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Original poster

Words that rhyme in your accent

245 replies

SleepingStandingUp · 18/08/2020 11:40

Just said to DS

Count down from 10
Then count back up again

Which rhymed. Then I said it again and it didn't. Which made me think about the nightmare of writing rhyming books for children and the whole giraffe/scarf thing which defiantly doesn't work in my accent.

Also ftr I'm team:
My scone
Is alone
He likes to moan
But it lets his hone
His sculpting of bone.

God I hate teaching my kid phonics
Roll on September

OP posts:
OchonAgusOchonO · 21/08/2020 10:46

Yes ten + again rhyme for me. And owl + towel. And all the Mary, berry etc all rhyme to me.

For me, owl and towel rhyme but not ten and again. Mary, berry don't rhyme.

Also:
Craig + dreg - no
Laurie + lorry - no
squirrel + whirl - yes
garage + mirage - no.

It's fascinating that 2 different accents have some pronunciations so similar and some so different.

OchonAgusOchonO · 21/08/2020 10:48

@Ihaventgottimeforthis

When I lived in Vancouver they told me that squirrel rhymed with swirl.

How do you pronounce them so they don't rhyme? Neither are words I use in conversation too frequently so I don't think I've heard them pronounced in too many other accents Grin

solidaritea · 21/08/2020 10:55

Squir-rel has a distinct two syllables for me (SE england) while swirl is one syllable.

Craig is an awkward name. Some rhyme it with egg, and others with vague. I'm still confused how egg and vague can fully rhyme, but will try to get my Irish friends to say them sometime so I can hear! Grin

CaptainMyCaptain · 21/08/2020 10:58

Someone mentioned that Read Write Inc states that 'put' is not decodable. I don't understand this, I grew up in the South of Northern parents and now live North-ish, and have only ever said it one way.

As a teacher with a Southern accent I had trouble with the u in umbrella etc and deliberately changed it to suit the children's accent but 'put' always had that short oo sound to it for me.

CaptainMyCaptain · 21/08/2020 10:58

We did Jolly Phonics not Read Write Inc.

OchonAgusOchonO · 21/08/2020 11:15

I'm still confused how egg and vague can fully rhyme, but will try to get my Irish friends to say them sometime so I can hear!

I'm Irish and they sound completely different to me. We have more than one accent here, you know Grin

OchonAgusOchonO · 21/08/2020 11:17

Squir-rel has a distinct two syllables for me (SE england) while swirl is one syllable.

They both have 2 syllables for me.

OchonAgusOchonO · 21/08/2020 11:38

They both have 2 syllables for me.

Actually, thinking about it, they have 1.5 syllables, rather than 2.

QueSera · 21/08/2020 11:40

My accent is North American.

My British family laugh so hard when I say squirrel like whirl (one syllable) - but I laugh when they say it: skwee-rel (or something like that!)
Same when I say Craig like dreg - and they say Cray-eeg (or something like that)
Don't get me started on yogurt or battery (these don't seem to rhyme with anything)...
or water....(which I would rhyme with plodder, which even I don't like the sound of)
or straw or Paul ....

Original poster
SleepingStandingUp · 21/08/2020 11:40

@OchonAgusOchonO

Squir-rel has a distinct two syllables for me (SE england) while swirl is one syllable.

They both have 2 syllables for me.

How do you say swirl with two syllables?

Agree put is decodable

OP posts:
Original poster
SleepingStandingUp · 21/08/2020 11:47

water....(which I would rhyme with plodder, which even I don't like the sound of) daughter, shorter, mortar
straw door, war, whore
Paul fall, maul, shawl

OP posts:
Grapesoda7 · 21/08/2020 11:47

Laugh and cafe

OchonAgusOchonO · 21/08/2020 11:47

@SleepingStandingUp - How do you say swirl with two syllables?

I updated to say it's more 1.5 syllables because, after wandering around repeating them to myself for about 5 minutes, I realised I say squirrel as squirr-il and swirl as swir-il but the "il" bit is very short.

OchonAgusOchonO · 21/08/2020 11:48

Agree put is decodable

What does decodable mean?

OchonAgusOchonO · 21/08/2020 11:50

@Grapesoda7 - Laugh and cafe

How do they rhyme? Unless you're abbreviating cafe to caff and then elongating the a, I can't see how as cafe ends with an ée sound.

Original poster
SleepingStandingUp · 21/08/2020 12:01

@OchonAgusOchonO

Agree put is decodable

What does decodable mean?

