# Pronunciation: scone



## Kazak (Jan 19, 2004)

skawn (rhymes with "John" Cusack)
skown (rhymes with "Joan" Cusack)

Which do you say?


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## The Doug (Jun 14, 2003)

Skōn (rhymes with Jōn Cusack).


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

The silent "e" at the end of the word scone, makes the "o" vowel the long sound, as in Joan.


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

Dr.G. said:


> The silent "e" at the end of the word scone, makes the "o" vowel the long sound, as in Joan.


Right on! Correct!! 'Skawn' is an affectation. Way to go *Dr.G.*


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## guytoronto (Jun 25, 2005)

I pronounce it "biscuit".


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

guytoronto said:


> I pronounce it "biscuit".


:clap: :lmao:


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

Then what about crepe.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

Ask any Scot . . . it rhymes with Joan.


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## Black (Dec 13, 2007)

Scone like cone/joan/loan

I've never heard of Scone pronounced like Skawn until now.
If it was pronounced Skawn wouldn't it be spelled 'scon' instead of 'scone'?


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## Macified (Sep 18, 2003)

dona83 said:


> Then what about crepe.


I believe it's actually crépe which is pronounced "crape".

New Found Land or Newfin Land.


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## Black (Dec 13, 2007)

Macified said:


> I believe it's actually crépe which is pronounced "crape".


That's the closest way to pronounce Crepe properly in English. In French you pronounce it with a deep 'Crrr', kind of like a choking sound actually  finished off with a whipping P.


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## Macified (Sep 18, 2003)

Black said:


> That's the closest way to pronounce Crepe properly in English. In French you pronounce it with a deep 'Crrr', kind of like a choking sound actually  finished off with a whipping P.


Choking and whipping. Sounds like what my son does when forced to eat crépes. He's obviously not a fan.


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## Black (Dec 13, 2007)

Macified said:


> Choking and whipping. Sounds like what my son does when forced to eat crépes. He's obviously not a fan.


Then he definately would not enjoy learning French, i know i didn't.


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## Chris (Feb 8, 2001)

My late, sainted grandmother, from the Emerald Isle, always used a short "o" sound. Maybe it's an Irish thing, but I do note that all versions of Gaelic have interesting and challenging vowel and consonant combinations.

I've always thought the long "o" version sounded a bit poncy. Give me a good, hearty "skawn", please! (yum!)


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## MissGulch (Jul 20, 2005)

I pronounce it skown, rhyming with loan. The coffee I have with it is pronounced kawfee, not cahfee. I can mimic accents like a pro, but this is my natural way of tawking.


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## MLeh (Dec 23, 2005)

I pronounce it phonetically - as Dr. G said: the 'e' at the end makes the 'o' long.

'skown'

However, I have poncy British friends who pronounce it 'skawn'. Of course, I also have poncy British friends who pronounce 'Tuesday' as 'Tewsday' or 'Chewsday', when we all know it is 'Toosday'.


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

Miss G., we should "loin dem to tawk like New Yawkahs". When my wife, who is from Calgary, wants to demonstrate to others what a New York accent sounds like, she makes me say "Boston dog paw sauce" or "our dog ran after the ball when we were on a walk". 31 years here in St.John's has not dampened my NYC accent for these words. Of course, my father, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, made Archie Bunker sound like an elocution teacher.


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## MissGulch (Jul 20, 2005)

I speak in lawnguylandese, DrG, so the accent is nary as thick as the outta boroughs, but my Brooklyn-born grandmother always said "foist" for first and "ya woikin?" for are you working? etc.

"Boston dog paw sauce" could come out of my mouth as proper Bostonese if I wanted it to. Doing accents is one of my entertaining, but useless talents. 

How does Calgary differ from Toronto as far as accents?


