Homophones: one/won

[HeShouldKnowBetter]

Is it just my accent that makes them sound different?

It is moan about school night here obviously!

I say hour as ow-er, which is a homophone (in my accent) for our.

Not sure if this is the same. But DS (5) wants to know why to and too are spelled differently. How do I explain easily?

scarf and laugh? How are they homophones?

To me, "one" is "wun" and "won" is "won" so not the same either,

Tell him it's because there is an extra o as well. This has always helped me teach kids which way to use them.

I'm a Northener living too far sarff.

Are rhymes with car. Hour and our both rhyme with power.
Won rhymes with fun. One rhymes with gone.

I say won as wun but my son says it the same as one.

One and won are homophones...

So are peer, pear, pier, pare and pair.

I'm a Kiwi, so basically all my vowels are pretty indistinguishable

Tiggytape people say that northerners have 47 phonemes as opposed to the normal 44, but these people can never tell me what the extra 3 are.

My lack of r in laugh ruined The Stick Man.

I know dialect can give regional variations but dictionary definitions give the pronunciation as identical.

Breaking news: not everyone speaks RP. Indeed, only about 2% of the UK population speak RP. So dictionary pronunciation may be a starting point, but you can't deem words homophones just because one, very minority, accent happens to make them so.

YY. Julia Donaldson books don't always work unless you have a south English accent. Which is a wee bit galling as she lives in Scotland and has a Scottish family. Plant and can't in Tyrannosaurus drip spring to mind.

We had a Scottish nun supply teacher when I was in primary school in Liverpool, who couldn't understand how we all missed one set on homophones. It was pearl and peril. We looked at her blankly.

yy, friday.

Thanks. I'm in Scotland so this might be why I'm struggling.

So I'm west country but via lancs & lincs when I was small so I have won & one as sounding the same, hour & our also the same but I also pronounce our to rhyme with are. But never hour and are.

I also never considered rhymes not working with some accents...

Plant and can't in Tyrannosaurus drip spring to mind.

I suppose, in the author's defence, the vowel in those tends to be the same. I speak something fairly close to RP, and I'd pronounce them with the same vowel as in (southern) bath or grass. I suspect that a lot of people in the north of England and in Scotland would pronounce them both with the same vowel too, (northern) bath or grass, much shorter. I'm not sure where they'd be different.

But never hour and are.

Are there any common UK (or, indeed, English-speaking) accents such that "we are leaving in one hour" are homophones? Or even share the same vowel?

The other Julia Donaldson rhyme which irritates me immensely is in The Smartest Giant in Town where she rhymes scarf and giraffe

Whilst for those of us halfway between London and Scotland (!), can't and plant don't rhyme because plant has as short 'a' and can't a long one...

yy, I'm short a plant and long can't. But live in Scotland, and have Scottish DH and children. Why have I never asked them? I think I was assuming the long a for both as JD uses Rpish, I think. Bah. I'm a fool.

How about "the poor have more of a tour of the moor"?