asks him where his books are, he will say that he forgot to bring them. His mother will have told him to NOT forget to bring them, once again proving that listening to your mamma is gonna be a Best Practice far more often than not.

I'm talking about  direct conversation, not one over the phone. If my missus calls me on my mobile while I'm out walking, she'd say ' Bring home some bread' ( actually the direct Japanese equivalant). The two situations I mentioned were direct, face to face conversations. One was ma to kids as they left for school ' Bring your lunch'.

The other was a person leaving work and heading home, being told ' Bring this cake home with you'.  Johnny's mother , speaking to Johnny as he leaves home for school should tell him not to forget to take his books, not not to forget to bring his books, that's wrong.

Edited May 29, 2016 by kinuta

[David Ayers]

5 hours ago, BillF said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorkshire_dialect

I mean your red light phrase appears nowhere on google. I am from Yorkshire so I know the dialect...

[A Lark Ascending]

10 hours ago, BillF said:

Have you started saying "going forward" when you mean "in the future", Bev? Or are just unfashionable, like me? 

Well I'm definitely unfashionable...or cussed! We all used to mock management-speak (some staff used to have secret Jargon Bingo cards as a way of getting through long staff meetings!); but it was amazing how you'd suddenly find yourself using some of the terms unwittingly (though I've yet to interface with a colleague [probably a dismissable offence]).

Funny thing is that I find it hard to remember many of them now. I'm back in a world where people talk normally all the time. 

Edited May 30, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[sidewinder]

11 hours ago, A Lark Ascending said:

Well I'm definitely unfashionable...or cussed! We all used to mock management-speak (some staff used to have secret Jargon Bingo cards as a way of getting through long staff meetings!); 

Presumably 'stakeholder', 'pro-active', 'governance', 'transparent', 'synergistic', 'lean', 're-engineered' , 'enterprise architecture', 'framework' and 'compliant' all featured in the list?  

Edited May 30, 2016 by sidewinder

[king ubu]

54 minutes ago, sidewinder said:

Presumably 'stakeholder', 'pro-active', 'governance', 'transparent', 'synergistic', 'lean', 're-engineered' , 'enterprise architecture', 'framework' and 'compliant' all featured in the list?  

I guess I reach out to those that speak that crap daily ... but 'ey, you wuhh'n think so but they had a good teacher:

 

 

[BillF]

2 hours ago, sidewinder said:

Presumably 'stakeholder', 'pro-active', 'governance', 'transparent', 'synergistic', 'lean', 're-engineered' , 'enterprise architecture', 'framework' and 'compliant' all featured in the list?  

I'll remember them going forward.

[alankin]

"right-shoring" = we're sending your job to India.

[Ted O'Reilly]

To get back to 'often' -- are you consistent in the sound of the T?  Do you lissen to music, or liss-ten?  Do you haysen to answer the phone, or hays-ten?

[Big Beat Steve]

1 hour ago, Ted O'Reilly said:

To get back to 'often' -- are you consistent in the sound of the T?  Do you lissen to music, or liss-ten?  Do you haysen to answer the phone, or hays-ten?

As an outsider (native speaker-wise ) looking in, am I right in assuming that - disregarding dialects and local variations - prononcing the "t" in "often" is definitely more common than pronouncing it in "listen"? To my ears, "liss-ten" would sound very, very stilted and way over the top (both in the UK and the US versions that I am familiar - and somewhat comfortable - with).

Edited May 30, 2016 by Big Beat Steve

[BillF]

1 hour ago, Big Beat Steve said:

As an outsider (native speaker-wise ) looking in, am I right in assuming that - disregarding dialects and local variations - prononcing the "t" in "often" is definitely more common than pronouncing it in "listen"? To my ears, "liss-ten" would sound very, very stilted and way over the top (both in the UK and the US versions that I am familiar - and somewhat comfortable - with).

I've never heard anyone sound the "t" in listen, but perhaps there are some dialects where this happens.

[JSngry]

Sonny Liston

Sleigh bells glisten 

[rdavenport]

I say glissen, is it glis-ten?

[JSngry]

glis·ten

[ˈɡlis(ə)n]

 

 

Sleigh bells ring, are you listenin'?
In the lane, snow is glistenin'

[Dave Garrett]

14 hours ago, sidewinder said:

Presumably 'stakeholder', 'pro-active', 'governance', 'transparent', 'synergistic', 'lean', 're-engineered' , 'enterprise architecture', 'framework' and 'compliant' all featured in the list?  

A Bizspeak Blacklist

[A Lark Ascending]

15 hours ago, sidewinder said:

Presumably 'stakeholder', 'pro-active', 'governance', 'transparent', 'synergistic', 'lean', 're-engineered' , 'enterprise architecture', 'framework' and 'compliant' all featured in the list?  

Indeed - though, like all professions, education spawns its own. There's actually an educational buzzword bingo ready to print card here:

 http://www.bullshitbingo.net/cards/education/

They advise shouting 'bullshit' when you get a line (not recommended in a meeting!). 

I was reasonably used to this growing up in a military family. My parents used to talk with one another at the tea table in acronyms. 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I never thought about this before, but I guess in the region where I grew up, we pronounced the 't' in often but not always in oftentimes. The 't' is always silent in words like listen or glisten.

Of course we had our own linguistic variations. For instance, if you're from there, you drop the 'y' when you pronounce Holyoke, Massachusetts. We also added an 'r' to the end of idea. Weird one, that is. I've had a tough time breaking that habit.

The first time I went to the store after I moved to New Hampshire, I heard an announcement for a special on Starkist tuna packed in water. The announcement said, "Special today - Starkist tooner in watah". I cracked up.

Edited May 31, 2016 by Kevin Bresnahan