Does shone rhyme with dawn or zone?

[youdialwetile]

DD has been told she's saying it wrong - may be both as used in different places?

@ShowOfHands the exact same word had me mocked (fortunately not bullied) when I left Derby!

I had to learn to to say tung instead of tong pretty quickly.
When I had kids down here in the south, it felt so weird to me that I had children that said grahss and bahth!

@pinkstripeycat Love the posters who are saying one and gone rhyme. They must be from the north

@HunterHearstHelmsley Depends where in the Midlands! I'm black country and one and gone rhyme for me and a lot of people I know

Agree Hunter. Me too. The "Midlands" is a huge area with a vast variety of pronunciations. Even in the West Midlands there's a huge mix. Just like the North.

When our kids are taught to read one at school they'll be taught to sight read it as it doesn't work with phonics and it rhymes with gone. If somewhere else pronounces it differently, it isn't wrong, it's just part of our rich cultural diversity. Who invaded who and who won (rhymes with Bun) etc.

Those who have never heard any word pronounced differently to how they say it must have very sheltered lives. Here's a shocker. In some areas, poorly rhymes with Julie

I would be here for hours transcribing regional pronunciations of one…

Mind blown.

Shone, one, gone here. They’re spelt the same so find it weird they wouldn’t be said the same. Having said that one and won are the same sound to me.

Also struggling to make Shaun and shorn sound different.

Fascinating stuff.

This thread has been a revelation, I’ve only ever rhymed one with gone and can’t imagine saying it as ‘wun’ unless I was putting on an accent! Where I’m from it’s a very noticeable ‘o’ sound in it.

Also, bizarrely I feel like I’ve only ever heard others say “BBC ONE” on tv the same as I do but I’m wondering if I’ve heard it differently to others. And to my ears, Chesney Hawkes is definitely singing “the ONE and only” to rhyme with gone not won!

Well my name is Dawn and I can ASSURE YOU ALL that it absolutely DOES rhyme with corn, horn, worn, lawn, prawn...I mean I've put up with Horny Dawnie and Dawn The Prawn for bloody years, so 🤷‍♀️🤣

I’ve only ever rhymed one with gone and can’t imagine saying it as ‘wun’ unless I was putting on an accent!*

But surely the fact that you would say 'wun' if you were putting on an accent means that you are aware that it's pronounced 'wun' in different accents?

In the interest of research, I just watched the beginning of Chesney Hawkes singing 'The One and Only' and he definitely sings 'wun'. Like most pop stars he sings in a vaguely American accent anyway, and no American I've ever heard rhymes 'one' with 'gone'!

My mind is blown re. 'One'. I'm a goner and yes I am Northern. However, I am also very keen to point out that Northern English is historically more 'correct' than RP in that it came first.

@Catswhisky

Mind blown.

Shone, one, gone here. They’re spelt the same so find it weird they wouldn’t be said the same. Having said that one and won are the same sound to me.

Also struggling to make Shaun and shorn sound different.

Fascinating stuff.

I’m fascinated, since I’m the opposite and can’t make them sound the same, do you reckon we pronounce any of them the same or would my Shawn not sound like either your Shawn or shorn? Thereby making it even more complicated

I hear one Andy only to rhyme with gone and only so I think it's that thing of your brain translating

[quote HaveringWavering]@Grilledaubergines
@aSofaNearYou

I’ve lost track of who is saying what because of all the quoting.

Let me get this straight.

1. You are both from the South of England and have lived there all your lives. However this still covers a massive area.

1. GA says that she has never in her life heard “one” and “gone” pronounced (by a fellow local) in a way that rhymes.

1. ASNY says that everyone around her rhymes them, and that you hear it all over the BBC as well.

So, three things could be happening here:

A. Each of these posters is hearing different sounds local to them ie there is more regional variation than they thought.

B. They are both hearing the same thing but their brains are processing it differently.

C. They are confusing each other with the way they are trying to represent sounds in writing (“won” “wun” etc) and they actually agree. Possibly it’s the way they say/hear “gone” that is more variable than “one”?

Can we resolve it like this? Can each of you find a clip(s) of someone saying “one” and “gone” that sounds like you hear them?

I’ll declare my bias- in my Scottish accent “gone” does not rhyme with “gun”, but “one” does rhyme with “gun”. In my accent “gone” rhymes with “on”.[/quote]
I think you’ve summed it up very well!

I’m really not trying to be difficult about it but genuinely don’t hear it any other way. If I visit family or friends much further north then obviously it is noticeable that there are differences in pronunciation but neither is right or wrong. If we have different accents then words will sound different. It’s simple(ish!)

@Lightstoobright

They're completely different sounds OP.

Zone: own / cone / known / tone / flown

Shone: one / con / on / don /

Dawn: yawn / fawn / horn / corn

I agree with these except ‘one’ is the odd one out in that line. It’s a different sound to on/con/don

My first thought was shone and John

@Thethingswedoforlove

Neither/ it rhymes with gone

Yes!

People still don't seem to get that accents vary. In many Scottish accents lawn and corn/horn don't rhyme at all. Spelling in English is also not a reliable indicator of pronunciation. One is on the tricky word list because it is not phonetically regular. If it was, you would saw it 'own'.
We also say poor, paw and pour differently- shocker!

