# Pronunciation: doth



## Pincadilly

Hello everybody,
I need to know the pronunciation of the old English word "_doth_" which nowadays stands for "does"...
Thank you very much in advance!


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## panjandrum

Doth rhymes with cloth, goth and moth.


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## entangledbank

No, rhymes with . . . I can't think of anything it rhymes with. Same vowel as _does, dust_ anyway.


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## Nunty

My American accent pronounces it like panj, to rhyme with cloth, moth and sloth.


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## xqby

When I look at it all alone there's a temptation to rhyme it with other -oth words.
But when I say "The lady doth protest too much," the pronunciation comes out closer to "duth."



entangledbank said:


> No, rhymes with . . . I can't think of anything it rhymes with.


 
Bismuth?


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## sound shift

The author of an article in "The Times" believes that the _original_ pronunciation rhymed with our present-day pronunciation of "tooth": say "do" and add "th". ([duːθ] in IPA). http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article545105.ece


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## cuchuflete

I too was tempted to suggest moth and goth, but those two are slightly different for me, and neither is an exact match for the vowel sound of doth.  That vowel is close to the sound of fluff.


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## mplsray

Pincadilly said:


> Hello everybody,
> I need to know the pronunciation of the old English word "_doth_" which nowadays stands for "does"...
> Thank you very much in advance!



I just checked the pronunciation with six online dictionaries which I know to have printed versions, including the Oxford English Dictionary, and they all show it as being pronounced with the vowel in _dust_ and the _th_ in _thin._

_Doeth,_ on the other hand, the OED shows as being pronounced in two syllables, having the vowels in _tooth,_ and _sit_ while the _th_ remains the same.


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## Nunty

I pronounce _cloth, moth, doth  _and so on with the same vowel that begins _off_. Maybe I have a strange accent.


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## sound shift

I believe that the way _we _pronounce "doth" incorporates vowel shifts that have taken place since Shakespeare's time. The [ʌ] of present-day Southern English "must" is not part of the current vowel inventory in Shakespeare's native Warwickshire, nor was it to be found there in the Bard's day. In fact I don't think it appeared anywhere in England until later on.


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## panjandrum

I have to say that neither I nor the people I have learnt my pronunciation of doth from have ever had the opportunity to hear either Shakespeare or King James pronounce the word.

There is a fair point in there somewhere.

Out here, on the periphery of British English, much of our pronunciation tends to be somewhat literal.  After the invention of the printing press, through the great boom in education for all, and until the advent of non-paper media, we most often came across a word first in written form.  Not having any alternative, we tend to pronounce words that look the same in the same way, except when we have been very definitely informed that we shouldn't.

Thus we pronounce all of those -oth words the same, but we have the wit not to do the same with the -ough words and others that have a dramatically eccentric pronunciation.


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## sound shift

panjandrum said:


> I have to say that neither I nor the people I have learnt my pronunciation of doth from have ever had the opportunity to hear either Shakespeare or King James pronounce the word.


Nor have I, panj, but it would appear that the pronunciation from those times has been ascertained by non-auditory means, such as the study of Shakespearean rhyme. I suppose it all depends on how close to the pronunciation used when the word was part of everyday speech the "doth" needs to be.


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## panjandrum

I've been practising.
As often happens, especially with verbs, the sound depends on the place in the sentence and the resulting word stress.
In "How doth the little busy bee ...", doth is stressed (the way I read it) and very clearly rhymes with moth, goth and cloth.

Consider the different pronunciations of does that are possible in for example (stressed words in bold italic):
How does *he *know?
How *does *he *do *it?

Were I a regular doth-user, I'm quite sure I could set out similar examples to illustrate how I pronounce doth differently depending on stress.


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## Alxmrphi

> Consider the different pronunciations of does that are possible in for example (stressed words in bold italic):
> How does *he *know?
> How *does *he *do *it?


You have a good point..

First example: /dəz/
Second example: /dʌz/

I would always pronounce *doth* as /dɒθ/.
(Agreeing with panj & Nunty)


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## AngloSaxonSerf

I have only ever heard this word when studying Shakespeare at school and subsequently when people make quotations thereoutof. Both my London-born English master and current contemporaries in the North always pronounce(d) it more duth ( a soft_ th_ as in thorn) than doth/cloth/moth. (Agreeing with _entangledbank_ and _mplsray.) _


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## Alxmrphi

For the people supporting the 'duth' pronunciation, are you referring to a scwha in the word or an actual /ʌ/ sound?
I just checked a recording in a dictionary, I wouldn't have said it like that..

