Jennifer wrote:
> Are you suggesting that discover and hover don't
> currently rhyme? I'm now really curious where you come
> from and how you pronounce them :o). In my accent
> (west coast Canadian), they do indeed rhyme.
I'm English, born SE London, raised London and Somerset (west country)
and lived also in Oxford, Liverpool and Cambridge. They don't rhyme in
any of those places!
The vowel in "discover" matches whatever vowel is used in that regional
accent for guts, ugly, jumble, bug, love, mother and bubble.*
The vowel in "hover" matches the vowel in got, fondle, off, moth, swan,
John and hotpot (twice)
As far as I know, this is consistent with British RP, or Queen's English
(though I don't think HMQEII actually speaks it herself!)
The vowel in "Discover" matches that in "wonder". The vowel in "hover"
matches that in "wander". Now, the folk song/carol "I wonder as I
wander" has been attributed to various places, but I'm sure one version
I've seen said it came from Canada. So, do you pronounce those two words
identically?
What _is_ interesting is when you have grown up understanding one vowel
to be identical in hundreds of words, and then find in one region that
there are two distinct groups. I found this during my one sojourn in the
US, in Massachusetts. I would have used an identical short o vowel in
both words of Boston Pops, but consistently heard Dave Tucker on WCRB (I
think) referring to the Baweston Pahps. I couldn't work out whether it
couldn't also have been Baweston Pawps, Bahston Pahps or even Bahston
Pawps. And in any case, these will sound different again if you read
them from my spelling into your own accent :o) (I'm not going to run
this through the spell checker, in case I crash the entire system!)
chairs
Linda
*In the north of England that comes close to the sound in "book" and
"look" - though oop thur, they pronounce "look" to sound like "luke",
presumably to distinguish it from "luck" which they pronounce as
"look"... In the stronger SE accents this "love" vowel sounds almost,
though not quite, like a as is "lav" (rest room to you; here in
Cambridge it is just possible to tell if a person is in love or in the
toilet!)
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