@SweetPotatoDumpling

Well my name is Dawn and I can ASSURE YOU ALL that it absolutely DOES rhyme with corn, horn, worn, lawn, prawn...I mean I've put up with Horny Dawnie and Dawn The Prawn for bloody years, so 🤷‍♀️🤣

Not with a Rhotic accent, because those speakers would pronounce the R in 'corn, horn'. Your accent is presumably non-Rhotic and you are pronounce those something more like 'cawn, hawn' whereas someone in say Scotland pronounces it 'coRn' with a discernible R sound. To make them rhyme for my accent would turn Dawn into DoRn which would sound odd!

Lots of info about Rhotic/non-Rhotic here:
www.thoughtco.com/rhoticity-speech-4065992

Where are you from, what is your accent? That may help.
Scottish but in America 20+ years. I can't put it down to USA pronunciation though because I don't think I've ever heard anyone say it like zone...cone...phone here or in the uk

I listen to an audio book series narrated by an American and she definitely says shone as rhyming with phone.

And lots of other odd (to me) sounding words.

I don't even think that among the locals where I now live (NW England) 'one' fully rhymes with 'gone' tbh. It's certainly got a bit more of an 'o' and less of an 'u', but not to the extent of fully rhyming with gone!

One is won. W-on
Gone is G-on
Shone is Sh-on

@LapinR0se

A linguistic?? WTF iPhone. Linguist.

Ooh that must be interesting! I studied linguistics via distance education with a class of people from all over the world and we had such fun with discussions like this.

The almond / salmon differences are another that blew our minds (I’m team ahmend and sammon). Is there a term (like rhotic) for dialects that don’t pronounce the letter ‘L’ in words like this?

I'm fairly sure R4 say "The World at Wonn" not "The World at Wun", though the way wonn is said is more like the word 'wan', which I couldn't begin to write the pronunciation of.

@RitaFires

With language doesn't your brain learn to specialise in your native language and dialect so if you're not exposed to certain sounds as a baby you lose the ability to perceive them?

I'm finding this all really interesting. I'm Irish from Cork but a lot of family in Waterford so those would be my native accents. So I rhyme dawn with lawn and pawn, one with done, sun and won.

I would rhyme the word wan with gone so that might be throwing off my ability to hear people saying one to rhyme with gone, or maybe I just can't hear that sound so I hear wan or wun regardless of what that person is actually saying.

@RitaFires Yes, I think the inability to notice sounds that don’t exist in your own accent accounts for so many people’s failure to notice that other people are saying one to rhyme with sun. The way southerners say the vowel in sun wasn’t a sound I grew up with. As a child on rare visits to London or the channel ports, I found it difficult to understand people because what the hell is a tab of ice-cream or a cap of tea and was that bucket or packet? Now living in the South-East of England I have reached the stage of unconscious competence and I don’t notice whether southerners rhyme one with run, but I would notice someone with an accent like mine who said one to rhyme with sun.

I think everyone rhymes wan with gone, but I have heard water to rhyme with matter so maybe not.

@crazyjinglist

I’ve only ever rhymed one with gone and can’t imagine saying it as ‘wun’ unless I was putting on an accent!*

But surely the fact that you would say 'wun' if you were putting on an accent means that you are aware that it's pronounced 'wun' in different accents?

In the interest of research, I just watched the beginning of Chesney Hawkes singing 'The One and Only' and he definitely sings 'wun'. Like most pop stars he sings in a vaguely American accent anyway, and no American I've ever heard rhymes 'one' with 'gone'!

All of the British songs with one in them I can think of definitely say one as in "gone". Think of She's The One by Robbie Williams, he even rhymed it with "on"!

I checked out Chesney Hawkes and I think that's actually a prime example of how people might interpret it to suit what they're expecting to hear. I hear "one" like "gone", but it actually sounds close enough to the middle of the two pronunciations that you could interpret it either way. I wonder if the problem is actually just that people are assuming people say the words to the fullest extreme of what they are describing. We might all be somewhere in the middle but just defining it as if it's one or the other.

I think people get that words are pronounced differently - you’d have to live a VERY sheltered life not to hear any other accents. But there’s something about people confidently declaring certain words rhyme when they very much don’t to you, that is harder to get your head around. I think we assume that there’s at least that much consistency, that words that rhyme for us rhyme for someone else, even if the sound is a bit different. But nope! English seems to go out of its way to be difficult. I’m in awe of anyone who learns to speak it as an adult. Words ending with -ough(t) would make me quit if I was learning it as a second language.

Well my name is Dawn and I can ASSURE YOU ALL that it absolutely DOES rhyme with corn, horn, worn, lawn, prawn.

It does when you say it. But people from other regions and countries don't adopt your accent when they're saying your name. A Mancunian or a Liverpudluan might tell you how their city's names are pronounced, but they aren't going to sound the same when someone from the West Country or the Scottish Highlands pronounces them!

I pronounce 'Dawn' like you do, but for anyone with a rhotic accent (Scottish, Irish, American etc) , 'Dawn' does not rhyme with 'corn'. So you can't assure them that it does!

It’s “shon”. As in “the sun shon(e) brilliantly all day”.

To rhyme with dawn would be shorn - as in “the sheep have been shorn”.

It doesn’t rhyme with zone.