September 26, 2003
Tomato tomahto. Just back from a trip to the grocery during which I was listening to NPR. Once again, the puzzle gnawed: why do all NPR readers pronounce the word "news" as "nyooooze"? Is it some northeastern thing? Some secret code? Some mid-Atlantic affectation? Some good ol' liberals' club shibboleth? Have my ears perhaps received only a biased sample? Nyoooze. (It's properly "nooze", of course.)


Posted by Moira Breen at September 26, 2003 12:40 PM
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Because they wish they were English.

Posted by: Jonathan on September 26, 2003

The Brit pronunciation is also the one used in my hometown in MA. Working class, strongly influenced by Irish pronunciations, but still "nyooz" and "tissyue". But then, we also said "War-ick" instead of "War-wick".

Blame it on where they grew up, were educated, or whom they tend to imitate. Ain't nothing very serious, though it can be annoying.

BTW, my wife, a Wash DC native, pronounces it Tom-ah-to. I'm now ambi-prounciationist.

Posted by: Hatcher on October 29, 2003

Interesting. My mother was a DC native, and had all kinds of (to us) strange pronunciations: dram-a, not drah-ma, for drama; her donkey was closer to "dunkey" than donkey; "dinosaur" was din-a-sahr, not dine-a-sore. Not to mention her way with the ow dipthong. But she most definitely never said "tomahto".

I have no serious objection to variations in pronunciation. It's just that, as a native Floridian, I have an inbred antipathy toward that preferred NPR accent. All Yankee accents were ugly, of course, but worst of all was that Massachusett-sy talk. (Hey, they made fun of our accents first!)

Posted by: Moira on October 29, 2003

does anyone know the origen of the phrase "you say tomato i say tomahto"?
thanks

Posted by: erin m on November 28, 2003

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