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## medic03 (Aug 2, 2005)

MissGulch, whenever I visit out west (BC) they always tell me I sound American. I always thought I was devoid of an accent. I don't find westerners have any different sounding 'accent' than people from the rest of Canada except of course those easterners with their funny talking


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

Miss G., having grown up with a Flushing "lawnguylandese" accent (all the girls in my high school sounded like Fran Drescher, The Nanny), I know what you sound like now. "Poifect" as my father would say. "Just like a boid".


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

Dr.G. said:


> ............all the girls in my high school sounded like Fran Drescher, The Nanny).............


OMG! My ears bleed just thinking about it!


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## SoyMac (Apr 16, 2005)

_We_ don't have an accent.
If you're not from here, _you_ have an accent.




.


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## MissGulch (Jul 20, 2005)

rgray said:


> OMG! My ears bleed just thinking about it!


If you can take Jerry Seinfeld's voice, you could take mine. 

A Toronto friend I met at party in L.A. was saying a-boot like it was nothing, so I started saying a-boot. OMG, what a riot, we were rolling.


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## MLeh (Dec 23, 2005)

MissGulch said:


> How does Calgary differ from Toronto as far as accents?


There's this thing called Canadian Raising.

Accents come mostly from where we place the sounds in our mouths, combined with muscle activity - which is why singers generally don't have an accent to speak of, because they're taught where to properly place the sound. But it's lots of fun to do different accents, realising, for instance, that not moving your upper lip, will, in fact, produce the beginnings of a British accent, and bouncing all your words off your teeth will make it even better. (I'm of the opinion that all this 'teeth action' has an affect on their dental health.) Canadians have a tendency to swallow their words - everything is at the back of the throat, which produces the 'oo' sound in 'aboot' - which is more prevalent in some parts of the country than others.

More reading here.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

English: skone (as in "cone")
Irish: skahn (as in "Khan!")
Scottish: scooooone (as in "loooon")
US: what?


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## Dr.G. (Aug 4, 2001)

rgray, I don't have as much of a nasal twang as Fran Drescher. However, if you have heard a NYC accent, you would know instantly that this is where I was born and raised.


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## Kazak (Jan 19, 2004)

Wow, we skawners are taking a beating.

Re: accents. Ironically, at SFU we had a Linguistics prof. from NYC whose favourite transition word was "now," or as he pronounced it, "neeeeaaaaaooooowwww." One could run out, grab a coffee, and get back before he finished the word. It took a few lectures for me to figure out that he wasn't punctuating his lectures with cat sounds.


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## Chris (Feb 8, 2001)

chas_m said:


> English: skone (as in "cone")
> Irish: skahn (as in "Khan!")
> Scottish: scooooone (as in "loooon")
> US: what?


By George! I think you've got it! :clap: 

Well summed up! :lmao:


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## Deep Blue (Sep 16, 2005)

Watch "The Goodies" circa 1975. 

Definitely "sconn."

ps. I've never heard of "skawn". No one says that (the Northern Irish, maybe???). Sounds like a North American mispronunciation to me. The same way North Americans can't differentiate between:

"Don", and "Dawn" 

- different words, different pronunciations although North Americans bastardize them into one.


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## Dreambird (Jan 24, 2006)

OK... dug up after a month and a half but my attention was drawn to it... 

Got a internet friend who was born and raised on "lawnguyland" but lived most of her adult life in Manhattan... have talked to her on the phone and her accent is really quite subtle I think. Compared to some. 

Calgary... Wal.. eny gud Albertan shuld be abl ta du a dessent rednek Texan acxent iff'n y'all asks me...  

With a little practice... 

Oh... it's scone as in joan...


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## Macfury (Feb 3, 2006)

MissGulch said:


> How does Calgary differ from Toronto as far as accents?


Many Torontonians affect a little up-talk at the end of their sentences.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

My ancestry dictates it thus:

Scone (skōōn) 

A village of central Scotland northeast of Perth. The old part of the village was the coronation site of Scottish kings until 1651. The Stone of Scone, or Stone of Destiny, which served as a throne during the coronation rites, was taken to England by Edward I in 1296 and kept in Westminster Abbey beneath the chair used during the crowning of British monarchs. The Stone of Scone was returned to Scotland in November 1996.


