Question for people from the UK

I am an ignorant yank who needs help.

How do you pronounce SCONE?

Does it rhyme with stone?
Or does it rhyme with fawn?
Or...?

Thanks for your help. I eat them all the time but feel silly for not knowing how to say the word properly. I usually rhyme it with stone.

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ArishMell · 70-79, M

The UK has an extraordinarily wide range of dialects and accents that can change noticeably over only a few tens of miles.

So you could hear [i]Scone[/i] as rhyming with [i]stone[/i], with a hard "o" ([i]scon[/i]) or even [i]scoon[/i] !

Not rhyming with [i]fawn[/i], though.

So please don't feel silly saying "scone" as it looks - many Britons do, depending where in the country they are from.

TJNewton · M

@ArishMell The only problem with that is Yanks think our biscuits are crackers and their scones they call biscuits

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@TJNewton LOL!

Then go and call computer programmes by their word for what Britons call 'biscuits'. Crumbs!

TJNewton · M

@ArishMell Only when they get crushed we do

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@TJNewton The crumbs yes - but there are times I wish that fate on the digital ones!

ninalanyon · 61-69, T

@ArishMell Computer programs not programmes. British English distinguishes the two.

Program: sequence of instructions for a computer,

Programme: sequence of performances, for instance on television, radio; booklet summarizing the performance.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@ninalanyon Hmmm! I know America dominates computing, the Internet etc.; but I try to avoid affecting Americanisms - as I avoid affecting Latin or French phrases as was once the fashion in ages past among the arty types!

With one important difference: the names of things invented in those countries, such as respectively there the "transistor", the "aqueduct", the "metre".

Oh - and in British English, "~i[b]s[/b]ing" :-)

ninalanyon · 61-69, T

@ArishMell I'm from the south west, the Oxford dictionary is my reference, it prefers -ize for words derived from Greek. Even Collins and Cambridge have started to accept those spellings.

See https://www.lexico.com/definition/summarize

As for program for computers, it has been program with one m for my whole life, it's not an Americanism. It would be an Americanism to use it instead of television programme though.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@ninalanyon I see: I take your point.

Dictionaries necessarily reflect contemporary use, rather than form it; though I think it a pity our own version of our own language is being taken over (like so many other things) by the USA.

Much more serious though is narrowing vocabulary, hence knowledge. About three years ago now, I think, the OED drew considerable justifiable criticism for its new children's edition rightly including many IT terms but wrongly expunging nature ones, like the ordinary names of common plants and animals.