I have a Utah accent. Not surprising; I grew up in Utah and still live here. My phone’s speech-to-text capability catches my accent on things like, “We’ll be right there!” translating to “Will be right there!”
I also have a Mormon accent. After I left Church, I’ve made an effort to lose my Mormon accent. I’ve basically banished the word “grateful” from my vocabulary. I find other ways to express appreciation and gratitude. Also, “turning the time over” to people is a phrase I’ve consciously tried to avoid. Instead, when I’m introducing a speaker, I’ll say: “Jim, the floor is now yours,” or something besides “turning the time over” to someone. They’re speeches, not talks. General Authorities give talks in General Conference, but when non-Mormon people stand up and pontificate to a group of people, they’re giving a speech, not a talk.
Once, when I was talking with a friend who was raised Catholic, I was griping about something I was struggling with and said something about “my trials.” We’re both lawyers, so she did a brief doubletake and then smiled at me. “You know that’s a really Mormon thing to say, right?” she said. I startled, and then laughed. Yep, if you’re a lawyer and have a trial, that means an entirely different thing than being a Mormon who is having a trial.
What are some other Mormon accent words you’ve noticed?
Wheat & Tares 
Janey, I [respectfully] wish that you would just sit down and tell us your life story, in full detail. When I read your byline, I see “female”, “queer”, “divorced”, “single mom” – and I realize that each one of those categories could fill a medium-size book. Your public would really like to see the complete you. TIA. RW
“Trials” is not just a Mormon term in that context. For example, there is the classic Star Trek DS9 episode “Trials and Tribblations”, a play on the phrase “trials and tribulations”. It’s still commonly used by many people outside the Church, as you can see at the Merriam Webster link for the phrase: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trials%20and%20tribulations
nobody else says they are “thankful for the moisture” because saying “I’m glad it rained” works for almost everyone else
Pop (a mission companion hugged me when I was assigned to him and said let’s get a soda).
Oh my gosh – or any substitute for swearing
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (we’re still Mormons to everyone else)
Chaste / chastity. I once used the word chaste at graduate school in the east coast and they looked at me like I was an alien.
…and the other side of the coin:
Not knowing any coffee, alcohol, or drug usage terms. I still don’t know the difference between latte, macchiato, etc, and have no idea what an IPA is.
I issue my strongest possible condemnation to the practice of closing a prayer in church with “bless everyone to get home safely.” These prayers are always in Utah, where people will only have to travel three blocks to get home. This is almost as bad as blessing the doughnuts and cookies at the youth activity to “nourish and strengthen us.”
“I challenge you to… [insert topic of talk]” Even though I see various challenges doted out on media, church members have dished out challenges to each other and Non-Mormons for decades. I was never fond of being triple-dog-dared into following religious principles. It was the fastest way for me to ignore everything the other person said to me.
And as Josh H said – “Moisture” I always had a chuckle with that one.
@John Charity Spring
Asking that doughnuts and cookies “nourish and strengthen us” is tantamount to daring God to do the impossible.
My extended family is from different places in rural Utah. My dad’s parents grew up around Vernal. For them it was common to say ‘fark’ as fork and ‘carn’ as corn. I grew up in Provo and was raised saying the word creek as “crick” and the two ‘o’s in roof as the ‘o’s in book. I changed when non-Utahns at BYU would sometimes laugh at the way I said those words. I also grew up saying “sluff” meaning to skip class. When I said “sluff class” to a non-Utahn once, they had no idea what I was saying. I also grew up calling rolly polly bugs, also called pill bugs, potato bugs, which I think it distinct to Utah. Lastly I grew pronouncing else as “elts,” a distinct Utah thing.
On Mormon accents, I hear tender mercies a lot. Lots of freak and heck growing up. I still say heck, because, heck, why not?
