Do you pronounce scone to rhyme with Joan or John? In Canada, about 40 percent of English speakers go for the soft o sound, as in John, compared to two third of those in the U.K. But in the United States, 90 percent rhyme it with Joan. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Pronouncing “Scone””
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Chris from Seattle.
Hiya, Chris. Welcome.
Hey there, what’s up?
Hey, I have a question here that’s actually been causing quite a bit of domestic discord over the last few years.
Question about scone versus scone.
Actually, I am from the U.S., lived in Canada for 10 years.
My wife is from Canada, and she insists that those pastries you have with high tea are called scones.
And I actually work for a company that designs software that translates text into speech and vice versa.
And I have used their American text-to-speech engine and their British text-to-speech engine,
And the pronunciation varies.
It’s scone if you’re in the States and scone if you’re everywhere else in the world.
So I’m hoping you can maybe solve this one for us.
So the Canadian says scone. That’s your wife?
Yes.
I’m the American, and I say whatever happens to come out.
So you say both.
I say both, really depending on who I’m talking to.
I also, when I write emails, spell color and humor and so forth differently, depending on my audience.
And God forbid I’m mailing a mixed American and UK.
You’re a true North American.
You span the continent.
I do try.
And the text-to-speech and speech-to-text software that I work with, which was designed by people with degrees in linguistics, varies its parsing based on what language you’ve got selected.
So I’m bringing the question to you people.
Unfortunately, it’s not a clear line, particularly when you talk about Canada, because Canada is such a linguistic mutt.
In spelling and pronunciation, they are a mishmash of stuff that they got from the rest of North America and what they got from the British.
And so, for example, scone is used by about two-thirds of the population in the United Kingdom, and then the rest say scone.
In Canada, scone is used roughly by about 40%, and the rest say scone.
In the United States, about 90% of people say scone, and the rest say scone.
And you can see that these different percentages here make it impossible to come down in a decision either in your favor or in hers.
Yeah, yeah.
And this is why, you know, I kind of changed my decision to be sort of, you know, that both of them must be correct to some degree.
Because, like I say, you know, my background is software engineering.
The people that design this software’s background is in linguistics.
And they accept both pronunciations, depending on what you’ve got selected.
So I figured there must be some flexibility there.
What’s startling me is I didn’t know anyone from the United Kingdom said scone.
Yes, they do.
And as a matter of fact, it’s really interesting.
When you get to asking individual Scots and Brits and so forth about this pronunciation,
If they say scone, then they think that the scone pronunciation is posh.
But if they say scone, then they think the scone pronunciation is posh.
There’s very much a class thing in their eyes.
But it just depends what you say.
You believe that the other pronunciation is the one that’s put upon or is done by posers of people who are aspirants to a higher lifestyle to which they’re not actually supposed to belong.
Yeah, you’ll see both of those pronunciations in the OED, in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Yeah, most good dictionaries will give you both pronunciations.
In North America, south of the Canadian-American border, scone is by far away the best pronunciation, the one most likely to use.
In Canada, flip a quarter.
Or flip a loony.
Yeah, no question.
So, Chris, I think we’ve preserved your domestic tranquility, don’t you think?
Yes, I think so, actually.
You have to do it her way.
I did get an agreement from her to accept whatever decision was come to here.
But I’m not done yet.
Here’s the rule.
Whoever makes the scones gets to choose the pronunciation.
That’s great.
So what if we’re out and, well, I guess that is—
Whoever pays gets to choose the pronunciation.
Right.
Okay.
And if you’re going Dutch, then you both get to use your own pronunciation.
Sounds good to me.
All right.
I hope the discord is mild.
Oh, truly.
You can stop sleeping in the car now.
You can go back into the house.
Excellent.
Thanks for calling, Chris.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Thanks, Chris.
Bye-bye.
Bye now.
Call us with your linguistic domestic disputes, 877-929-9673.
Your use of “John” as one of the words “scone” can rhyme with is confusing. The soft (or short) ‘o’ is pronounced very differently in the U.S., where most people rhyme “John” with “Khan”, and in the UK, most people rhyme it with (to my Upper Midwest American ear) something like “brawn” only with the vowel not drawn out as much…basically the ‘o’ as a Spaniard, among others, would pronounce it. Remember the controversy over whether General Powell’s first name should be pronounced ‘Coe-lin’ or ‘Cah-lin’? The first is the typical American’s hearing of the British (and West Indian) soft/short ‘o’, the second is the General American soft/short ‘o’.
Maybe “con” is a better example than “John”? Or does that also have lots of variation?
I used to say it as rhyming with “cone” but after hearing others use the English pronunciation, I changed my own – so now I say it to rhyme with “con”.