Do you pronounce "often" with the "t"? Boston Globe columnist Jan Freeman noticed that although the "t" fell silent in the 15th century, it appears to be coming back, at least among college students. It may sound pretentious, but she asks us to be kind.
More at the delightfully-named blog Throw Grammar From The Train. Link -via TYWKIWDBI
Pretentious pronunciation surely exists -- I sympathize with McIntyre's aversion to "Bach uttered as if the announcer suffered from catarrh, or a Spanish name pronounced as if the studio were in the foothills of Andaluthia." But I think that in general, we're much too eager to label people dimwits or social climbers on the basis of pronunciations they probably acquired in the usual way -- by imitating the people they talk to.
More at the delightfully-named blog Throw Grammar From The Train. Link -via TYWKIWDBI
"i can't imagine ANYONE except some backwoods hillbillies saying it that way when asked to pronounce the word as slowly as possible..."
I guess Australians must be backwards hillbillies then. I never pronounce the 't' sound, nor do I recall any Australians doing so.
Also, we pronounce "processes" as pro-cess-es with an emphasis on the 'cess' part, the 'pro' part rhyming with 'no', and a short 'e' sound at the end.
Despite Australia being such a large country, we generally don't have regional accents. You can't tell where anybody is from by their accent, although there is a sort of continuum from urban to rural that most people's accents lie on. People living in rural Australia tend to have a bit more of what we call a "bogan" (rhymes with Paul Hogan) accent, and say things like "Hows youse gaa'n?"
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060706193650AAmjRiw