But we're talking about a word that doesn't exist in contemporary English, there is no right / wrong way to say it, maybe in its day, but vowels in words have changed an staggering amount over the past 600 years.. is anyone actually surprised there are different opinions? I'm not.

I'm quite amazed people seem to remember exact pronunciations by others from their schooldays.


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## cuchuflete

For those of us for whom IPA and scwhas are strange, furry creatures, I offer this:

Doth has the same vowel sound as fluff, muff, rough, rust, etc.

Moth, in contrast, has a vowel sound close to awe.

If you say moth such that it shares a vowel sound with muff, then I've probably confused you.

In short, moth does not sound at all like the first syllable of mother for me. The vowel sound of *moth*_er _is the same as that for doth.


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## AngloSaxonSerf

Alxmrphi said:


> For the people supporting the 'duth' pronunciation, are you referring to a scwha in the word or an actual /ʌ/ sound?
> I just checked a recording in a dictionary, I wouldn't have said it like that..
> 
> But we're talking about a word that doesn't exist in contemporary English, there is no right / wrong way to say it, maybe in its day, but vowels in words have changed an staggering amount over the past 600 years.. is anyone actually surprised there are different opinions? I'm not.
> 
> I'm quite amazed people seem to remember exact pronunciations by others from their schooldays.


Goodness me, to this day I can still recite the "_neither a lender nor a borrower be "_ speech after having to learn it for a classroom recital

The_ doth_ though is still heard today in the much more widely known quote: "the lady doth protest too much methinks".


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## ewie

It's always been /ʌ/ for me too.  (Agreeing with other people who prefer /ʌ/.)

(I remember King James.  Big chap.  Poor teeth.  Smelt funny.)


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## AngloSaxonSerf

Alxmrphi said:


> For the people supporting the 'duth' pronunciation, are you referring to a scwha in the word or an actual /ʌ/ sound?
> I just checked a recording in a dictionary, I wouldn't have said it like that..
> 
> But we're talking about a word that doesn't exist in contemporary English, there is no right / wrong way to say it, maybe in its day, but vowels in words have changed an staggering amount over the past 600 years.. is anyone actually surprised there are different opinions? I'm not.
> 
> I'm quite amazed people seem to remember exact pronunciations by others from their schooldays.


Goodness me, to this day I can still recite the "_neither a lender nor a borrower be "_ speech after having to learn it for a classroom recital

The_ doth_ though is still heard today in the much more widely known quote: "the lady doth protest too much methinks". 

EDIT. Slinking back into the room after spending the last hour looking up the bard I have to correct the above and say the quote is actually   " neither a *borrower* nor a* lender* be".

What can I say. Er, it was a deliberate mistake and caught everbody out?


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## Kevin Beach

In my southern BrE it is identical to *dust*.


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## mplsray

Alxmrphi said:


> For the people supporting the 'duth' pronunciation, are you referring to a scwha in the word or an actual /ʌ/ sound?
> I just checked a recording in a dictionary, I wouldn't have said it like that..
> 
> But we're talking about a word that doesn't exist in contemporary English, there is no right / wrong way to say it, maybe in its day, but vowels in words have changed an staggering amount over the past 600 years.. is anyone actually surprised there are different opinions? I'm not.
> 
> I'm quite amazed people seem to remember exact pronunciations by others from their schooldays.




A standard pronunciation does exist, because the word is archaic, not obsolete. It is still used when people read aloud from the King James (Authorized) Version of the Bible and when people play Shakespeare. The pronunciations given in modern dictionaries are those which have actually been observed used by modern speakers, and so are not in any way theoretical or reconstructed. (The Oxford English Dictionary will occasionally discuss in an etymology how a word might have once been pronounced, but if the word is still in use, it gives in the section on pronunciation that pronunciation which is currently in use.)

If the pronunciation of _doth_ which rhymes with _cloth_ is not in current dictionaries, it is most likely a quite rare one. Consider, for example, how Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, which is considered the most descriptivist of dictionaries and which is famous (or infamous) for having more pronunciation variants than any other English-language dictionary, has only the pronunciation of _doth_ with the vowel of _dust._


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## Pedro y La Torre

panjandrum said:


> Doth rhymes with cloth, goth and moth.



Being that schoolchildren in the Republic of Ireland are forced to spend 4+ years learning at least two of Shakespeare's plays, I came across this word quite a lot and I (and everyone else I ever heard reading) always pronounced it like this.

The _duth_ pronunciation is completely foreign to me.


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## Loob

Fascinating thread!  I've always imagined (heard?) "doth" with the same two vowel sounds as "does": ie _unstressed schwa, stressed_ /ʌ/.

