# Pronunciation of "one"



## inib

As this is a pronunciation question, I will tell you that I am from the West Midlands, (UK), in case that has anything to do with it. 
When I say the words "one" (as in the number) and "worry" slowly and/or individually, after the /w/ I pronounce /ɒ/, not /ʌ/ as all the transcriptions I have seen suggest. Does anyone else do this? Is mine an alternative pronunciation, or just a personal peculiarity?
Thanks for taking the time to read this.


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## enUS

According to Wiktionary

(non RP, non-standard British) IPA: /wɒn/, SAMPA: /wQn/


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## inib

enUS said:


> According to Wiktionary
> 
> (non RP, non-standard British) IPA: /wɒn/, SAMPA: /wQn/


 Many thanks, enUS. I had consulted several dictionaries, but didn't think of Wiki. So I'm non-standard as far as "one" is concerned, but it can't be unheard of if it's in the dictionary. However, it seems like I might be unique regarding "worry"!


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## sound shift

Inib, I am not surprised that you pronounce "one" with a /ɒ/. This is the usual pronunciation for people who are native to your region. It is the most heard pronunciation of "one" here in Derby too. /ʌ/ is not part of the phoneme inventory in the Midlands. /ʌ/ is part of the RP inventory because RP is based on the speech of the South-East, where /ʌ/ is indigenous.

I am not sure I have heard "worry" pronounced with a /ɒ/, but I have heard some Midlanders (probably a minority) pronounce "won" with this sound.


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## inib

sound shift said:


> Inib, I am not surprised that you pronounce "one" with a /ɑ/. This is the usual pronunciation for people who are native to your region. It is the most heard pronunciation of "one" here in Derby too. /ʌ/ is not part of the phoneme inventory in the Midlands. /ʌ/ is part of the RP inventory because RP is based on the speech of the South-East, where /ʌ/ is indigenous.
> 
> I am not sure I have heard "worry" pronounced with a /ɑ/, but I have heard some Midlanders (probably a minority) pronounce "won" with this sound.


That was very interesting, Soundshift. I'm grateful. Actually, I seem to be RP most of the time, and I certainly use  /ʌ/ in words like "but", "mother" and even "won", so that also destroys the theory I was considering that I'm just inconsistent when it comes to words that begin with "w" or /w/. 
It must be a personal quirk.


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## Alxmrphi

Yeah RP IPA is quite weird for 95% of the UK, because it's only estimated that 5% of the population speak it naturally, and it is the language of the BBC and high office (and high-society), so given it's the standard that is 'recognised around the world' as well, people cling to this idea that it is the way people speak.

This (and the GOAT diphthing [look it up ]) are the two most unusual things non-RP speakers come across in looking at IPA. 95% of the people share your pronunciation, and everybody from the Midlands upwards (in England) shares this pronunciation, too. After the FOOT-STRUT split, which started in the south of England, different words jumped over to have new vowels in them, and there's a sort of gradient, and the more you go to the central part of England (i.e. Midlands) there is a bit of variability and less words are pronounced with the STRUT vowel. In the North it's not used it, unless they've grown up living in the South or they've made a deliberate attempt to copy it non-natively (or their parents were from the South (East)).

From my students on accent and dialectology I'm surprised you use so many vowels in words like "but" or "mother", which is not a common usage in your area, according to the isoglosses and previous studies done on regional English. Obviously regional accent study is limited to a sample of people and it's impossible to get 100% agreement in nearly every study from science to linguistics when it comes to human variation. Yeah, this is sort of how it is supposed to look (taking the example of the word 'sun').

As you can see, there is a [ɒ] sound present down in* KENT* which is employed consistently, so it wouldn't surprise me if around this area you heard w*ɒ*rry.
English pronunciation, how it varies in England today and the historical facts that led to it, is just massively complicated.


