I 19M live with my mother and we are constantly arguing, mostly about trivial things that don’t actually matter. We do make up pretty quickly, but it’s still very annoying because we are both incredibly stubborn and always both think we’re the one in the right.
Anyway, I forgot exactly what I was talking about (this was earlier today) but I used the word "tourist" in whatever the topic was.
I pronounce the word like "TOR-IST". She corrects me and says that isn’t the correct pronunciation. She says it’s "Too-rist."
I say that "tor-ist" is just how I naturally pronounce it. She says it makes me sound ignorant and "sure, that’s how to pronounce it is you’re a hillbilly" and she just wanted to help me sound educated.
I tell her to not correct me as I’m not going to change it, and to just stop doing that because it’s very annoying and I’m not interested. I do say this in an exasperated/pissed off tone, which I use fairly quick in conversations with her. I have a strangely short fuse and tend to overreact to things that I shouldn’t care that much about.
She tells me she doesn’t appreciate my being aggressive for no reason because she’s helping me.
I would care a lot less about her corrections if she didn’t treat me like I’m dumb and uneducated for saying I’ll stick to my natural pronunciations.
Anyway she goes to her room, upset, and tells me I’m the one who will have to "live with the consequences."
For what? Pronouncing "tourist" like that? I think I have a higher percentage of being struck by lightning than that becoming a detriment to my life or even something anyone would ever comment on again.
There are very few words I pronounce "incorrectly", it’s not like I’m walking around with a toddler level vocabulary.
Examples are "melk" for milk and "pellow" for pillow.
Edit: To be clear, she could be right about the pronunciation and probably is. That’s not what I care about, it’s that I don’t think she has to be so rude about it.
Info: what does she think the correct pronunciation is?
Slight YTA. You will sound ignorant if you mispronounce words often enough, especially common words such as tourist, milk and pillow. It may not matter in your peer group. But it is the sort of thing that could affect your employment/advancement prospects. She’s your mom. She’s trying to be a good parent. Cut her a break and help yourself at the same time.
“That’s how to pronounce it if you’re a hillbilly” isn’t being a good mom, it’s being a bully. NTA for snapping. People who are trying to help you don’t insult you in the process.
I agree that what the mom said was a poor choice of words. It sounds like she was implying that an educated person would pronounce it correctly, but a “hillbilly” wouldn’t, which is unnecessary and rude. That said, I would not go so far as to call it bullying.
A lot of the time, a parent is the only person who is blunt enough to correct things like this. OP may have been saying the word incorrectly for a long time and no one else bothered to point it out. Parents tend to notice these things and step in, even if they do it clumsily.
It’s a YTA from me because refusing to correct yourself simply because your relationship with your mom is already strained feels like an overreaction. This is a relatively small issue that is being blown out of proportion.
My husband says tor-ist. I say toor-ist.
We’re from different ends of the UK. I think it’s probably a regional thing. Is your mum’s accent different to yours OP? I am not from the same area my kids were raised and they have tones of my accent with all the local lingo and regional accent thrown in.
This is something awfully silly to fight about. All of us have our own way of pronouncing words & sounds. It’s called an accent and it comes from various environments.
NTA for objecting to the correction but TA for the short fuse and responding in the manner you did. But your mom is TA for her comments. Different populations in the U.S. pronounce a word differently. no one should be called ignorant or uneducated. I worked for a multinational and would occasionally spend weeks in a different country – I had quickly learn about the different pronunciations of the same word in English. I speak southeastern United States lingo and my wonderful cousins on Long Island and in Chicago pronounce words ending with “ing” differently and that’s ok.
You both need to grow up.
YTA: I’m a mom of a 19 year old who lives a home while attending college. I want to take any opportunity I have to help my son be prepared to succeed in life. We talk about lots of things, including word pronunciations and sometimes meanings in a civil manner. I understand that at 19 you want to assert your independence, but maybe take a minute and realize you mom is most likely not trying to criticize you. She’s trying to help you. It’s hard to turn the mom thing off. Show her some grace. Also, you should know by now that mom is always right. 😄
Esh. Yes it makes you sound dumb to pronounce it wrong and people who you want to hire you in the future will judge you for it but she also doesn’t have to double down after telling you once, you’re allowed to continue to sound uneducated.
YTA- there’s no such thing as “natural pronunciation”…. You didn’t come out of the womb knowing the word. You’ve been influenced by your environment.
Pronouncing things incorrectly does impact the way other people may gauge your intelligence and education level. It didn’t sound like she was rude until you double downed.
I know how it’s like when you have a critical parent- every comment is loaded with all the comments that came before it, so you really have to work on not letting all your history impact you, or trying your Mon you appreciate stress trying to help, but the constant nitpicking is not good for your relationship, and can she reserve her feedback for only truly important things.
INFO: Where are you from?
If I had to guess, I’d say the American South, due to your examples turning the short “i” sound into an “eh” sound, which is going to inform what I’m going to say next:
This is a *dialect* issue. If you are in the South, your pronunciation is fine. The thing is, the Standard American English pronunciation of tourist *is* what your mother says it is, and I’m pretty sure she’s riding you about your accent because she knows there’s a widespread bias against Southern accents.
It’s classist as hell and incorrect, but there’s a stereotype that people with Southern accents are all ignorant, culturally backwards and racist, and they’re often treated poorly for it in other parts of the country. I suspect your mother is trying to guide you away from and protect you from that, but she’s doing a really poor job of it.
I could be entirely wrong, but if I’m not, that’s something you should be aware of if/when you travel.
Not that it matters, but it doesn’t sound like she’s pronouncing it right, either:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/tourist
NTA. It’s not a big deal, and quite frankly, how it’s pronounced can depend on one’s own speech patterns or regional dialect.
You aren’t wildly off the mark, it’s not like calling a spatula a “spatchler” (which also isn’t entirely wrong depending on where, in the country you live and its local dialect). If your mother is constantly correcting you, particular over minor nonsense, that’s called “overbearing.” And it doesn’t matter how insignificant these individual moments are, at a certain point you snap. I find it ironic that all the people are telling you that you overreacted for such a minor correction, yet she was the one who felt it was necessary to make such a minor, insignificant correction.