That said, it's been a while since I visited Stratford-on-Avon, despite the fact it's pretty close...


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## GreenWhiteBlue

In my accent, "cloth" and "moth" (which have the vowel of _dog_, _off_, _lost_, _call_, _law_, and even _port_ when it is pronounced non-rhotically) rhyme with each other, but neither rhymes with "Goth" (which has the vowel of _log_, _frog_, _hot_, _Robert_, and _copper_.) None of the three rhymes perfectly with "doth", which for me tends towards the vowel found in "dust", but doesnt quite reach it....


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## Rover_KE

For me, 'doth' has the same vowel sound as the word 'does' which replaced it.

Rover


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## foxfirebrand

Back when I was in grad school in the 70s, I was part of a project that tried to reconstruct the pronunciation of Elizabethan English.  We had various sources for clues, but none better than rhyming dictionaries-- versifying was a popular endeavor at the time, and as much a part of courtship as was knowing your way around the parlor piano in the 19th century.  Rhyming dictionaries were plentiful.

_Doth_ was probably pronounced with the moth/goth vowel when stressed-- problem is, the word rarely is.  When it's slightly-elided, the vowel is more like the /u/ in _put_.  By "is," of course I mean "might be."  

I have more confident memories of _dost_, which probably had the same pronunciation of _dust_ as pronounced nowadays in the north of England-- think of Ringo Starr saying

_Golden girls and lads all must,
as chimney sweepers, come to dust.
_
I think our tendency to use the schwa is influenced by the way we pronounce _does_-- but that raises the question of why we pronounce it that way.

I'd say "the wind duth blow" and "the lady _doth_ protest"-- but let's face it, the word isn't really in anyone's spoken vocabulary, is it?  So if your guesswork works for you the next time you say that word, it's met the only criterion that really remains relevant.


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## GreenWhiteBlue

foxfirebrand said:


> _Doth_ was probably pronounced with the moth/goth vowel when stressed--


As noted above, these are two very different vowels for some of us.


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## Alxmrphi

> If the pronunciation of _doth_ which rhymes with _cloth_ is not in current dictionaries, it is most likely a quite rare one.


All you need to do is read at least some of the responses in this this thread.
There is no right / wrong here, it's an archaic word yes, we apply modern associations to these types of words, I wouldn't say a spoken standard has remained. (i.e. if I gave you the word 'flought' [Yes I made it up] - you'd instinstively apply a modern pronunciation of another word to it)

We've got Irish / English / American all agreeing with each other on aspects here, I know we're in the minority, but I don't think you can call it rare when people from different places are in agreement like this.

I don't think there is a right answer here, I just said how I would say it.
I think people trying to convince others of definitive right / wrong are fighting an un-winnable battle here.

After all, it's pronunciation, we seem to be in vast agreement compared to some of the other_ contemporary_ _words _that we argue about.


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## natkretep

ewie said:


> It's always been /ʌ/ for me too. (Agreeing with other people who prefer /ʌ/.)


 
I'm with ewie, cuchu, etc. - in other words, the same vowel as in _does_. Why? I think this is what I hear - Shakespeare, King James Bible, old hymns.

I see that this is also the version given in the OED.


> _3rd pers. sing._ *does* (dʌz), _arch._ *doth* (dʌθ), *doeth* ('duːɪθ)


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## Pedro y La Torre

Alxmrphi said:


> We've got Irish / English / American all agreeing with each other on aspects here, I know we're in the minority, but I don't think you can call it rare when people from different places are in agreement like this.
> 
> After all, it's pronunciation, we seem to be in vast agreement compared to some of the other_ contemporary_ _words _that we argue about.



That's a fair point. There can be no one "standard" pronunciation of this because no-one knows for sure how Shakespeare would have said it.



panjandrum said:


> Thus we pronounce all of those -oth words the same, but we have the wit not to do the same with the -ough words and others that have a dramatically eccentric pronunciation.


 
 I would agree with this analysis. However I should mention -ow words such as "now" and "down" which, in Ulster, have mutated into very strange sounding things indeed


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## pickarooney

Am I alone in pronouncing 'cloth' and 'moth' with a different vowel ('cloth' is much longer)?
And, for the record, I've always pronounced 'doth' as 'does' with a heavy lisp, at least in my head.


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## Pedro y La Torre

pickarooney said:


> Am I alone in pronouncing 'cloth' and 'moth' with a different vowel ('cloth' is much longer)?



Not for me though the h often tends to get dropped.



pickarooney said:


> And, for the record, I've always pronounced 'doth' as 'does' with a heavy lisp, at least in my head.



