Oh Daddy, the bad man made the words come out wrong...


We just finished watching season three of The 4400, and something's really been bothering me. When I say "The 4400", it comes out as "The Fordy Four Hundred". I think most English speakers with a relatively flat, middle American accent like mine probably pronounce the word "40" as "fordy". If you were a southern gentleman you might say "fahwty" and snap your tongue against the roof of your mouth to hit that hard "t", but other than that, most Americans are going to use a soft "d" for the "t" in that word. Since The 4400 is shot in BC and a large number of the actors are Canadian, they often say "The Fory Four Hunred", completely removing the "t" sound altogether. As Canadians, it is fully their right to do so, and (as you well know) I'm very much in favor of regions preserving their dialects and accents. This leads me to what's been bothering me... the word "50" pronounced as "fiddy".

"But Mason," you say, "I'm a slack jawed yokel from southeastern Oklahoma! The CW's Reba is my favorite show, and I know no other method of forming my lips and tongue to express the word of the number that is five times ten! I have no choice but to say "fiddy", would you chastise me for that? It seems massively hypocritical to give our neighbors to the north a pass of "fory", but not me. Can you explain this inconsistency?"

Yes I can. I have no problem with your pronunciation of "50" as "fiddy" as long as you're country. Black people, white people, that guy who's the manager at the Banana Leaf in Plano who looks like the Asian George Clooney but sounds like Hank Hill... if you say "ya'll", you can say "fiddy".

The problem I have is that my boss (whom I love dearly as a person) is a white man in late 30's from Northern California with no discernible accent who says "fiddy". It drives me nuts. He says it's a bad habit he picked up working retail, but I don't believe it. He has a masters degree in international business and speaks fluent Japanese, yet he says "fiddy cent" instead of "fifty cents". I don't understand it.



P.S. - Jordan Collier is a fucking bad ass.
- posted by Mason @ 3:26 PM