Mormons distinctly talk of “having a testimony” or “losing a testimony” which is a curious usage of the word not found outside Mormonism. In the legal context, testimony means a formal declaration, often under oath, that describes events and experiences that you witnessed. In common speech, testimony can also mean evidence as in the “the fine design of the building is testimony to the architect’s expertise.” In non-Mormon religious parlance a testimony is something that is given or borne, meaning a personal witness of divinity in some capacity. So Mormons use the term testimony in a way that matches non-Mormon usage when they talk of bearing a testimony. But Mormons more commonly use the term testimony to mean belief. And the term is not used to mean belief outside Mormonism as far as I’m aware. ”This experience strengthened my testimony” means “this experience caused me to have greater belief in set of traditional propositions.” ”He lost his testimony” means “he no longer believes in ideas/propositions that he was once persuaded to believe.”
One phrase that I always seemed to hear in LDS circles but never anywhere else was the superlative “beyond a shadow of a doubt.” This was usually in the context of someone giving their testimony about a certain gospel principal or foundational belief. Interestingly enough, I read Ryan Burge’s substack and he used that phrase twice in a recent column and he is Evangelical with a Southern Baptist background, so I suspect that this phrase isn’t completely unique to Mormonism but more common among Protestant/Evangelical Christianity.
Off the top of my head I think that the idea of “cultural hall” for essentially the church basketball court is unique to Mormonism. I suppose the culture aspect aligned with road shows and performances on the stage. Side note: as a kid I used to love spinning in the long curtains when my mom was the young womens’ volleyball coach. Playing as a young boy in the stake center stage is a great memory of mine.
Another one is the word “mutual”, meaning the weekly church youth group activities that we attended (e.g. “Are you going to go to mutual tonight?”). Mutual was combined with the young women I think 2x per month. As young men, some weeks we had scouting and other weeks we attended “mutual.” I don’t know that this would make much sense to anyone outside of LDS culture. There is a ton of LDS slang/jargon related to missions. I am thinking of using “kill” to describe being the last companion of an elder/sister before they go home (e.g., I killed Elder Smith). Someone not familiar with this terminology might be justifiably concerned if they were to overhear missionary conservations revolving body counts!
“Covenant path, think celestial, beloved prophet.” All of these were in the Ward bulletin I received today. The repetition of these weaponized words is exhausting.
I grew up in Utah and used to say a pronounced “un” instead of “ing” at the end of words when I was a teenager. Listening to tapes of my voice back then makes me cringe. I stopped talking that way at some point. I still say “rill” instead of “real,” ”fill” instead of “feel,” and “malk” instead of milk. My non-Utahn friends tease me about that. My mom used to say, “turthree,” blending all the words together instead of saying “two or three.” Some Utahns have a little “k” glottal stop at the end of words ending in “ing.” So “thinking,” sounds like “thinkingck.” If anyone remembers Sister Dottie Dixon, she had a whole act about Utah pronunciation and usage which was really cute. One example I remember which she talked about, was to say “suh” instead of “so” especially in phrases like, “you’re suh special.” ”I’m suh grateful.” ”Appreciate cha suh much.” etc. We talk that way as a joke sometimes. I have great fondness for the Utah accent.
Sorry, but you’re not talking about a Mormon accent. You’re talking about our unique Mormon dialect. They are two very different things.
I’ve never lived in Utah but did visit my Utah relatives frequently in the 80s and 90s and can affirm that the accent is the “ril dil.” I was chronically shy very self-conscious about everything (including my religion) as a child and adolescent so I tended to avoid saying anything that would out me as Mormon. I got more comfortable talking about it (and talking in general) after my mission, but l don’t think the vocab carried over into everyday conversation. I could be wrong, though. I did learn Gospel Spanish on my mission though, and that was a challenge learning to converse – or at least get by – in Spanish in a non-churchy context. If anything, I’ve moderated the other direction and try to use more inclusive religious language in church that could still pass as Mormon-y.
I joined the church at 21 and had to learn to say Jenny-ology instead of Gene-eology. Now I’m having to unlearn it (because I do still have conversations with non-Mormons about geneology.
Another one is the “mission field” meaning outside the Mormon belt. ”I grew up in the mission field” is something I heard a lot growing up and as recently as just a few years ago.
