How do you pronounce the word hover? In England, it rhymes more with “clobber” than “lover.” If you want to learn how to say “My hovercraft is full of eels” in lots of different languages, head on over to Omniglot. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Pronouncing Hover”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Grand Martha. This is Jonathan calling from just down the street in Pacific Beach, California.
Hey, Jonathan. How are you doing?
Hi, Jonathan.
I’m doing great. How about you guys?
All right. You got your toes in the sand?
Well, not at the moment, but I live pretty close, so it’s pretty easy.
Okay. Nice.
Sure. Sounds great. How can we help you?
Well, listen. So for years, my three brothers, my mom and I, have teased my dad because of the way he pronounces the word H-O-V-E-R.
So we say hover, he says hover, but the plot thickened recently when I heard somebody else pronounce it hover, kind of like a cow’s hooves.
Interesting.
Oh, really?
Hoover.
So I was calling to see what’s going on and give my dad a fair shake at this debate.
Tell us about your dad.
Where is he from?
What’s he doing?
Well, listen, he was born in New York, but mostly grew up in the San Francisco area.
But his father grew up most of his life in England, in London.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Yes.
Because your father’s pronunciation is more like the British pronunciation.
Yes.
The British tend mostly to say hover.
Hover.
Okay.
Hovering, hovering, hovering, something like that, right?
Right.
And in this country, it’s hover.
So what about this third pronunciation?
It’s just wrong, really.
And you don’t hear me say that often on this show, but Hoover is not really right at all.
And actually, I think most of the experts of pronunciation would say that’s not right.
It’s somebody who has learned the word from books and not from hearing it from other people.
Yeah, Hoover is what you do when you’re at the lunch counter and you’re eating really, really fast.
You’re just sucking up the food like a Hoover vacuum cleaner.
Yeah, like a vacuum, sure.
That’s probably what’s happened here is that the brand name Hoover for the vacuum cleaner has informed people’s pronunciation of this word.
Oh, but then the food would just be in the air there rather than coming in.
Floating, floating, floating food.
Yeah, yeah. Hoover is floating food.
That’s kind of gross.
Well, then I guess I need to go. We need to apologize to my dad for accusing him all these years when he’s just pronouncing it how his dad said it.
Yeah, don’t apologize.
I’ve got a few of those as well. My father was raised for the most part in Southeast Missouri, which means he has a fairly substantial version of the Southern dialect. And I have just a few of the things that he said, and they come out. You’ll hear them on the show. I get emails about them. And it’s a natural thing that we should speak like our parents. It really is. Now you’ve got to buy him a beer or a gift or something. I don’t know.
A stout, yeah.
I’m sure he’ll happily accept.
Hey, does he say hovercraft?
He does, yes. He says hovercraft.
Oh, well, I have a peace offering for you.
You can go to Omniglot.com and find out how to say, my hovercraft is full of eels in about 36 languages.
If you ever need that sometime.
We’ll put a link to that on our website, okay?
All right, I’ll check it out.
Thanks, Jonathan.
Thank you so much.
Take care. Rock on. Bye.
Bye.
You know, I should have said that some dictionaries do offer that hover pronunciation.
Some American dictionaries.
Some American dictionaries do, but a lot of them are starting to leave it out now.
Yeah, it’s less common than it used to be.
And the American pronunciation is overwhelmingly used in North America.
Right, like cover and lover.
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