Okay, who's the lazy one?

Who is more lazy, us or the British?

Erin and I were talking about accents today and that question came up. We noticed that the way things are spelled is not the way we pronounce them. I think it's called diglossia. She noticed that the British pronounce t sounds in the middle of words more than we do. "We're just lazy," she said. And it's true:

They say butter.
We say budder.

Therefore, we are lazy bastards here in the colonies.

"Aha! That's not completely right!" I said. She had forgotten something. Yes, the British pronounce their t's, but they forget about their r's.

Yeah, we may say budder.
But they say butta.

Who's lazy now? And what the hell is wrong with our language that neither of us can pronounce it properly?

"Oh my god! You're right!" she shouted, laughing. "Remember Peter Pan? They were always calling him Peeta. It sounds so much like pita. How do they know that they aren't calling him Pita? There's no difference."

I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that one. All I know is that there is a world of difference between Peeder and Peeta, and English is probably the stupidest language in the world.

"But they pronounce the r's at the beginnings of words," she said, gradually gaining her composure. "Yeah, otherwise we'd have guys running around with names like Odja, instead of Roger," I replied, "Hello, my name's Odja!" Once again, the people on the bus tried really hard to ignore us.