americans, how do you pronounce the word "on"

most american i know pronounce it "on"

"awn" - from just south of the Mason-Dixon line.

that kinda makes sense sunny--i think americans actually pronounce the aw sound the same way australians pronounce the "short o" sound

Is it really useful? It only confused me, because I have the following data:

- I had to vote "I would pronounce awn and ahn the same"
- but I do know what you mean about the southern dipthong pronunciation of "awn," even though I'd never naturally use it -- the "waah"
- which is also true of New York-area pronunciation among some black people (think of Flavor Flav dragging a dipthong out of "awaaaaahn")
- which when I think about it maybe I would half-use for a word like "awning"??
- which reminds me that it's similar to how many non-black and non-Southern-connected New York-area people pronounce the beginnings of words like "audience" and sometimes even "orange"

Which means ... I grew up in Colorado

haha, i think colorado is pretty much option 3.

But then like half the country is option 3, surely?

but it does get kind of confusing. new yorkers' aw vowel is longer and often kind of diphthonged, but the "standard" version is a pure vowel, not a diphthong. and it's the same vowel as in audience and awning and saw.

xpost yeah, the western half of the country (like west of the great plains) is pretty much all #3

Is the idea that people from around Great Lakes will pronounce "on" in the same dipthongy Canadian way they say, e.g., SWAH-rry (sorry) and ta-MWAH-row (tomorrow)? (Hahaha and SYEAH-lad?)

the western half of the country is 35% of the population

xp Isn't that the opposite of the Canadian way? I'm confused.

and more than half of that is CA and TX, xp

a lot of people from the great lakes area sort of twist their vowels around, but would probably pick #2

I lived for some time in Albany, (Awlbenny) NY, and that distinctive diphthong "awn" sound was very much a hallmark of the local accent.

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how Khan and lawn could rhyme. But then again, my accent is such a mishmash - my "on" rhymes with gone, con, scone (oh I know that last one is a real problem for UK people.)

That's how I learned to say "scone", too -- from a friend with an English mother. Dunno where she was from, but she said "scon".

I'm not sure how to phoneticize it, but some people who grew up in philly and parts of jersey do this "oo-wahn" thing that still makes me cringe occasionally when I hear it.

Scone. Rhymes with Gone.

Some Britishers pronounce it Scown, rhymes with own and cone. That sounds very very wrong to me.

So when we ate "drop scones" it had a... well, what's it called when it doesn't rhyme but the vowel sounds are pleasingly balanced?

Dell, yeah, THAT vowel thing is something I associate with Philly -- esp noticeable in words like "orange" and "Laurel".

^^^ that's what I meant about east-coast dipthongs with the Flava Flav example (or like a Rosie Perez example) -- the ooo-ahn.

(Which I guess is slightly different from the ooWAHdience or ooWAHning thing)

Okay this is kind of off topic, but I have to tell you, the woman at 3.18 is freaking cracking me up on accent alone. She's an anti-immigration lunatic and that face tells you life has not been kind, but regardless of how blackened her heart, I am laughing my ass off. Is that really a NC thing? I would have guessed the Bronx. Or somewhere NJ.

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ARRRGH SORRY. How do I embed things? :(

I grew up in Chicago so it's "ahn".

Oh and Laurel, I was calling that Great Lakes thing "Canadian" just by assumption -- do Canadians do them different? I always thought they shared that nasal Wisconsin/Michigan dipthong thing, the "oh gosh I'm sWAH-ry, I'll fix that ta-MWAH-row")

Some Chicagoans might just pronounce it "Ann," like the name!

Are you completely insane? Canadians are FAMOUS for their exact contrast to the Midwestern accent; I've never lived right on the border so I'm sure there's some cross-over that I haven't experienced, but the Canadian accent is almost THEATRICAL in its attention to diction and nicely rounded vowels.

Anyway, here's that video:

/

B-b-but the Kids in the Hall say sWAHry and taMWAHrow!