“Born in the covenant” is another one. Why that matters has long baffled me. I thought conversion was supposed to be an individual experience. I thought that individuals couldn’t even make covenants until the age of 8. And church teachings have long emphasized the wrongness of child baptism. Heck, it’s written very clearly in the Book of Mormon. So how can a child be “born into the covenant”? An infant has not made nor can they make a covenant.
Come unto
My wife is from rural southern Utah, which has some linguistic uniqueness all it’s own, and separate from northern Utah it seems. The accent has a bit of a drawl to it, but with a clipped manner of speaking. This lead to some occasional confusion and gentle teasing in the early years of our marriage. Phrases like “Jeet? Jauntoo?” (Did you eat? Do you want to?) come to mind, as does the name of the city of “Herkin” (Hurricane). I’ve been told the pronunciation of that city is a result of the influence of the early British saints who settled there, but this may be apocryphal. My wife moved to Logan (northern Utah) during her middle school years, and she says kids there made fun of her “accent” until she assimilated. That was unnecessarily cruel, because to me (CA native) all Utah accents sound weird.
The word “even” used as a …I don’t know. An example: “ …even the prophet Joseph” or “even the teachings of…” I have never heard even used as an emphatic outside the church.
Not being from Utah myself, it was on my mission was that I first learned the Utah term for “playing hooky” or “skipping class” was simply: “sluffing.” It was my first exposure to regional variances in Standard American English so-called.
It also takes a true Utah native to know how to pronounce “Tooele,” “Hurricane,” and “Toquerville” on the first try, as I learned during my stint at the U (which for most college football fans refers to Miami U, not the Utes).
It was while a graduate instructor in the Midwest that my only LDS student immediately realized that I was LDS too, based on how I jokingly said “I testify to you” in class about effective composition strategies.
I’m not from Utah, so I don’t use a Utah dialect, even though I lived there for over a decade as an adult (have literally never said “flippin” or “Oh my heck” except to make fun of people), but I do use idiomatic Mormon expressions from time to time. I recognize it when I do it, but off the top of my head I’m having a hard time thinking of one.
However, I do recall when we lived in Singapore that someone at church who was from Utah said in a prayer “we’re grateful for the moisture that we’ve received,” and friends, let’s be clear. Singapore is basically a jungle with skyscrapers. It rained every day during the rainy season. Moisture is not a concern there.
There is the lingo and there is the accent. Both are things.
Used to say mouh-uhn instead of mountain. Used to say cray-uhn instead of crayon.
Will never again say “every fiber of my being.”
Also really trying not to say non-member. There are members of the church and there are people that are not members of the church. To wit, I do not consider myself a non-Catholic or a non-Coloradoan, or a non-female or a non-person of color or a non-pickler eater. Maybe it’s just semantics but I really hate it when members of the faith community say non-Mormon. It feels very other-ing.
I still don’t know how to pronounce many Southern Utah town names. I do know that Hurricane and Monitcello are not said traditionally.
I was on a tram in Amsterdam and overheard two women talking with the Mormon accent. You know the kind-older, give out way too much personal information, let you know they’re members without saying it
Just last year a former BYU prof published a (non-academic) book about this called “Utah English”, I haven’t read it, but SLTRIB had a little article about it including some examples from the book:
https://www.sltrib.com/artsliving/2023/08/27/is-utah-english-real-thing-mostly/
One of the more interesting ones is “I used to do”, which the author argues, is unique to the Utah area and can be traced back to the British immigrant converts in the 19th century
I grew up in Provo, which because of BYU does not have the Utah accent, because of all the students from all over. But we do know how to say the names of all the strange Utah places. And we laugh at the Spanishfark accent. Then spent 20 years moving all over with the military. So, I learned to code switch if we were at church, then we used the Mormon jargon, but if we were around military people, we spoke with the BYU student from California accent we grew up with. I am not kidding, 20 years of people asking what part of California we grew up in. It was weird to then say, “Utah.” And I never did use “gosh” or “heck” because my mother said that substitutes for swear words were as bad and just proved you had a poor vocabulary. I not only had to learn to code switch as an adult in order to talk to nonMormons (that is for Chadwick) but I had to learn to swear as an adult.