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## sound shift

I don't think it's just a personal quirk, inib. Midlanders and Northerners who "adopt" RP (which they sometimes do if they move to London, acquire a job with a nationwide profile or attend one of the public schools, particularly one that's in the South-East) may leave their Midlands/Northern pronunciation of "one" as [wɒn] unchanged, perhaps unaware that this is not the RP pronunciation. Listen to cabinet minister Kenneth Clarke, who is originally from Nottingham. Or listen to Jeremy Clarkson (if you can bear to), who is from Doncaster but attended a public school, has a nationwide profile and now lives in Oxfordshire. The pronunciation of both is RP, except for the [wɒn] that both have retained (Clarkson tends to throw in the odd [wʌn] here and there).

Alex - I'm sure that more than 5% of the British population pronounces "one" as [wʌn]. All natives of the South-East do so (except for a few who copy the pronunciation of parents who moved there from the Midlands or the North of England) - and that's several million people. It's not just an RP pronunciation. I remember one particular match at Elland Road (Leeds, North of England) at which the home support mocked en masse the visiting Tottenham supporters' pronunciation of "one" as [wʌn]. This was in the pre-Premier League days when football crowds were 75%-80% working class; those Tottenham supporters were mostly Cockneys (working-class Londoners; not what I would call RP speakers). That pronunciation is not unknown in Scotland, either. In the South-West of England, the pronunciation of "one" varies along a continuum that extends from /ʌ/ to a schwa.


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## inib

Thanks to both of you. I must have been born in the wrong place! I certainly pronounce /strʌt/ and /sʌn/, and I have never lived anywhere other than my birthplace for 21 years, and in Spain for 27. The latter being the case, I have little opportunity to observe how people from the same area - Worcestershire, to be more exact (and with a similar education - private school, but not "over-posh") pronounce the words in question. However, I have experimented with a couple of visiting friends who meet those requirements, and they pronounce /wʌn/!!!


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## Alxmrphi

> Alex - I'm sure that more than 5% of the British population pronounces "one" as [wʌn]


I was only talking about RP as an accent, not specifically with the word 'one', sort of background to the discussions about RP that had been discussed earlier and that I was going to discuss (always useful for non-natives to realise the true situation of the RP accent in Modern England). I was just reflecting that point, which is backed up on page 111 of this book and page 18 of this book.

RE: Scotland, yeah they have the split, too (as does Ireland). I was reading Trudgill (very famous dialectologist) about the situation of this split and even he concluded it was a mystery which England seems to be the odd-one out, and the historical data doesn't show an innovation happening in England.

I think there's a conditioning with /w/ that might be going on, it's not something I remember coming across but wouldn't surprise me. I just looked at two of the Queen's speeches (one this year and one last) and her pronunciation I would say is between [ʌ] and [ɑ], but exact vowels are extremely difficult to qualify due to the fluid nature of their production (consonants are so much easier!) so we should also factor in our mental representations of these symbols might not be as fixed to one specific sound as it would be in a perfect world.

I haven't met anyone before who remembers specific details about pronunciation and can refer back to them later, it's something that started happening to me over the last 2 years, quite strange isn't it  ? As for eliciting pronunciations from people, there have been whole books referring to the traps people fall into, the observer's paradox, and many people have shown to just say very different things when they have been asked. So I don't hold much stock by hearing about people asking others how they pronounce a word (especially if it was 'How do you say <WORD>?') and it can merely be linked to copying the other person. I was shocked by some of the ways that people honestly respond to these questions and believe they're saying it in their normal way, only to be picked out in a natural recording later to say something in a very different manner. There are a few good examples but I can't find them at the moment.

Food for thought, definitely


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## ewie

Alxmrphi said:


> there is a [ɒ] sound present down in East Anglia


(I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Alex, but that's actually _Kent_)


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## Alxmrphi

ewie said:


> (I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Alex, but that's actually _Kent_)



Do you know what, I knew I should have looked that up when I posted!
I thought I'd risk it because I had just got up and needed a caffeine blast quite quickly 
My geography is great up here in the North, but not in the South!

