mauney@ncsu.UUCP (09/19/83)
One of the spelling books I used in grade school had a list of homonyms
that I should be careful not to confuse. Included was the pair (our, are).
This confused me no end, because I "knew" that (our, hour) were homonyms,
and 'are' didn't sound like them. Actually, I pronounced all three words
differently, but I thought I pronounced 'our' and 'hour' the same. I
have since met people (West Coast, I believe) for whom 'are' and 'our'
are homonyms.
Jon Mauney
mcnc!ncsu!mauneyashwin@uicsl.UUCP (09/22/83)
#R:ncsu:-233900:uicsl:8600018:000:461
uicsl!ashwin Sep 21 14:50:00 1983
In parts of Britain, "our", "hour" and "are" would both be pronounced "aar".
Some people, however, pronounce "our" and "hour" with two syllables as
"ah-wer", leaving "are" to be "aar". Some pronounce "hour" as "ah-wer", and
both "our" and "are" as "aar". In most parts of U.S.A., the "ah" changes to
"a", as in "aunt" ("ahnt" vs. "ant").
Ashwin Ram
Coordinated Science Lab
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
...!uiucdcs!uicsl!ashwin
...!uiucdcs!ramhaight@bwkna.UUCP (R. C. Haight) (09/22/83)
The other day while waiting in an airline check-in counter in a small Southern city I kept hearing "bah...mumble mumble...bah", etc. I knew the herd behind me weren't sheep and I was confused until I realized that the "bah"s were good-bahs.