Pronouncing Roof Like Ruff

How to pronounce roof.

Pronouncing roof like ruff.

How to say roof. When i was in grade school we had a teacher from chicago. I now live in california and expected to hear it here after being questioned for years in the east. The michigan ites and some other us americans i know pronounce roof as ruff.

According to grant barret linguist and cohost of the npr radio show way with words it is particularly a regional marker. Roof pronounced ruff roof as ruff is rare although i don t doubt that there are some who say it. He says only about 10 to 15 of americans pronounce roof as rough. Mostly the distinction is between the two different double o pronunciations the long oo in food or the short oo in book.

The teacher also said we had only 12 instead of the normal 13 american vowel sounds pronouncing cot and caught the same but my question is whether my pronunciation of root and roof is disappearing. In a particular episode he says the difference is only caused by how some people make tense vowels as lax vowels. Don t know about nook. People who pronounce the wood roof as ruff are a danger to our society.

I am from the south. Roof was one of our spelling words. The really bizarre one and not limited to michigan is the pronunciation of wash or washington as warsh and warshington.