It's close anyway, like saying Liverpool for Manchester, same thing! (rofl)


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## sound shift

Alxmrphi said:


> I thought I'd risk it because I had just got up and needed a caffine blast quite quickly


Dare I say it, but you need a spelling blast too.  _Caffine  * _NIT-PICKING MODE *OFF* *

And just so that this post is not _totally _off-topic, can I say that I have never encountered the Kent phenomenon mentioned above, even though I have lived in the county and have parents who hail from it.


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## Alxmrphi

I'm drinking it now actually, I usually pick up on that mistake made by everyone else.
Everyone's _aloud_ the odd spelling mistake (that was deliberate )



> And just so that this post is not _totally _off-topic, can I say  that i have never encountered the Kent phenomenon mentioned above, even  though I have lived in the county and have parents who both hail from  it.


I wonder if it's from an old study or not, I might check that out today because I have a day off and nothing better to do


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## natkretep

sound shift said:


> Midlanders and Northerners who "adopt" RP (which they sometimes do if they move to London, acquire a job with a nationwide profile or attend one of the public schools, particularly one that's in the South-East) may leave their Midlands/Northern pronunciation of "one" as [wɑn] unchanged, perhaps unaware that this is not the RP pronunciation.



Sorry, did you mean to say [wɑn] or [wɒn]? I thought we were talking about the latter. (Or is my display playing tricks on me).

I think many people have the same vowel for _one_ and _nothing_, no?


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## Alxmrphi

> I think many people have the same vowel for _one_ and _nothing_, no?


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## sound shift

natkretep said:


> Sorry, did you mean to say [wɑn] or [wɒn]? I thought we were talking about the latter. (Or is my display playing tricks on me).
> 
> I think many people have the same vowel for _one_ and _nothing_, no?


Sorry, I meant /wɒn/. I must be in need of some coffee too. I've edited it now.

In Derby, people have /ɒ/ for "one" and and "none" (as well as for "among" and "tongue"). The local pronunciation of "none" leads occasionally to the written mistake "He was a none-contributor".


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## inib

I'm very grateful to everyone who has contributed and ask no more of you. However, if anyone still has anything to add, I'll be very interested to read it. 
My conclusion is that I AM inconsistent, because I also pronounce "none" just like "nun" (with /ʌ/), and the same goes for "nothing" etc.
Alx, I appreciate what you say about asking people to pronounce a certain word. The chances that they will do it naturally are slim.
Just in case anyone's wondering why I asked such a relatively unimportant question, I will explain: while I was living in England, I never gave any thought to the matter, or even noticed the difference. It was when I came to Spain to teach that I first questioned my own pronunciation of these two words. Spanish kids are taught at school by non-native teachers to pronounce "one" as /wæn/*. As you probably know, most Spanish-speakers have great difficulty in distinguishing /æ/ as in "cat" from /ʌ/ as in "cut", but I couldn't see why they should have any difficulty with /wɒn/, and that's when I discovered that the standard pronunciation given by all dictionaries was /wʌn/.

* It's also true that the following 2 numbers are usually taught as "chew" and "free"!!!

Once again, thanks to all.


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## Alxmrphi

I have a Spanish friend who was on an Erasmus year at my university and she told me her Spanish (nationality) teachers of English were teaching that the tag question for the 1st person singular is *amn't I*? She didn't believe me when I tried to correct her, but it's been an enlightening experience hearing from learners of English some of the things they are taught by their non-native teachers in their home countries.

Anyway back on point, it is very weird to have complete RP dictionaries which (as the links I provided earlier support), it's a native accent of between 3-5% of our country, yet holds the most sway. Maybe it's just my variety of English but even hearing other people having a homophony between "won" (past participle of 'to win') and "one" still is strange to me.