You can sound it out if you're 5 and learning phonics. p uh t put

Didn't work if you pronounce it p ah t , then it's undecodable and you learn it as a sight word, like "your". y oh uh er phonetically (I think) wouldn't tell them how to say it. Undecodable

OP posts:
Original poster
SleepingStandingUp · 21/08/2020 12:02

[quote OchonAgusOchonO]**@Grapesoda7* - Laugh and cafe*

How do they rhyme? Unless you're abbreviating cafe to caff and then elongating the a, I can't see how as cafe ends with an ée sound.[/quote]
L a ff
c a ff

OP posts:
OchonAgusOchonO · 21/08/2020 13:42

L a ff
c a ff

Both with a short 'a' or a long 'a'? I'd use a long a for laugh and a short a for caff (or cafe).

Do you never pronounce the é sound at the end of cafe? I always assumed people saying caff were just abbreviating cafe rather than that being they way they pronounced it.

I find this all really interesting. I'm obviously a sad nerd Grin

Original poster
SleepingStandingUp · 21/08/2020 14:55

@OchonAgusOchonO

L a ff c a ff

Both with a short 'a' or a long 'a'? I'd use a long a for laugh and a short a for caff (or cafe).

Do you never pronounce the é sound at the end of cafe? I always assumed people saying caff were just abbreviating cafe rather than that being they way they pronounced it.

I find this all really interesting. I'm obviously a sad nerd Grin

Short. a bit ah .

Re
c a ff
ca ff ay
c a ff ee

It would probably depends on the establishment. Greasy spoon, c aff. Somewhere that does omlettes and Panini's, c aff ay

OP posts:
tabulahrasa · 21/08/2020 15:05

“How do you say swirl with two syllables?”

Swurrull is about closest to what I say...

Farm and world also have 2 syllables.

Iron has the r where it’s written instead of how a lot of people move it to next to the n, poem has a y in the middle and post office isn’t two words.

They’re just the ones people comment on lots when I talk, rofl - because I don’t live where my accent is from anymore.

isabellerossignol · 21/08/2020 15:09

[quote OchonAgusOchonO]**@alexdgr8* - this has just reminded me, in hosp once, trying to give contact details for someone. an irish therapist repeated the name beryl back to us as if she had heard, berl.

She did hear Berl as that is exactly how I would say it too.

so we kept saying saying, no, beryl

not being rude, but why do you say egg like that. i have never heard anyone say it like that.

alright, i'm going out on a limb here, but why don't you try to say it in a more usual way ?

Based on these 3 comments alone, I think you need to get out and about a bit more. Not all accents are the same. No accent is more correct than another in terms of pronunciation.[/quote]
Am I too late to respond to that poster (alexdgr8) with the Mumsnet favourite 'did you mean to be so rude?'. Wink

alexdgr8 · 21/08/2020 15:37

i had thought you were russian, and trying to learn/speak english.

i still don't see why beryl becomes burl. it's a different name.
beh-rill. two sounds. burl is one sound.
esp if swirl becomes swirrell.
it sounds contrary to me. a two-sound name is changed into a different name with one sound. whereas a word with one elided sound in the middle is made into two sounds. so it's not an inability to say it.

isabellerossignol · 21/08/2020 15:57

i had thought you were russian, and trying to learn/speak english.

Is that aimed at me?

Original poster
SleepingStandingUp · 21/08/2020 16:43

@alexdgr8

i had thought you were russian, and trying to learn/speak english.

i still don't see why beryl becomes burl. it's a different name.
beh-rill. two sounds. burl is one sound.
esp if swirl becomes swirrell.
it sounds contrary to me. a two-sound name is changed into a different name with one sound. whereas a word with one elided sound in the middle is made into two sounds. so it's not an inability to say it.

Seriously, do you socialize outside of your region much, read? Watch TV? The idea that things can sound vastly different in different accents can't be that odd to you.

It's perfectly fine too have no idea what someone is saying because you can't decide the accent, quite another to suggest people are speaking wrong, should change how they're speaking etc because it's different to you.

OP posts:
ArtieFufkinPolymerRecords · 21/08/2020 17:27

There are lots of cases where the same group of letters can make different sounds though - omb has a different sound again in comb.

That's not an explanation I can give my 5 yo 😂😂

Well he presumably is learning phonics at school, so will have learnt that all the phonemes (sounds) have graphemes (ways of writing the sounds down), and some phonemes (e.g.the -er sound) can be written in more than one way and some graphemes (e.g -oo) can represent more than one sound. It doesn't help you to know which to use when though.
English isn't a totally phonetic language because we've taken words from lots of other languages and unfortunately for us the rules have so many exceptions so we just have to learn them all.