2012/09/14

Earth vs. Garth

As you can see, the fireplace is starting to come together.  This has resulted in a bit of a debate at our house.  Living with a former Arkansan, some discussions come screeching to a halt when one of us utters an unfamiliar word.


Examples which come instantly to mind are decal, foyer and the Kia Sportage.  Now, my lovely Southern Belle would refer to each of these as DEE-cal, FOI-yer and SPORT-aj, respectively (of course, Canadians will know that this is just plain wrong).   I first heard DEE-cal when I was in university - sitting with a bunch of American theologians who were discussing stickers.  I could not, for the life of me, figure out what the heck they were talking about.

However, as I spent more and more time in the US, DEE-cal came to sound more pleasant to my ear than DECK-al.

All of this is a round-about way of introducing our household's most recent debate on pronunciation.

The word is "hearth".

Do you pronounce this word as rhyming with "earth"/"hirth"? 

Or does your pronunciation rhyme with "Garth"?

7 comments:

  1. Love the house! I pronounce it like Garth. How does L say it?

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  2. Hi Alisa - I'm so glad you came by!

    I'm going to keep everyone in suspense until I get a larger sampling of pronunciations. Maybe there's even more pronunciations out there - anyone say "heerth"?

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  3. Cal-gary or Calgary?

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  4. CAL-gary
    cal-GARY

    ...or...

    CAL-gree? See what I did there?

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  5. CAL-gary.

    I think you're from Sask if you say cal-GARY.

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  6. I dunno - I think growing up I said, CAL-gree

    Alisa - Laur has been saying herth, rhymes with earth. I've not heard it pronounced this way... although I'm sure my Great-Grandfather, the Highlander, might have said something like "Hairth".

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  7. Never heard herth before. Interesting!

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