I could repeat "one" and "won" all day and hear the huge difference, and I know it's due to my lack of the STRUT vowel in my accent, but even in an impersonation of a posh voice, to put the following sentence together and realise it's a repetition of two words that should sound exactly the same (according to the OED), baffles me:

*I won one trophy*.

/aɪ wʌn wʌn tɹɔʊfi/  (for me)
/aɪ wʊn wɑn tɹɔʊfi/ 

(let's not even go into the [əʊ] / [ɔʊ] alteration...)


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## sound shift

Alex, you keep using terms like "RP" and "posh", but you don't need to speak the one or be the other in order to pronounce "won" the same as "one". All Cockneys do this. They are neither posh nor RP speakers. What's baffling about the fact that some people pronounce "won" the same as "one"?


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## PaulQ

sound shift said:


> In Derby, people have /ɒ/ for "one" and and "none" (as well as for "among" and "tongue"). The local pronunciation of "none" leads occasionally to the written mistake "He was a none-contributor".


I'm from Derby originally - how can there be a difference between none and contributor?  Although I have heard amung and tung (among and tongue) I've never said tung myself.


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## Alxmrphi

> Alex, you keep using terms like "RP" and "posh", but you don't need to  speak the one or be the other in order to pronounce "won" the same as  "one".


I only used _posh_ once.
The pronunciation of "won" and "one" like this, for speakers in my area is something that is stigmatised as being posh, and carries with it a lot of sociolinguistic prejudices that even I can't separate myself from all of the time. 


> What's baffling about the fact that "won" and "one" sound the same to some people?


To me, honestly, a lot.
I can't qualify it with any reasonable argument as it's just the wiring of the phonology in my brain, but maybe _baffle_ was the wrong word to use, it is very very alien to me.

I'm beginning to think we might not be talking about the same vowels....


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## inib

PaulQ said:


> I'm from Derby originally - *how can there be a difference between none and contributor?*  Although I have heard amung and tung (among and tongue) I've never said tung myself.


 Sound Shift was referring to the mix up between "none" and the prefix "non-"


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## sound shift

inib said:


> Sound Shift was referring to the mix up between "none" and the prefix "non-"


Yes, I was.


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## sound shift

Alxmrphi said:


> I only used _posh_ once.
> The pronunciation of "won" and "one" like this, for speakers in my area is something that is stigmatised as being posh, and carries with it a lot of sociolinguistic prejudices that even I can't separate myself from all of the time.


Well, you should go and see the council house that my father grew up in in Ashford, Kent. It's not the least bit posh and nor is he. He has always pronounced "won" the same as "one" - and so did his neighbours in the other council houses.


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## Alxmrphi

sound shift said:


> Well, you should go and see the council house that my father grew up in in Ashford, Kent. It's not the least bit posh and nor is he. He has always pronounced "won" the same as "one" - and so did his neighbours in the other council houses.



Can you PM a recording if you happen to chance upon one in the future, so I can hear the exact pronunciation you're referring to? Just so we're on the same wavelength as I believe there's been a sort of misunderstanding that I'd like to figure out.


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## entangledbank

I'm a little surprised. I'm aware that there are regions of middle England where 'one' is pronounced with the LOT vowel, and this is common enough and not stigmatized, but I thought it was an oddity of transition because of the commonness of the word overriding the broad split: no STRUT/FOOT split in the North, STRUT/FOOT split in the South. Though my STRUT vowel for 'one; won' is near-RP and near-current-RP, it is shared with all the non-posh South accents such as Cockney, Australasian, and South African.


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## inib

Alxmrphi said:


> Can you PM a recording if you happen to chance upon one in the future, so I can hear the exact pronunciation you're referring to? Just so we're on the same wavelength as I believe there's been a sort of misunderstanding that I'd like to figure out.


