Pronouncing Roof Like Ruff

According to grant barret linguist and cohost of the npr radio show way with words it is particularly a regional marker.

Pronouncing roof like ruff.

Listen to the audio pronunciation in the cambridge english dictionary. I am from the south. Mostly the distinction is between the two different double o pronunciations the long oo in food or the short oo in book. I now live in california and expected to hear it here after being questioned for years in the east.

The really bizarre one and not limited to michigan is the pronunciation of wash or washington as warsh and warshington. Don t know about nook. The teacher also said we had only 12 instead of the normal 13 american vowel sounds pronouncing cot and caught the same but my question is whether my pronunciation of root and roof is disappearing. Northern us accents tend toward the long foodish one southern accents tend toward the bookish one.

Roof was one of our spelling words. When i was in grade school we had a teacher from chicago. In a particular episode he says the difference is only caused by how some people make tense vowels as lax vowels. People who pronounce the wood roof as ruff are a danger to our society.

How to pronounce roof. And for nice try sake its called soda. How to say roof.