Scones

[wellinghall]

[Poll #1414249]

Comments

[sally_maria]

To a certain extent, it depends - I'm sure I remember using both versions at different times, but the gone version sounds more natural at the moment.

[emperor]

The gone version is usually what I end up with, because scones are tasty :-)

[clarienne.livejournal.com]

Used to be short o, now long.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I notice that having a hamster eaten by a scone means that you cannot possibly pronounce "scone" any way at all. So how do you report the crime to the police? How do you stand up at Speakers' Corner and rail eloquently about the evils of scones, and stir the populace up to unleash bloody, jam-filled vengeance against them for killing poor Fluffy? How do you form a pressure group to campaign against dangerous tea breads and lobby Parliament to change the law so you can only have a scone in public if it's muzzled?

As for the pronunciation of the word, much bickering happened in my house when I was young about it - most of it, I suspect, inspired by the Goodies, in which Bill Oddie said it with the long vowel sound and the others "corrected" him. I inherited my Mum's pronunciation (she's from Derby and says it with the long O sound.) My Dad, from near Glasgow, says it with the short O sound.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

There is another pronunciation: to rhyme with boon, as in "The Stone of Scone".

I use the long 'o'. My mother says the same, and is from Staffordshire stock. My father uses the short 'o' and is from mixed Staffordshire and Lincolnshire roots.

My experience is that the long 'o' seems rarer, at least in places I've lived.

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

I innocently used a long 'o' when I first graced these isles with my presence, but was corrected by English friends, who I assumed must know better, since it was British food. Now I carry on with a short 'o' out of inertia but am open to further correction in the service of eccentricity.

How about "book"? malaheed's pronunciation to rhyme with "souk" is beginning to intermittently rub off on me.

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

I jump back and forth between them and I honestly don't know why...

[muninnhuginn]

Isn't the long "o" in scone terribly posh (with a long "o")?

[white_hart]

I pronounce it with a short 'o' to rhyme with 'one', but I pronounce 'gone' with a longer 'o', more like 'gorn'.

[didiusjulianus.livejournal.com]

Well, I call it as per #1 except that because I have more than one accent having picked them up as I move around, I also sometimes now call it #2, and a teacake is something entirely different. I've never had a hamster, so a scone didn't eat it. Maybe a scone eats the missing socks and so forth, though - I don't know.

[didiusjulianus.livejournal.com]

Not posh so much as regional.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's my thinking too.

Of course in this country, a lot of 'posh' pronunciation is nothing of the sort, it's actually regional pronunciation, and certain regions are seen as 'posh'.

Examples:
grass
Grant

Most of the country would pronounce the a as a short a sound. Most people from south-east England, whether duchesses or a cockney barrow-boys would pronouce the 'a' as a long 'ar' sound, so that 'grass' rhymes with 'arse'.

There are differences between posh and not-posh south-east accents, but the 'a' sound isn't one of them (and possibly neither is the 'o' in scone).

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a teacake's completely different to a scone.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

In Swansea (at least, in the 1970s) they said it to rhyme with bone, but in North Devon they said it to rhyme with gone. I think that also applies in the Tamar Valley today, though I don't know if that also applies to the webfooted westerners, let alone them Vurriners in the East.

This suggests an entertaining project involving the eating of scones around the country, and subsequent preparation of a Monstrous Chart.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Yes what sort of oddity could possibly consider a scone to be a teacake? A teacake is like a bread bun with currants, whereas a scone is more like a wild dumpling that has escaped and leapt into the sugar bowl, and thence, to the oven.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

To get a true picture, you would probably need to eat scones around the country with the locals.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Excellent. I can see the potential for a series of Monstrous Charts, showing pronunciation mapped against area, Jam Location Preference (top or bottom) and origins of parents and grandparents of the scone-eater.

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

This issue precipitated the breakup between my first boyfriend and myself. That and the fact that he was a prat, and the whole thing was a disaster anyway.

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

LOL! Okay... I absolutely LOVE that discription!

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

How do I pronounce "scone"?

"Properly" :-)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

*happy dance*

[asklepia.livejournal.com]

Regardless of pronunciation (and I'm of the "on" variety probably due to Scottish forebears) I shall forever more consider a scone to be a dumpling escaped into the wild ...