 I'm so sorry. I seem to have set the cat among the pigeons. It was me (or rather, _I_) who first mentioned the word "_posh_", and that is obviously a very subjective (and prejudiced) word, which for me means "anyone who speaks in an "affected" way, seeing as I believe I speak more or less according to the standard with the possible exceptions of _one_ and _worry_". Yes, arrogance at its height, I know.
I'll also admit to only knowing the very basic IPA symbols which are commonly used to transcribe British English as a whole, and can comprehend the odd superscript used by some dictionaries and phonetics books, but I'm no "Professor Higgins", and while I'd insist that most of the family and friends I'm thinking of (who live less than 20 km apart) use a pronunciation that would be transcribed in the same way with these basic symbols, we all sound different.
Finally, "one" has become controversial, but I seem to have the honour of being the only person in the world outside Kent (or on WR) who says /w*ɒ*ri/ for "worry".


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## eni8ma

PaulQ said:


> Although I have heard amung and tung (among and tongue) I've never said tung myself.


I'm fascinated by the discussion of "right" and "less-right" ways of pronouncing words.  As an Aussie, I find all the variations of accent and pronunciation quite wonderful to listen to.

In Australia, won, one, ton, and sun all rhyme.  My mother assured me that I had to say wurry, not worry (to rhyme with lorry).  For us, there are many words where the o is pronounced like the u in STRUT.

among, tongue, come, onion, front, worry, accomplish

Actually, because (for us) won and one rhyme, school children have a ditty:
1 1 was a racehorse
2 2 was 1 2
1 1 1 1 race
2 2 1 1 2 

Probably wouldn't make any sense to those of you who pronounce one differently from won


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## Alxmrphi

> I'm fascinated by the discussion of "right" and "less-right" ways of pronouncing words.


This is absolutely categorically* not* about right or less-right, and I completely object to those terms. Please don't take this as if I am having a go at you, I'm not, but the idea there is a right and a wrong way to say something when we're discussing various accents is extremely the wrong view to take. There are no ways that are right and there are certainly no accents that a native community speaks that can ever be considered 'wrong' or 'less-right' than others.

"Standard" and "non-standard" are fine, but wrong/right lead people to think there are wrong ways to say words, and nothing anybody has said so far in this thread is more right or less right than any other, and it's really important that everyone understands that (hence this post). I can talk about the variation of accents in English til the cows come home but anything that imposes a system of right or wrong on natively-produced speech (with the exception of speech impediments etc) is one that is not scientific, not linguistic, and not worthy of heed by anyone in my opinion.

(Not aimed at you, but in general).



> In Australia, won, one, ton, and sun all rhyme.  My mother assured me  that I had to say wurry, not worry (to rhyme with lorry).  For us, there  are many words where the o is pronounced like the u in STRUT.


In the first list they all rhyme for me, except 'one', which sticks out like a sore thumb in a quick reading of those words 
I'm trying to place the 'worry' rhyming with 'lorry' accent, and I keep thinking Irish but I am not 100% sure about that, it exists though, I'm sure I've heard it before.
That last thing makes no sense to me! Like you predicted 

P.s. I find the Australian accent really interesting to listen to, as well. They've been playing a lot of Rupert Murdoch interviews on the TV (for obvious reasons) and I always found myself trying to pick out features of the accent rather than listening to what he's saying, the accent is really cool.


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## eni8ma

I put "right" into quotes to soften the impact (or so I hoped) - it was all tongue-in-cheek, I assure you 

The translation of the poem is:
1 1 was a racehorse (one-one was a racehorse)
2 2 was 1 2 (two-two was one too)
1 1 1 1 race (one-one won one race)
2 2 1 1 2 (two-two won one too)


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## PaulQ

This reminds me of a friend who was an EFL teacher who was seconded to Jeddah to cover the holidays of another EFL teacher. He found the class all spoke with a broad Scots (Glaswegian) accent.


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## Thelb4

I can't imagine "one" being pronounced any differently from "won".


