Ways to Pronounce “Won”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jake Oshbacher from San Antonio, Texas.

Hey, Jake.

Hey, how you doing? What’s on your mind?

Well, guys, I have a two-and-a-half-year-old debate I need help with, with my wife.

Is that a child?

Yeah.

Not yet. We’re not to those type of debates yet.

Oh, okay.

But this debate has to do with her side of the family versus my side, so it’s kind of a big deal.

I was hoping y’all could help.

Okay.

I’m cranky.

This is serious.

So the past tense word of win for me is won. W-O-N pronounced as if the word or the number one O-N-E.

So that’s my side of the family. We all pronounce it that way.

But her entire side of the family pronounces it won to have won the game.

I won the game.

Yeah, as in a gentleman’s name, J-U-A-N.

Or looking very pale.

Right. So, you know, it’s kind of this weird thing that I couldn’t find any good information on.

So I thought, hey, I’ll give you all a call.

Great.

That’s a good idea.

I don’t know if we have good information, but we have lots of it.

I’ll take anything at this point.

All right. So we got to get to the bottom of this.

And so if this is really apparent that there’s a family divide here, I’m guessing there’s something different about where her people are from and where your people are from.

Yes. So my people are German. Her people are English.

But how recently are you German and English?

I think I am third generation, and I don’t think we can really trace hers back all that clearly.

And both Texan families?

Yes.

And what part of Texas?

My family originated in Brownsville and San Antonio, and hers’s originated in San Antonio as well.

Oh, okay. Wow, this is really interesting.

There are a couple little things that are happening here, which I really love.

The first thing that you said that really piqued my interest was that you couldn’t find any information on this.

I think you’re right.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has done a comprehensive survey and then mapped it out to figure out if there’s some regional difference or age difference or heritage difference that would explain this different pronunciation.

The second thing is, in your family, you and your wife together kind of represent a micro version of the United States because this is the way it is for most of the country.

The pronunciation of W-O-N is Juan or one, you know.

I don’t know if everyone can hear those differences.

So Juan, it’s like the word wand, W-A-N-D without the D.

And the other one just sounds like the number, O-N-E, one.

Juan and one.

The differences that you have in the pronunciation of that word really are happening across the country.

And there doesn’t seem, as far as I can tell, to be a clear-cut regional difference or age difference or education difference or anything like that.

And as a matter of fact, the pronunciation has fluctuated long enough that it looks like both pronunciations are kind of being perpetuated in families.

You know, they’re inherited.

You’re teaching your kids rather than learned from their environment.

Maybe we’ll just teach our kids to say that they’ve succeeded in victory.

Yes, yeah.

There’s no winning this one, dude.

There isn’t.

Oh, man.

This word does not have one standard pronunciation.

Now, the problem with this is if you go to the dictionaries, all of them will tell you there is just one pronunciation and it sounds like one.

However, and you’ve heard me talk about this on the show, as a dictionary editor, let me tell you that the dictionaries cannot be entirely trusted on things like this because they do not often include dialect versions of words or variant pronunciations that are widespread.

There are many, many, many, many, many places in a dictionary where they don’t account for minority voices.

And this is one of those.

So this is a variant that has occurred over time.

It’s a legitimate, actual, real variant that occurs across the entire English-speaking world.

I think we’re going to leave it as a 50-50 split, and I’m just going to have to stop rolling my eyes, I think.

Yeah.

That sounds like a plan.

Hey, Jake, thank you so much for calling us.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you all so much.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye-bye.

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