I have a theory about the Mormon accent (not lingo). One part of it is that many Mormons grew up in more rural cities and towns, or their parents did, (that’s where you get mouh-uhn instead of mountain, and the like).
And the other part of the Mormon accent is mostly due to primary choristers teaching young children to really anunciate their words for the primary program. I remember being taught, “Shape your words, stick your tongue out for the L’s, emphasize those consonants and vowels. Ready? (cue music) IIIIIII BeeeLLonG To the CHurCH of JEEzuS CHrisT of LLaaaaTTerr Dayy SaintS!” Mormons don’t talk that way, but it does affect the way that they talk and is part of the Mormon accent.
I am giggling at all of these, especially at the idea of praying for moisture in Singapore. Thank you for your contributions! Yeah, I think I’m talking more about a dialect or lingo than an accent, I’m rilly sorry but I shur appreshiatcha for figuring out what I meant anyways.
Potato bugs! Right, I’ve just recently started calling them rolly-pollys (misspelled? is it rolly-pollies?). Sluffing is definitely a Utahism.
RW – I admit the idea of writing a memoir has crossed my mind, but oh my heck, every fiber of my being is not quite ready to revisit some of those experiences.
I was very confused when someone called a pillbug (I’m from the Northeast) a “potato bug” because we grew potatoes, and the bugs that infest them are black with a red pattern on them, more like a mutant ladybug. Anyway, just wanted to chime in that while they are called “roly poly” in the South and Midwest, we called them pillbugs, and in England they call them “woodlice.” Apparently Aussies call them “slaters.” And apparently people in Canada and upstate NY also use the term “potato bug,” so while it’s regional, it’s not just a Utah word. The attached article shows that many “Utah” words were transplanted to the state with the pioneers.
https://news.byu.edu/intellect/utah-owes-many-of-its-most-quirky-expressions-to-pioneers-says-research-from-byu-linguist#:
This post suddenly made me remember the older gentleman in my childhood ward who very strongly emphasized the h in vehicle: “Vee-Hickle.”
A while back I started noticing how much I use the phrase “I’m sure.” We Mormons love our certainty after all. Phrases like, “I’m sure he didn’t mean that,” suddenly seemed to betray an unearned confidence or even an avoidance of unpleasant realities. So I’ve tried to instead say things like, “I’d like to believe he didn’t mean that” or “I suspect he’s exaggerating.”
Don’t forget Mantua, pronounced “Mannoway,” the small town in Sardine Canyon on the way from I-15 to Logan.
Mantua fits the northern Utah pattern of dropping the t. If you hear a t when pronouncing “Layton” or “mountain,” the speaker is not a native.
How about the way the missionaries pause every few words they say? And most of these short phrases sound like a question.
Outsider here, but…
“Heavenly Father” instead of “God”? (Normals might use the phrase in prayer, but won’t casually refer to “Heavenly Father,” esp. without an “our” or something in front of it.)
The errumm and the thumb-’em on the high priest’s breastplate?
The one thing I often hear people note about Utah accents that I don’t think is distinctly Utahn is the dropped t. At BYU it seemed that people would regularly critique Utahns for saying Layton as Lay-uhn. I’ve long tried to observe how English speakers from different areas pronounce the t in different words and as far as I can tell, it is fairly widespread across the US to turn the t into a glottal stop in the middle of a word that ends with an n. The common American pronunciation of the word Latin is La-uhn, without an enunciated t. The common pronunciation of Santa is Sanna. The common pronunciation of mountain is moun’uhn. Many British accents drop the t but in different places. I recently heard someone from LIverpool say the word eighteen as eigh’een. British is often pronounced Bri’ish.
A funny anecdote is that my sister-in-law who used to live in Layton has for years gone out of her way to fully pronounce the t whenever she says Layton, in what I perceive as an overcompensation for how Utahns are commonly said to mispronounce the term. For me it just doesn’t come off as natural to pronounce the t in that town. I always say Lay’uhn.
From where I live, in the eastern US, I would disagree that “the common American pronunciation of the word Latin is La-uhn, without an enunciated t. The common pronunciation of Santa is Sanna. The common pronunciation of mountain is moun’uhn.” We pronounce all of those t’s in these parts. When we lived in Santa Barbara, California, everyone pronounced the t.