In my (west Dublin) accent, does is pronounced as something near "duz", doth however is pronounced with a much more open vowel sound resembling how I would say cloth or moth.

If you go here http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to-speech-interactive-demo.htmland listen to Heather saying the sentence "the lady doth protest too much", that comes something close to how I say it.


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## panjandrum

If you want a lot of fun, try listening to the various voices at Pedro's link say:
_The moth doth rest upon the goth's cloth.
Doth the goth not rest?
The goth resteth not; the moth doth, upon the cloth.

_I'm not sure it tells me anything about who pronounces what how


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## pickarooney

The voices on that page don't sound remotely human and the vowels not like any I've ever heard  At a push, Graham's pronunciation of 'doth' is similar to mine. Curiously, Heather's 'cloth' is more in tune with my pronunciation. Nobody in my family is American though.


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## Pincadilly

Thank you for your interesting answers, but unfortunately now I know exactly as before!
The point is that I found the word "doth" in a chorus song and, since I have to sing it, I need of course to pronunce it properly... But in fact there's not a "proper" pronunciation at all!!!
I'd better ask the chorus master about how he wants the chorus to pronunce it...
However, thank you again!


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## pickarooney

If it's a chorus, I suggest you mime, although if everyone does that because they can't decide how to pronounce it.... 
Best ask the chorus master, indeed.


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## Brioche

entangledbank said:


> No, rhymes with . . . I can't think of anything it rhymes with. Same vowel as _does, dust_ anyway.



Daniel Jones _English Pronouncing Dictionary_ gives
*Doth* /dʌθ/ as the strong form and /dəθ/ as the weak form.

*Doeth* is given as /ˈduːɪθ/ or /'dʊɪθ/


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## ewie

panjandrum said:


> If you want a lot of fun, try listening to the various voices at Pedro's link say:_
> The goth resteth not; the moth doth, upon the cloth._


Oh those things are always good for a laff.  If you get UK Peter to say this one it sounds like Middle English (or something.)


Pincadilly said:


> Thank you for your interesting answers, but unfortunately now I know exactly as before!


That happens a lot here, Pinca: you get hundreds of answers but not _the_ answer


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## liliput

I would pronounce doth in either way (as in moth, cloth, goth, etc. or with a schwa), depending on the sentence I think.

I'm a little bewildered (or even awestruck) by cuchuflete's comment about _moth_. Do you pronounce it _mawth_!? I agree it's not the same as in mother (mutha) but I would pronounce it exactly as it's spelled and as goth and cloth (not sloth, which is more like slowth).

Similarly, I can't figure out how cloth could have a longer vowel sound than moth (pickarooney, post 32).


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## liliput

panjandrum said:


> If you want a lot of fun, try listening to the various voices at Pedro's link say:
> _The moth doth rest upon the goth's cloth._
> _Doth the goth not rest?_
> _The goth resteth not; the moth doth, upon the cloth._
> 
> I'm not sure it tells me anything about who pronounces what how


 
I did this, and surprisingly all the UK speakers sound wrong to me - pronouncing "duth". To me the US speaker sounds better - pronouncing "doth" (until she says "resteth" in a weird way).


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## mplsray

Pedro y La Torre said:


> That's a fair point. There can be no one "standard" pronunciation of this because no-one knows for sure how Shakespeare would have said it.



From a linguistic point of view, a "standard pronunciation" is a pronunciation used by the educated portion of the population, and is one which dictionaries represent without an accompanying usage note indicating that the pronunciation is regional or dialectal or otherwise not to be considered standard--such as the /'sæm/ pronunciation of _psalm_ that I mentioned in another thread as being given in Webster's Third accompanied by the label "archaic." Note that this linguistic concept of standard pronunciation is used by the editors all modern general dictionaries.

This is not to imply that there is only one standard pronunciation of any given word, only to say that how Shakespeare pronounced a word is essentially irrelevant to the question of what the standard pronunciation of that word is. Any Shakespearean production which attempted to reconstruct the pronunciation of English of Shakespeare's time and place would be, from a linguistic point of view, _nonstandard_--not that there's anything wrong with that.

Addition: I would add that the Oxford English Dictionary does not give pronunciations for words which are obsolete. So _doth,_ being archaic, is shown with a pronunciation, but _indisputed_, labeled obsolete, and _monomane,_ labeled obsolete and rare are given without any accompanying pronunciation.


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## ewie

mplsray said:


> Any Shakespearean production which attempted to reconstruct the pronunciation of English of Shakespeare's time and place would be, from a linguistic point of view, _nonstandard_


It would also, I suspect, be _even more_ incomprehensible than usual.