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## sound shift

PaulQ said:


> This reminds me of a friend who was an EFL teacher who was seconded to Jeddah to cover the holidays of another EFL teacher. He found the class all spoke with a broad Scots (Glaswegian) accent.


 Classic! If there's ever a "Best of WR" compilation, I'm going to propose this! And now we know that thanks to inib there's a part of La Rioja that will be forever Worcestershire. Sort of.


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## inib

As often happens on long threads, I may have missed something, or just got mixed up, but I would like to underline the following passage from Alx as being true to my own opinion, and also insist that he has never said anything different:
[QUOTE ALX:"Standard" and "non-standard" are fine, but wrong/right lead people to think there are wrong ways to say words, and nothing anybody has said so far in this thread is more right or less right than any other, and it's really important that everyone understands that (hence this post). I can talk about the variation of accents in English til the cows come home but anything that imposes a system of right or wrong on natively-produced speech (with the exception of speech impediments etc) is one that is not scientific, not linguistic, and not worthy of heed by anyone in my opinion.QUOTE ALX]
And just in case, after having bored you all stiff it's not clear, my problem is that in my own way of speech "one" is the only word that doesn't rhyme perfectly with "won", "ton" and "sun".
And of all these others:among, tongue, come, onion, front, worry, accomplish, *-* except for the famous "worry", which for me DOES rhyme with "lorry", *-* I would use the same pronunciation. 
I'm flattered that so many people have taken notice of my post and that so many obviously and necessarily different accents have been commented on. 
G'dnight to you all.
Inib


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## Cagey

Thelb4 said:


> I can't imagine "one" being pronounced any differently from "won".


I was having a hard time with this too.
'One' is among the words for which they provide sound clips on this website from English Only Resources list.  (Unfortunately, they don't have clips for 'won'.)
Accents of English from around the world - hear them and see the IPA at this University of Edinburgh site.​


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## Kevin Beach

inib said:


> As this is a pronunciation question, I will tell you that I am from the West Midlands, (UK), in case that has anything to do with it.
> When I say the words "one" (as in the number) and "worry" slowly and/or individually, after the /w/ I pronounce /ɒ/, not /ʌ/ as all the transcriptions I have seen suggest. Does anyone else do this? Is mine an alternative pronunciation, or just a personal peculiarity?
> Thanks for taking the time to read this.


If I'm not much mistaken, are you not sitting on the "foot/put" isogloss in the West Midlands? I imagine there are various pronunciations of many things within a 20 to 30 mile radius of you!

My experience is that "one" rhymes with "won" in southern England, but with "on" in Northern England. I know a lass from Coventry though who pronounces it both ways and can't explain why.


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## PaulQ

Nearest I can get is
wan = wɒn
one = wɒn
won = wʌn


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## eni8ma

I pronounce wan as though it was spelled _won_, won as though it was spelled _wun_; 
same with wander (pronounced as though spelled _wonder_) and wonder (sounds like like _wunder_).  
Worrier sounds like _wurrier_, warrior sounds like _worrier_.
 ROFL  
Here's where we need to be able to post audios of ourselves talking


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## Kevin Beach

PaulQ said:


> Nearest I can get is
> wan = wɒn
> one = wɒn
> won = wʌn


Do you hail from somewhere north of the Bristol-Wash line?


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## PaulQ

born Derby stayed 20yrs, East Yorks 15yrs, St Albans area since 1986.

Edit to add:

Wander = ponder the 'o' as in cot
Wonder = thunder The 'u' is quite flat and deep
worrier = furrier ditto
warrior = quarrier 'o' as in cot

Another thing is that I always pronounce a hard 'g' at the end of gerunds, etc and the 'o' sound as in 'go' has a 'w' sound O(w)

A few days back, I met a school friend from Derby whom I hadn't seen for ~30 years. He's never left Derby and I could hear his accent quite clearly. As I suspect that an accent is something other people have, my accent has probably change a little.