Georgis, I just searched on YouTube for videos in which Americans are talking about Latin or mountains. Every one I found pronounced the t as a glottal stop “La’uhn and moun’uhn.” I looked for videos of New Englanders saying those words. It was the same. Also, I distinctly remember on the movie Elf Will Ferrell shouting “Santa” and pronouncing it as “Sanna.” Ferrell is from Southern Cal. But for some strange reason many think that this is a specifically Utah phenomenon. I just don’t see it.
Brad D – I would agree that the common pronunciation of the words you cite is to not aspirate the “t,” i.e., not use a “hard t.” But like Georgis, I’m not hearing people entirely replace it with a glottal stop, as is done in Utah and more famously in the English cockney. The most common pronunciation I’m hearing, including by urbanites and newscasters, is to touch the tongue to the upper palate without aspirating (I’m sure there’s a linguistics term for this). So we don’t say ki’un for kitten (the Utah way), but “kitn” with tongue touching palate while concurrently intoning the “n” sound (which has to be near impossible for non-English speakers to pronounce).
It would be interesting to hear some linguistics grads chime in on this.
Bryce, I’ve taught ESL for years and have studied about ten foreign languages. I’ve studied phonemic pronunciation variation considerably. A challenge. Listen to John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High. Denver was born in New Mexico and raised in CA. He says mountain with a glottal stop t. Then listen to the Godsmack song Rocky Mountain Way. The lead singer Sully Erna from Massachusetts, again pronounces mountain with a glottal stop t. Then watch various videos where Americans from different parts of the US, newscasters included, routinely pronounce mountain with a glottal stop t. “Moun’uhn” is simply common pronunciation across the US.
As someone who is fascinated with language and foreign language especially, I love finding unique ways in which Utahns speak or have spoken. But the glottal stop t in the middle of words that ends with an n is by no means distinctly Utahn.
For what’s it’s worth, I was raised in the PNW by two Bay Area natives, and I never, I mean never heard “moun’uhn” except out of the mouths of my Utah cousins. (They also over-pronounced their silent Gs, as in “seen-ga,” for “sing,” which I thought was odd). Everyone else I knew, said something like “mountin.” The T was bit soft, but definitely present.
That being said, there is nothing “wrong” with the Utah accent or dialect, just as there is nothing “wrong” with using – or making and effort not to use – the “Mormon Accent.” We all code switch depending on the situation and that’s fine. The only thing that irritates me a bit (and this is rare) is when exmos appear to have discovered profanity for the first time in their lives and use it gratuitously and inappropriately. It’s not offensive, just awkward and cringey. Unless you’ve worked in blue-collar jobs your entire life, you don’t know how to use profanity properly in everyday conversation. Sorry. Doesn’t work. It’s like when people wear those expensive pre-holed, new jeans. I’m not buying it.You have to earn those holes with hours of mind-numbing, back-breaking labor.
Sorry, overcompensating exmos, four-letter words aren’t free.
On my mission lots of Americans though saying flip instead of the usual f word. If you pointed out that a stranger hearing it and not having heard flip before would hear the usual f word. Most continued to use their f word.
I lived in Coventry in the English Midlands. We had a family in the ward from a village nearby where dropped “h” in some places and add “h” elsewhere. For example they would say “hour father which hart in eaven”
One Mormon accent that still stands out to me is the pronunciation of the word “ward.” Rhymes with “lard”. Maybe it isn’t as prominent as it used to be, but I still hear it.
Brad D – so I had to listen to Rocky Mountain High because I did not recall John Denver singing “mountain“ as “mou’uhn.” And sure enough, he is clearly touching tongue to palate to make the concurrent “t” with “n” sound.
But let’s leave “mountain” and consider a word that doesn’t have an N before the T so there’s no confusion. Take the words “eat“ and “eaten.“ The Utah pronunciation is “ea'” (they will say “did you ea’yet?”) and “ea’uhn”. Both have clear glottal stops in place of the T. The common pronunciation does not use the glottal stop but simply touches the tongue to the palate without aspirating the T.
