General Tojo

To those of you in the States, how long did it take til you altered your own pronunciation of 'can't'? I'll ask about the other 'c' word later

Elvira

If I would be a rich man...

Anian

It's the weird pronunciation of "roof" that gets me. And "data" seems to vary between people as day-ta, dar-ta and datta (I always use the former, but never with the t=d American way)

Sally Redux

or "had of caught the ball"

Christian

‘of’ for ‘have’ drives me spare. Here, at least, it's more common than not to hear things like:
He would of come if he would of been able to.

And I still remember Bill Clinton saying:
When Redford was interviewed for Out of Africa, he made a remark about working with Meryl Streep saying:
... and then he actually made it worse —when I didn't think that was possible— by re-iterating it as:
Thus proving he's a natural blond.

Egg and Cress

Ok, here we go again - blonde bashing! (And how do you spell 'blonde'?)

Mummy in the foothills

Well I've been here 25 years and I'm still saying can't the way I did in UK car-n't saying it as cant is too much like the other c word
But then I'm still known as the Mom with the accent at the local school

Sally Redux

Maybe he was thinking of the Rastafarian "I and I".
Blond for men and blonde for women.

Englishman43

Been here 15 and I still speak exactly the way I did when I arrived - cant's and all - not consciously trying to , I just think I sound like a pillock when I pronounce things the American way so try not to.

Mummy in the foothills

Me too. I sound fake if I try to do it.

Christian

Yes, exactly, and thank you Sally. I'm blond, (though greying now), and so spell it for myself. Diana Dors was blonde. Egg and Cress it's one of but a few adjectives in English that is gender specific, even the American Webster's Dictionary recognises this convention.

Egg and Cress

Well, I'll be "durned" - I didn't know that......

Englishman43

My wife refuses to let me try anymore - says I sound like a cross between Johnny Cash, John Wayne and a Nascar driver

Sally Redux

One I don't like is 'ekscape', I hear it more on TV than from real people though.

Egg and Cress

I honestly didn't realize there were gender specifics like this - thought it was only in other languages. I know the Polish language has those gender specifics, as does Spanish, but I didn't know about the American ones. (And I did look it up - but not in Webster's - in the Oxford Modern English Dictionary.) Thanks for the "English" lesson - guess I don't know as much as I thought I did!

Please note: I do know how to use apostrophes properly, though.