an actual sentence here fuck you" and quit. posted by egypturnash at 4:42 PM on January 3 Okay, ya'll, a bit of advice: it's very, very often the case that how people think they pronounce words is not actually how they pronounce them. And how they hear other people pronouncing words is not how other people are actually pronouncing them. And orthography has a subtle but real affect on how people believe themselves to pronounce words, independently of how they actually do. This is good advice. Worcester: They are saying WOO-stah, (oo like rough or was), but it sounds kind of like wistah. In "Mr. Johnson is from Worcester," mister and worcester wouldn't be identical. Actually, they are saying Wor'ster, but the non-rhotic R becomes nearly silent. Query: I have always heard it queer-y, but not quite as dipthongy. Queer has a bit of a kwee-er dipthong to it (like "ear"), and I've never heard it pronounced that way in query. Sounds more like kwir-ee, where the ir is like irritate or irrational. Flower/flour: It's the strength of the dipthong. Flower is more like FLOW-wer (ow like now or wow), and flour would be closer to FLAR (like jar or far). Sort of how "hour" and "our" can be pronounced slightly differently. ("Ar train leaves in an ow-er.") My sociology professor in college enjoyed demonstrating to our Midwestern tin ears that "Mary", "merry" and "marry" could indeed sound different. It was "MAY-ree", "murray" and "mah-ree", if memory serves. Let's not