moved to Shrewsbury (across the lake from Worcester) from Illinois when I was 9, and I spent a LOT of time trying to wrap my head around the local speech patterns, and it was absolutely not Woo-stuh. It was Wisstah. Wisstah Centrum. Wisstah County. Wisstah Telegram and Gazzette. Maybe even Wistah. The first vowel is not long, in my experience. posted by dirtdirt at 11:44 AM on January 3 It's difficult because you have to understand the grammar well to disambiguate words with the same sound - if someone says "par-leh", it might be written parl, parler, parlez, parlais, parlait, parlaient All of your examples don't sound the same - the first three are pronounced /pa?le/, the rest /pa?l?/. posted by martinrebas at 11:51 AM on January 3 I'm referring to pronouncing "world" as "wuhld," as in "BBC Wuhld News." I'm referring to pronouncing "world" as "wuhld," as in "BBC Wuhld News." This has to be that US weird ear thing. My wife swears blind she hears 'r's in my speech that simply aren't there (as have several Canadian friends). What you hear as 'Wuhld' is World. The 'r' is there as plain as day to me. My wife says things to me after (possibly willfully) misunderstanding what I am saying. She will then say 'no you said (something that sounds to me exactly like I said but that apparently would be spelt completely differently to her with that pronunciation when she says it). It drives me batty. She is