Of course, the old song about "to-may-toe" or "tom-ah-toe" is meant to be silly. Everyone knows how to say "tomato." I mean, right? If you're going to write a song about how people pronounce words, you really should go with something that causes more of a divide, like the pronunciation of "caramel." Are there two syllables or three? Long vowel or short? This issue is no small potatoes – it's the kinds of thing people will actually argue over.
Outsiders often make fun of how Southerners pronounce certain words. Here's the thing: we're right and they're wrong. Well, mostly. The following word pronunciations were mostly culled from regional dialect maps created by a graduate student from North Carolina State University. Click here to see them.
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