Chicago = keep it deown, da bearse game is ann

lol, read this nabisco:

One phenomenon apparently unique to General American is the behavior of words that in RP have [ɒɹV] where [V] stands for any vowel. These words are treated differently in different North American accents: in New York-New Jersey English they are all pronounced with [-ɑɹ-] and in Canadian English they are all pronounced with [-ɔɹ-] (thus "sorry" is pronounced by Canadians as "sore-ee"). But in General American there is a split: the majority of these words have [-ɔɹ-], like Canadian English, but the last four words of the list below have [-ɑɹ-], like New York-New Jersey English, for many speakers.[8] Words of this class include, among others:

orange
origin
Florida
horrible
quarrel
warren
borrow
tomorrow
sorry
sorrow

Oh wow, yeah, I might be mistaking sore-ee for swah-ree

oh yeah as a Canadian going to Chicago the one or two saw-rees I got made me LOL! Sorr-ee, guys, but y'all talk funny. Don't even get me started on how the few states I went through seemed content to use "mm-hmm" where "You're welcome!" would go..

Canadians say "sore-ree" and "two-more-row", I thought this Was Known.

oooh, missed this: Canadian accent is almost THEATRICAL in its attention to diction and nicely rounded vowels.

As a proud, syllable-loving Canadian I will thank you for the compliments! All the Canadians I know would say sore-ree and too/tuh-more-row, definitely. And scone like cone.

Well, it's balanced somewhere between a compliment to Canadians and a complaint about theater people, but that's okay, I'm generally partial to Canadians.

Canadians also pronounce "drama" like "grandma."

The country's so used to being maligned that we'll take anything short of an egging as a compliment! ;)

I have a hard time with the drama/grandma thing.. I pronounce drama like draw-ma (ma from Obama, for instance) and Grandma like Graham-a (though I usually keep the D intact if she's in the room with me)

sorry this is about Americans and ON, I already screwed up by voting ("both") so I will shut up about my fair Canadia.

I pronounce drama like draw-ma (ma from Obama, for instance) and Grandma like Graham-a

I think I do the same, although I would write it as "drah-ma" rather than "draw-ma." Basically, it rhymes with Obama.

I consider "drama = grandma" to be a Canadian thing because both rrrrobyn and slocki say it that way.

Oh yeah, for some reason "drama" and "pasta" are the Canadian exceptions to nice vowels, they both get flatted unfairly. I think I used to know why but have forgotten.

American: "Save the drama for your mama."
Canadian: "Save the drama for your gramma."

haha, I was about to post that very phrase, Laurel

awn

I don't know what kinds of fucked-up families Canadians would have to have to get involved in baby-gramma drama

you're the one projecting babies on the canadians nabisco

(dude it is a joke about the phrase "baby-mama drama"!)

....which no one used here and I have never heard. But then I haven't lived in the ghetto for a while, life has probably moved on without me.

nabiscos got babies on the mind

glad to see ILX is back and in its usual form

listen buddy save the drama for simon schama

xp Welcome back!

orn

Some Britishers pronounce it Scown, rhymes with own and cone. That sounds very very wrong to me.

Yeah, but Britishers aren't consistent on this either. And it seems to vary from family to family, at least in Scotland. I think the pronunciation is screwed up by the Scottish Scone (in perthshire), which is pronounced Scown. Plus, Scown just sounds posher.

Is this the 'Southern' pronunciation (e.g when he says "hone in on ..." around 0:40)?:

"On" is actually one of the few words which doesn't sound very different from how I'd say it.

(haha, didn't expect that to embed.)

I pronounce it \ˈȯn\ as in "on the telly"

as opposed to "\ˈän\ the television"

I hope that confused yall

oh shit guys I oted wrong b/c I pronounce "lawn" like "lahn" but pronounce "on" like "awn"

the way I pronounce "on" is sort of like a cross between "ohn" and "ahn"

xxxxxpost, Scone (in Perthshire) is pronounced Scoon. carry on/awn/ahn

never heard of scone being pronounced any way other than "scohn"

What, Lawn and Khan (as in the Wrath of Khan) don't rhyme? They both rhyme with autobahn to me.

golf/gulf are a better measurement imo

total ahn here.

it kind of depends. like people from england would never rhyme them, but it varies a lot with americans. like i grew up in eastern kansas and khan and autobahn rhyme, but not lawn. and on rhymes with lawn.

xpost to z_s

golf/gulf are a better measurement imo

yeah this is a very good measurement for establishing whether or not somebody should be put in a camp

I non-sarcastically can't wait to tackle pour / poor in 2009

"Poor" has the sound that all Americans say I embed in my "house," "about," etc. I can't wait for 2009.

http://www.spiralfrog.com/sfimages/covers/pop/cov200/drf600/f619/f61952er0ap.jpg

Crut the way you say "on" is about the only overtly southern thing about yr accent from what I recall.