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## Copperknickers

In Ayrshire we say 'yin' or 'wan' for 'one', to rhyme with 'tin' and 'tan' respectively. Plus we pronounce 'worry' to rhyme with 'quarry'. We just say 'wun' for 'won' though.


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## Alxmrphi

> Another thing is that I always pronounce a hard 'g' at the end of gerunds,


That's a feature we share, Midlands and parts of the North West of England are the only places in the world where it happens.
Well I personally only have it in some words, it's fairly inconsistent in my speech but I meant my area, has a lot of speakers who do it consistently.

Here's an isogloss of the feature (NG-coalescence).
I wasn't aware of Kent actually having this, that's new for me.


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## PaulQ

Ha! I am acutely aware of my hard 'g' pronunciation because my then teacher, who was from the Lake District (see isogloss) made pupils' lives a misery commenting on this part (amongst others) of our Derby accent.


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## ewie

Alxmrphi said:


> Here's an isogloss of the feature (NG-coalescence).


That's odd: that's exactly the same isoglossy line in Kent as in the map you linked to in post #6, Alex.  (I wonder if there's something significant going on)

As somebody said before (probably Alex), my ear's so attuned to hearing _one_ pronounced with the first syllable of _wander_ that when I hear it with the first syllable of _wonder_ it sounds ... [rifles carefully through sewing-basket in search of term] it sounds _'off_' ... yes, that's it: it sounds 'one vowel-sound _off_'.


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## inib

PaulQ said:


> Nearest I can get is
> wan = wɒn
> one = wɒn
> won = wʌn


 Yes! That's me exactly. I was happy until I read your following post. I'm afraid I usually pronounce "wander" and "wonder" as homophones ( with /ɒ/, of course), and the same goes for "worrier" and "warrier".
I really do seem to have a problem with most "W-sounding-words", except "won".
As this thread has become long, and just in case any newcomers are wondering, I'm not recommending or disadvising any particular regional pronunciation. I'm just at loggerheads with my own contradictions!


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## ribran

inib said:


> Yes! That's me exactly. I was happy until I read your following post. I'm afraid I usually pronounce "wander" and "wonder" as homophones ( with /ɒ/, of course), and the same goes for "worrier" and "warrier".
> I really do seem to have a problem with most "W-sounding-words", except "won".
> As this thread has become long, and just in case any newcomers are wondering, I'm not recommending or disadvising any particular regional pronunciation. I'm just at loggerheads with my own contradictions!



I know I have heard some Southerners pronounce both _wonder_ and _wander_ with /ɒ/, but I'm not sure how widespread this pronunciation is (Austin, like many other large cities in the South, has become something of a dialect island).


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## inib

Thanks folks, if any of you remember that I was the original poster, I'm grateful for all contributions and for learning so much more about "other" accents. Thanks to your comments, it would seem that 4 or 5 words in my (basic teaching) vocabulary don't follow the main grain, but that what I generally use is not a complete aberration.
For the third time, the intention of this message is to thank you all and become an observer from now on, but we'll see if I manage not to put my oar in as soon as there is something else interesting!


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## natkretep

inib said:


> Yes! That's me exactly. I was happy until I read your following post. I'm afraid I usually pronounce "wander" and "wonder" as homophones ( with /ɒ/, of course) ...



You would not have any difficulty with singing the American carol then:


> I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
> How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die.
> For poor on'ry people like you and like I...
> I wonder as I wander out under the sky.



In this context, the phonetician John Wells notes in his blog that even those who distinguish between them might find it difficult to do so!



> They sometimes seem to sing *aɪ ˈwɒndər æz aɪ ˈwɒndə*. I even caught myself doing it when not concentrating properly.


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## inib

natkretep said:


> You would not have any difficulty with singing the American carol then:
> 
> 
> In this context, the phonetician John Wells notes in his blog that even those who distinguish between them might find it difficult to do so!


 Thanks, natkretep. I know the carol, and have always thought it has a nice pair of homophones!!!


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