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

Kazak said:


> skawn (rhymes with "John" Cusack)
> skown (rhymes with "Joan" Cusack)
> 
> Which do you say?


Neither. Scoon (rhymes with spoon), like they say in Macbeth.


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## Dreambird (Jan 24, 2006)

I can do ONE (1) sentence in perfect British English reminiscent of the Queen's accent... taught to me by a friend... to be used when someone is coughing from a badly swallowed item... You say "Ahem... Did you swallow it whole? You're supposed to chew it first!" Imagine the accent... I've had people rolling on the floor...


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## Kazak (Jan 19, 2004)

Dreambird said:


> OK... dug up after a month and a half but my attention was drawn to it...


Actually, a year, a month, and a half, but who's counting.


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## G-Mo (Sep 26, 2007)

The pronunciation of the word across the United Kingdom (and it's hand me downs around the globe) varies. Neither is right or wrong, however, nearly two thirds of the British population and 99% of the Scottish population pronounce it as /skɒn/, to rhyme with "con" and "John." The rest pronounce it /skəʊn/, to rhyme with "cone" and "Joan." British dictionaries usually show the "con" form as the preferred pronunciation, while recognizing that the "cone" form also exists.

I am born and raised in Canada, to a British mother, and grandparents (both sides, via Hartlepool and Colliers Wood)... I was raised to pronounce it /skɒn/, to rhyme with "con" and "John." I lived for the better part of a decade in and around the GLA, and never heard it pronounced /skəʊn/, (to rhyme with "cone" and "Joan"), until I visited the country near the end of my tenure, and I heard the word said 10+ times a day for nearly a decade...

While a British "treat" the word is actually based on the Middle Dutch schoonbrood (fine white bread), from schoon (pure, clean) and brood (bread) which likely explains the "common" pronunciation /skɒn/.

Now... Is it a Kirby Kiss or a Glasgow Kiss?????!


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## Dreambird (Jan 24, 2006)

OK, OK... yeah well so I'm still in 2008... I'm at the age where I don't like to be pushed... 



Kazak said:


> Actually, a year, a month, and a half, but who's counting.


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## Dreambird (Jan 24, 2006)

"Now... Is it a Kirby Kiss or a Glasgow Kiss?????!"

Glasgow Kiss OR the other properly Kirkby Kiss and neither sounds pleasant... painful, very painful... what are you trying to tell us?


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## gordguide (Jan 13, 2001)

" ... How does Calgary differ from Toronto as far as accents? ..."

" ... MissGulch, whenever I visit out west (BC) they always tell me I sound American. ..."

" ... Many Torontonians affect a little up-talk at the end of their sentences. ..."

I don't have any problem discerning the Ontario accent or the BC accent ... they're quite distinctive to me, and certainly differ from a Prairie one.

If you want a good listen to some western/eastern Canadian accents, watch Sports Center on TSN.

Jennifer Hedger and Darren Dutchyshen have classic examples of Sask accents that are quite obvious to my ears.

Jay Onrait and Brian Mudryk are from the same Alberta town, and Cory Woron hails from Calgary.

The accents are a little easier to nail because of the nature of the show; sports broadcasting allows a lot more slang and inflection that you normally wouldn't see in a regular news broadcast.

Holly Horton, Rod Smith and Dan O'Toole are equally distinctive with their Southern Ontario accents to my ears.

The BC accent is a little harder to nail down with examples, but to my ears, it sounds more Californian than Torontonian, if that makes any sense.


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## Kazak (Jan 19, 2004)

gordguide said:


> The BC accent is a little harder to nail down with examples, but to my ears, it sounds more Californian than Torontonian, if that makes any sense.


Dude! You nailed it, man.


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