Think we agreed on how to say ‘Thank you’? Think again – 8 states are messing it up for everyone

Thanks for the kind thanks.

Saying the word “Thanksgiving” may seem straightforward, but the official name of Turkey Day has a different pronunciation depending on where you are in the US, according to a study by online language learning platform Preply.

“While there is no one correct way to say ‘Thank you,’ there are regional differences that are consistent with other regional differences in the pronunciation of other words,” Melissa Baese Berk, a professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago. reported.

Celebrants may pronounce the harvest festival “THANKS-giving,” with an emphasis on the prefix, or “Thanks-Giving,” with the oomph placed in the middle. Others kick the K and tap a “Happy Thangsgiving.”

To determine how the pronunciation varies geographically, Preply surveyed 1,000 people across the US about how they pronounce the name.

They also drew on a Harvard study, which reportedly found that 74% of Americans emphasized “giving” while only 16% emphasized “thanking,” The Mirror reported.

Preply found that the states that mostly spelled the holiday the latter way were Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

Meanwhile, the rest of the country says “Thank you” with the exclamation point in the center.

Berk said the general rule is that southerners say “THANK YOU” while northerners say “thank you.”

“This is in accordance with a general tendency which is also manifested in cases such as ‘umbrella’ vs. ‘umbrella,’ she said.

Incidentally, there is also a tertiary pronunciation. The same poll also found that “48% of respondents pronounced the holiday as THANGS-giving,” which experts attributed to a product of “modern dialect that rounds off the harsh ‘k’ sound,” according to the release.

“The pronunciation of ‘THANGSgiving’ is also consistent with other trends in language production,” Burke said. “We often ‘drop’ the pronunciation of words when we speak casually, and sometimes these pronunciations end up becoming the default pronunciation through language change.”

However, she’s still unsure if this is a flash in the pumpkin pie pan or a long-term language shift.

This year, people are likely to encounter different regional pronunciations of the word as over 18 million Americans are taking to the skies this Turkey Day.