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## JulianStuart

liliput said:


> I would pronounce doth in either way (as in moth, cloth, goth, etc. or with a schwa), depending on the sentence I think.
> 
> I'm a little bewildered (or even awestruck) by cuchuflete's comment about _moth_. Do you pronounce it _mawth_!? I agree it's not the same as in mother (mutha) but I would pronounce it exactly as it's spelled and as goth and cloth (not sloth, which is more like slowth).
> 
> Similarly, I can't figure out how cloth could have a longer vowel sound than moth (pickarooney, post 32).



I was a little surprised until I realized we had encroached on the cot-caught merger.  GWB's examples of _lost_ and _dog_ having different vowels from_ hot_ and _log_ (to me those are all the same) didn't immediately identify this as such.  But moth-mawth_ is _this merger.  

However, neither resembles my version of doth: also like "dust" - This is used so seldom that I think many people lock on to the way they first heard it as the one that "sounds right".


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## MMarie

Midwestern Americans would pronounce "doth" so that it rhymes with "moth."


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## mplsray

MMarie said:


> Midwestern Americans would pronounce "doth" so that it rhymes with "moth."


 I grew up in Central Illinois (the Midwest) and live in Minnesota (the Upper Midwest), and I don't believe that I've ever heard any Midwesterner say _doth_ to rhyme with _moth._ Having been interested in language all my life, I think I would have noticed such a thing. (And when I was young, the King James Bible seemed to be the only version that anyone of my acquaintance ever quoted.)

That doesn't mean, of course, that it has never been pronounced that way in the Midwest and Upper Midwest, just that it would be rare for it to be pronounced in these areas other than with the vowel of _dust._

(Another opinion to take into consideration: I mentioned this thread topic to a friend of mine who was raised in Indiana, Maryland, and the Chicago area, and who attends a Lutheran* church regularly here in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro Area, and she considered the pronunciation of _doth_ to rhyme with _cloth_ to be flatly wrong.)

*I don't know if this is relevant or not, but mention it just in case it might be.


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## Pedro y La Torre

mplsray said:


> (Another opinion to take into consideration: I mentioned this thread topic to a friend of mine who was raised in Indiana, Maryland, and the Chicago area, and who attends a Lutheran* church regularly here in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro Area, and she considered the pronunciation of _doth_ to rhyme with _cloth_ to be flatly wrong.)



Lucky she isn't an authority on English pronunciation then because a lot of us would be considered "flatly wrong" according to her


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## natkretep

Can I confirm that folks would have the same vowel for _does_, _dost_ and _doth_?


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## Kevin Beach

natkretep said:


> Can I confirm that folks would have the same vowel for _does_, _dost_ and _doth_?


Confirmed by me, and for dust.


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## mplsray

natkretep said:


> Can I confirm that folks would have the same vowel for _does_, _dost_ and _doth_?



In the case of those people who pronounce _doth_ with the same vowel as _hut,_ yes. The dictionaries I cited previously for the pronunciation of _doth_--which showed only that pronunciation--have _dost_ as a homophone of _dust._


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## cuchuflete

Kevin Beach said:


> Confirmed by me, and for dust.



Following along obediently...  

Shares a vowel sound with rust, fluff (Mid-Western and other), butt, but, smut, and lust.  Sounds nothing like moth, cloth, toss, goth _when I say it.  _Obviously there are many people who say it differently, and I have no argument with them.


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## Wayland

GreenWhiteBlue said:


> In my accent, "cloth" and "moth" (which have the vowel of _dog_, _off_, _lost_, _call_, _law_, and even _port_ when it is pronounced non-rhotically) rhyme with each other, but neither rhymes with "Goth" (which has the vowel of _log_, _frog_, _hot_, _Robert_, and _copper_.) None of the three rhymes perfectly with "doth", which for me tends towards the vowel found in "dust", but doesnt quite reach it....


 
I agree entirely with this interpretation. In the North here where older pronunciations linger more than elsewhere it would not be pronounced with a d*u*ll th*u*dding _u_ (as would be expected of northern dialect) but with a halfway sound between an_ o_ and a _u._


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## timpeac

Wayland said:


> In the North here where older pronunciations linger more than elsewhere it would not be pronounced with a d*u*ll th*u*dding _u_ (as would be expected of northern dialect) but with a halfway sound between an_ o_ and a _u._


The north of what?


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## Wayland

timpeac said:


> The north of what?


 
"The North": where the language originated.
"Of what": everywhere else.


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## timpeac

Wayland said:


> "The North": where the language originated


Saxony? The cradle of Africa? How far are we going back?


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