Fascinating post and comments-
Sometimes when DHOaks speaks I can hear my father – they are about the same age and both hail from Utah County.
And my mother hails from central Utah so my barnyard talk is well-ingrained (and often used).
We need a talk from Paddy Kearon about how to be more inclusive in our language and practices, for example too many white saviors in our missionary work – I have two nephews from a wealthy zip code in SLC now serving in Africa. And don’t get me started on “inner-city missions” in SLC or Ogden for rich people from Sandy or Bountiful…although this type of mission seems a little more based in practicality and addressing real needs.
I feel similar cringe/shame/pity/malaise/sadness when I hear non-US members using code words that are purely Utahn.
Is there a Deseret Book in Ghana yet?
Bryce, I fail to see how John Denver’s pronunciation of mountain is in his song (and I watched a couple of live versions) is different from the common pronunciation of mountain in Utah.
On ‘eaten’ I looked around for videos of newscasters saying the word. It was a hard word to find people saying. A more common word that newscasters say was beaten (reporting on violent crime) and very commonly they pronounced ‘bea’uhn’. I searched for videos of Americans saying words such as cotton, satin, Latin, etc. and found that common pronunciation was a glottal stop t followed by a schwa and then an n sound.
“The common pronunciation does not use the glottal stop but simply touches the tongue to the palate without aspirating the T.”
As in a ‘d’ sound? I’ve never heard anyone say eaten as ee-duhn.
Suffice it to say, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence that common Utahn pronunciation of mountain, Latin, Layton, and other words with a middle t and an ending n are distinctly different from what you hear in other parts of the US.
Brad – if you can’t tell the difference between a Utah (or Cockney) pronunciation of eat, beat, kit, kitten, beaten, eaten, Layton, etc. where the tongue never touches the palate/teeth vs. most other people’s pronunciation (yourself included I imagine, unless you force a hard aspirated “t”), then it sounds like you are unable to distinguish the sound difference between the two. Regardless, try this experiment. When you say the word “eat” – do you say it without your tongue ever touching your palate/teeth (which is how the the glottal-stop Utahn’s say it), or do you touch your tongue to palate/teeth at the end (which is how most people say it)? That’s the distinction.
Bryce, I see your point. However, the general argument I have heard is that non-Utahn Americans “say the t” in words like Latin and mountain. I interpret that to mean enunciation of the t as in ‘tin can.’ That’s not what I hear at all. T glottalization in those words is common throughout the US. What you’re saying is that Utahns glottalize the t but don’t touch their tongue to the palate. Whereas outside Utah it is more common to touch the tongue to the palate when saying words like eaten, cotton, etc. Mountain has an n before the t so the the tongue would soon for that before anyways. I’ve been listening to people on YouTube say beaten, Latin, and cotton. I can’t really hear much of a distinction.
My theory is that a meme stereotype took hold a few decades among non-Utahn Mormons about how Utahns talk differently wherein it was commonly identified that Utahns talk differently by saying Layton as Lay’uhn. The meme was often in gentle mockery of the way Utahns talk. I heard this repeatedly at BYU in the late 90s and early 2000s, said by non-Utahns of Utahns. However with the advent of YouTube it is quite apparent that middle t glottalization before n is not unique to Utah by any means.
When other people would say “proselytize”, Mormons say “proselyte”. I believe in mainstream usage the latter is actually a noun (one subjected to proselytizing efforts) rather than a verb.
When Gary E. Stevenson was conducting a session of Conference, I noticed that he inserted a “t” in the names “Nelson” and “Olsen” to make them “Neltson” and “Oltsen.” This reminded me of some missionary companions I had a few decades ago who I remember doing a similar thing. I’m not sure if it’s particular to an area or not. (And I’m from Utah.)
A broken heart and a CON-trite spirit. Which the rest of the world pronounces correctly as con-TRITE. Look it up.
Elder Stevenson is from Logan Utah, where there are many Neltsuns and Oltsuns and Hantsuns.
It’s pretty easy to identify the Utah and Idaho-raised speakers in Genral Contfernts.