I cant work out this lawn and kahn the same thing. I say them as "lorn" and "cahrn". Nothing alike.

But I have a broad, flat, ugly Aussie accent :(

i'm a native new yorker but i say "ahn" (rhymes with "don") -- i think a lot of people from the region say it with more of a short "a" sound closer to the one in "cap."

when i took drama-school diction they told me to europeanize my vowels, so "on" would have an almost-long, rounded "o" ("bone").

i think most native new yorkers say it like the korean name

i pretty sure ahn is normal for non-black new yorkers, get bent. i don't think it changes to awn until you get to philadelphia. xpost

awn is def. philly.

i guess i'm more talking about the way new yorkers nasalize "ahn" -- but that's really more stereotypical jewish/italian/irish-catholic than well-heeled northeast wasp.

how would betty draper say it?

When I first moved to the South, there was a guy in my class who the principal's assistant came to get.

They asked his name.

He said "in"

They said "what?"

He said "in; like in and out".

Only later did I learn his name was Ian.

huge multi-xpost to Laurel: that is most assuredly *not* a North Carolina thing; I've never heard anyone here talk even remotely like that.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

how about this one:

http://www.albesm.com/evergreens/panscotchpine01b.jpg

FORE-EST

I like it when they call it a Faw-rest.

lawn and khan rhyme and anyway who says otherwise is an unamerican sumbitch

anyway anyone

FORE-EST
Faw-rest

No real American would pronounce the "T".

Midwestern accident pronounces the 'T'

Upstate NY pronounces the T, too.

Don't know how to answer the original question, I think my ideas of how things are pronounced are different from how I actually say them. Like whether "cot" and "caught" have different vowel sounds: I think they do but when I say them when I'm not actually thinking about that difference, I'm told I pronounce them the same. Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't even know how I would pronounce "lawn." (Also, I normally say "sah-ree" but when I'm feeling self-conscious I say "sore-ree.")

I think cot and caught have different vowel sounds, too

FAR-wrist

FUR-rest

yeah, i say far-rest, and ar-runj, rather than fore-est and ore-runj

I pronounce everything weird, I am weird, I have pronunciation, we might meet up for an enthymeme sometime I don't know.

Dianne Feinstein says "awn"

Only notable because she's the only example I know of of someone from the west coast who doesn't merge her vowels. But this is probably because she's 75 and from SF.

Hm. This is "awn" then?:

I'm not sure whether I distinguish between "cot" or "caught" either actually. I think they're both close to the sound of Strombo's "plot" but maybe "cot" is a little rounder and closer to a British short "o"?? Maybe?? What's the difference supposed to be? They'd both have a broad "ah" sound in the Midwest/Great Lakes area, right?

"awn" - from just south of the Mason-Dixon line.

― kingkongvsgodzilla, Thursday, September 18, 2008 5:39 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark

Sundar, I think the deal is that English people have 3 vowels, ah like in father; short o like in cot; and aw like in caught or saw. Americans have 1 or 2 vowels--most with 2 vowels merge the father and cot vowels, making the o ones sound like ah ones. Bostonians have 2 vowels but merge the o and aw vowels instead. Americans with 1 vowel and pretty much all Canadians merge all three categories and end up sounding like the people in your video.

That makes perfect sense, thanks!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

So it was pointed out to me the other night that ... much as I think of "lawn" and "khan" as having the exact same sound in them, I actually do hold my mouth in slightly different positions when saying the two vowels. Just not different enough that I ever thought of them as distinct sounds. But I'm not sure if this means I voted wrong, because I actually pronounce "on" in both of those ways: I hold my mouth the way I say "lawn" if I'm emphasizing "on" or taking the time to say it clearly, and I hold my mouth the way I say "khan" if I'm talking fast and clipping or tossing away the "on."

I think I agree, actually.