the rut of all problems..

the teaching assistant for my class says the word root as rut. As in, now we are going to find the
square rut of the variance. It's odd, because it's the only word I've noticed that is pronounced differently. I wonder where he's from. Actually I think he might be from Iowa, maybe northeast. I don't know if that is some regionalism though. I have noticed there are some differences in pronunciations here, especially with vowels. But that might be more of a Minnesota/Wisconsin factor, as many people I've met here are actually from those places. Two regional words here:
pop (not too surprising) and occasionally sack (instead of bag). Like at some store, do you want a sack for that?
I can't remember any other new words right now. Dialects and accents are pretty interesting though.