General musings

A while back, I wrote a post about some regional words that I use in my books. Today, I thought I would talk a little about pronunciation.

Just like words, pronunciation varies widely from region to region (not to mention accents). Simple words always seem to trip me up the most. For caramel, do you say car-mel or car-a-mel? I usually say car-mel.

I like The Weather Channel, but my ears perk up every time one of the forecasters talks about the Appalachian Mountains. The forecasters almost always pronounce it as App-uh-lay-chan. But I’ve always heard and said it as App-uh-latch-in.

Another word that I’ve heard pronounced two ways is pecan. I’ve heard it as peh-cahn and pea-can. I usually say peh-cahn. And as long as we’re talking about food, there is bruschetta, which is bru-sket-a to some and bru-sche-tah to others (including me).

One thing that always surprises me is when people mispronounce Estep, my last name. Many folks say it as Es-tep, but I’ve always heard and said it as E-step. That’s how I would say it, no matter how it’s spelled — Estep, Eastep, Estepp, Eastepp, etc.

In the end, I guess it’s just like regional words — you say them the way you hear them growing up.

What about you guys? What words have you heard pronounced different ways?

Since we are well into January now, I thought I would post about something winter- and book-related.

In both the Elemental Assassin and the Mythos Academy series (and in the Bigtime series too), I refer to characters wearing toboggans, or knit/winter hats. A while back, a reader wrote to me asking if maybe I meant toque (also a winter hat) instead because toboggan can also mean a sled. Honestly, I had never heard of the word toque before, and it never occurred to me to use another word for toboggan.

I think this just might be a regional difference. I’m from the South and in my neck of the woods, a toboggan is a winter hat, and a sled is a sled. If I tell my mom that I’m wearing my toboggan, she knows that I’m wearing a hat. I would never say that I’m going to slide down a hill on my toboggan; I would slide down a hill on my sled.

Since both the Elemental Assassin and the Mythos Academy series are set in the South, I didn’t think anything about using the word toboggan. But I’ve had a couple of folks e-mail me about this now, and I’m wondering what other words/phrases I use that might mean something else or might be interpreted differently in different parts of the country and world.

And it’s not just words — it’s food too. I know when Wheezley and I travel to other places, especially when we go up north, we always wonder if the restaurants will have sweet tea or not. For those of you who don’t know, sweet tea is just what it sounds like — tea that already has sugar in it (usually a lot of sugar). In the South, practically every restaurant (even the fast food joints) will offer you a choice between sweet or unsweet tea. But when we went to Texas a few years back, they only had unsweet tea in one of the restaurants we ate at.

But it works both ways too. For example, I don’t eat grits, which are another Southern staple. In fact, I’d never really even heard of grits until I visited some of my cousins who live in another Southern state where they are more popular. So I guess it all just depends on where you grow up and what you hear and eat along the way.

What about you guys? What regional words or food items have you noticed in books, if any?