<p>MizzBee – I can’t say them differently either. It’s a strain on my mouth muscles even to try. Fortunately, I like the way I talk, so I wouldn’t change even if I had the option!</p>
<p>We used to use “wicked” all the time when I was growing up in MA in the 60’s and 70’s. Kind of went out of fashion but I it’s used all the time now in the Boston area.</p>
<p>^wicked alive and well in RI…my son said the Aerosmith concert was wicked good…</p>
<p>wicked = very</p>
<p>One quiz pegged me as a “midland” other as a “western”. I grew up in Boston and was born in the Midwest. Oh well.</p>
<p>I’ve never heard or used wicked until I went to school in upstate CT. All my Mass/local friends say it. I say ‘mad’ instead of wicked and get weird looks, lol. They both mean very.</p>
<p>Wicked ****ah - something very good or something very bad. In use in the Boston area and maybe elsewhere in New England.</p>
<p>Oh my, the automatic censor didn’t permit my the use of a syllable that begins with a “p” and rhymes with diss</p>
<p>I grew up singing with careful articulation. All those words are pronounced (and sound) differently to me.</p>
<p>^ some I can see as maybe slightly similar(maybe)…but bag and vague? feel and fill? Maybe the test should be who has butchered the English language the least/most…lol</p>
<p>D has friends from Minnesota who regularly carry “begs” or “baygs”. Me, I like a pocketbook, but I"ve learned to call it a purse (even though my husband is convinced it’s a knapsack). :)</p>
<p>I thought “mad” was the west coast version of “wicked.”</p>
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<p>Well, let’s not get on a high horse about why everyone else’s accent is"wrong." To them, your accent is just as wrong. </p>
<p>English has an enormous range of vowel sounds, and the same letters represent multiple sounds. There is no generally accepted “standard” way of pronouncing words that include those vowels. I imagine in the mother country of the English language, pretty much all Americans sound like ignorant hicks who “butcher” the English language. But they don’t agree amongst themselves as to how various words are pronounced. It varies by class, by region, by educational background, sometimes (as in London) by neighborhood.</p>
<p>Truth is, many people in Minnesota and the Dakotas do pronounce “bag” in a way that rhymes with “vague.” It sounds odd when you hear it, if you’re not familiar with it. But who’s to say they’re wrong? A few hundred miles to the north, in Manitoba and Ontario, they pronounce the word “about” as “a-BOOT.” And a schedule, which most Americans pronounce as if the “ch” were a “k” (“SKED-jule”), to many Canadians is a “SHED-jule.” Sounds funny to us, but then many people in England pronounce it the same way as the Canadians, and after all, it was their language first.</p>
<p>English is very difficult to learn. In many foreign languages when you see a written word, if you know the pronunciation rules, you have a good chance of pronouncing it correctly but not in English. Why do lead (metal) and lead (direct) are not pronounced the same?</p>
<p>@bclintonk even in minnesota those words have different pronunciations… some people say bag like bayg and some say it like beg</p>
<p>" I imagine in the mother country of the English language, pretty much all Americans sound like ignorant hicks who “butcher” the English language."</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVc57FlKuoo&feature=fvwrel[/url]”>British Accents Vs American Accents - YouTube;
<p>Wicked is not used on the west coast. Hella= very, as in “hella cool”.</p>
<p>The recent discussion of speech patterns reminded me of the year that Amy Carter was sent a chain saw for Christmas, by a chain-saw manufacturer. She had been interviewed about what she hoped to receive for Christmas, and her answer sounded to some like “chain saw.” Actually, it was “train set.”</p>
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<p>They are also spelled the same way. But the past form of “lead” (direct) is also irregular, as it is spelled “led” and pronounced like “lead” (metal), not “leaded”, which indicates that the gasoline in question has a lead-based additive in it.</p>
<p>But hella should never be used in Southern California! Most people consider it an ugly Northern California word, and it is derided and mocked as such :)</p>
<p>“Wicked ****ah - something very good or something very bad. In use in the Boston area and maybe elsewhere in New England.”</p>
<p>Once again, another thing that I have heard people talk ABOUT many times but have never heard in context.</p>