what's the difference between "nothing" and "nuthing"?
By maggie Sun
@maggiesunjuan (554)
China
July 3, 2019 11:48pm CST
I'm an English learner and I've never been aboard though I have always been dreaming of being aboard. When I read English novels, I'm always confused with the spoken Engish, for example, somebody in the novel would say, "nuthing matters.‘’ I surely know that he means "nothing matters." But why "nuthing", what's the difference between "nuthing"and "nothing", the letter u and a both sounds /? /, doesn't it?
would anyone explain this to me? Thank you.
4 people like this
5 responses
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
4 Jul 19
I can only suggest that the author is trying to represent a dialect pronunciation. The correct spelling is, of course, "nothing" and it's pronounced (in Southern/Received English) so that the 'o' is like the short 'u' in 'luck'. In some dialects, however, the vowel sounds change and the 'o' in 'nothing' would sound more like the 'oo' in 'book'.
If, in the novel, the speaker is said to come from the Midlands or the North of England, that is the most likely explanation. The 'o' in 'nothing' can vary quite widely depending on what part of the English-speaking world the speaker comes from. It is never, however, pronounced as the 'o' in 'no', 'go', 'note' &c., even though the word derives from 'no thing' (two words). In Southern English, it is like the short 'u' in 'luck', as I said; as you go further North in England it tends to go towards the 'oo' as in 'book' and in the West of England and especially in American pronunciation, you might hear it almost as the 'a' in 'father' or the short 'a' in 'cat'.
2 people like this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
4 Jul 19
@maggiesunjuan I think that the author probably meant it to sound something like "noothing", with the "oo" short, as in "look". If he had written it with a double 'o', however, most English speakers would be inclined to read it with a long "oo", as in "soon". If I were you, I wouldn't attempt reading it with a 'fake' dialect accent and would just say 'nothing' (as normal).
Trying to represent dialect speech in print makes it quite confusing for someone who has no idea how the dialect should sound and rather few writers do it successfully. The American writer 'Mark Twain' (Samuel Langhorn Clements) is one of those who can do it well, I think. Have you read "Tom Sawyer" or "Huckleberry Finn"?
@maggiesunjuan (554)
• China
4 Jul 19
Thanks for explaining, There's one more queation I'd like to know, how should I pronounce the word nuthing, should I pronounce the short u?
Thanks a lot.
1 person likes this
@maggiesunjuan (554)
• China
4 Jul 19
The only word I can think of to describe your response now is--professional, thumb up!
I majored in English, and I'm now an English teacher, I'm really interested in the accent, though I've never been abroad, your response really is very very helpful for me to have a general understanding of the English accents. BTW, the sentence I read is from Stephen King's Different Seasons.
Thanks a lot, you really is an Owl, so wise and intelligent.
1 person likes this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
4 Jul 19
@maggiesunjuan Ah! That (somehow) explains a lot! King is clearly writing in a style that shows his character is speaking in a vernacular - 'common speech' . He replaces the 'ng' sound with an 'n' sound and the normal (American), rather open, 'u'/'a' sound of the 'o' is almost an 'uh' sound (backwards 3, in the phonetic alphabet). *I* know exactly what he means but, unfortunately, it's difficult to describe (and even harder here, because we can't use phonetic symbols!).
@maggiesunjuan (554)
• China
4 Jul 19
No, it's a wrong spelling, but not the fault of the author but of me. I was so careless to spell it wrong, actually it's "nuthin'"
2 people like this
@flapiz (23148)
• United Kingdom
4 Jul 19
@maggiesunjuan Even “nuthin” is not really in the english dictionary. It’s more if improper English or slang. Because ordinary people doesn’t always speak English properly and the author tries to depict that picture as much as he can. Thus we normally see it enclosed in “___”.
@maggiesunjuan (554)
• China
4 Jul 19
no, abosolutely not. lol
you would never find nuthing in dictionary, it's actually a dialect spoken in specific area in the novel. What I'm interested in is how to pronounce the word.
1 person likes this
@porwest (90876)
• United States
4 Jul 19
I think the author is simply trying to suggest a slightly different dialect or accent, but the word "nuthing" is not a word. Often times in dialogue in novels authors will simply change the spelling of a word to denote the way the character is pronouncing it. For example, I might want the character to say, "My truck was parked in the parking lot." BUT, because my character is from Boston I might write it like, "My truck was pawked in the pawking lot" to denote a Boston accent.
1 person likes this
@maggiesunjuan (554)
• China
4 Jul 19
yeah, I really wish I could go to America and stay there for sometime to work out this problem, it haunts in my head...
1 person likes this
