Poor, Pour, Door, Tour (and tore) all rhyme to me.....

South and North Dakota pour like tour

I pronounce it as rhyming with tour, and Cynic, I am from the deep South and we do not pronounce it as poe. Where are you from, by the way???

In southern Minnesota pour rhymes with tour. I agree with Cynic, in the deep South it would rhyme with hoe. Sometimes when I'm with Bigbaby in Galveston I feel like I need an interpreter.

Ron

Thanks for your responses. I'm from the Toronto area and have always pronounced 'poor' as in 'tour.' Just recently I noticed my grown DD saying it to rhyme with 'door.' When I noticed and asked her about it, she said she has always said it like that. I'm surprised I've never noticed before, if she's been pronouncing it differently all these years! I was just curious how most people say it, and I guess it's varied, depending on where one lives.

Growing up in Bakersfield, CA, everyone pronounced roof as if it was spelled ruf. I moved to San Francisco in my 20s and got teased about the ruf thing. I worked hard to learn to say roof like hoof. Now I am in Iowa where most everyone says ruf. Also in Iowa some of my friends call a creek a crick.

I've lived in the deep south all my life and I've never known anyone who pronounced pour as 'poe'. I've only heard it in movies where the actors used a fake southern accent.
Dedtired, I had to laugh about the 'bane soup'. I know many, many southerners who say bean this way.
And as for roof, to me it rhymes with goof. But it's no big deal if someone else says 'ruff'. Interesting thread.

Poor as in door. We also 'get down' at the grocery store or wherever we go in a vehicle. Ask your passenger, "are you gonna get down?" I had a friend from PA almost died laughing when I asked her that. hahahaha!

"I say poor, as in door. That is both the CA and Iowa pronunciation."

It's not the pronunciation for all people in California. I, and everyone I know, pronounces it like "moor." (I'd say "tour" but it seems that not everyone here pronounces it the same way.)

The standard American pronunciation of poor rhymes with tour, except if you are using a regional dialect. Click on the link below, then click on the speaker symbol and listen to the audio.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pronunciation of poor

A new neighbor years ago was from the south. I asked why she named her dog Windy. Except it really was Wendy...lol

Illinois and Wisconsin: Poor rhymes with door. We associate the sound "pour" with pouring a drink, or pouring rain.

I guess I'd recognize what it meant, either way :-)

Did you ever notice that there aren't any oil wells in Texas? They're all wells.

Ron

I've posted here before about trying to find a directory listing for a new neighbor from Texas who had introduced herself as Mrs. Wyatt. Yup, it was White, not Wyatt.

If you live in a small town near a larger one, do you go 'Uptown' to your town and 'Downtown' to the larger one?

At the grocery, do you put your purchases in a 'cart' or a 'buggy'? (Or something *else*? LOL) Do you pay the 'cashier' or the 'checker'?

I'd like to know where jasdip is from - I have never heard poor rhyming with tour - exactly opposite of what he/she said!

littlebug5-
Have you traveled much around the U.S.?

As I mentioned above, use the link I provided to listen to the standard pronunciation.

This post was edited by kudzu9 on Thu, May 16, 13 at 13:15

My wonderful relatives (grands and aunts) from the Cleveland area pronounced 'wash ' as 'warsh'. I always thought that was so cute.

I say "pore"...like the pores in your skin. I say "yella" instead of yellow. And I say "win dah" instead of window....win dough. I guess I speak "east Texan".

For me, poor rhymes with your, tour, pure

"poor" ... as in "foolish" or "wood", and to me it rhymes with "tour": when I hear folks pronounce that as in "tore" ... it sort of tears me up (which is not the same as "tears me up" ... as in crying).

To me, "pour" and "door" ... sound like "floor" or "score" (even "albacore") ... or "four" (to make it an even four).

ole joyful

OMG...that reminds me, my grandson always makes fun of me except we are from the exact same area four miles apart. Evidently I say warsh instead of wash.

littlebug5, I'm guessing jasdip is Canadian, like me. Other than just learning my DD and her hubby both pronounce 'poor' like 'door,' everyone else around me says it to rhyme with 'tour' (unless you pronounce tour like door, which I do not.) That's why I was surprised to hear my DD pronounce it differently than I have ever heard, here in Ontario.

agree with everything Vicki7 said. Also lived in the south all my life.

I'm from Texas and we don't say "POE" unless we are just acting stupid and just saying that to be funny and jokingly. My Yankee husband says "crick" for creek and "warsh" for wash...drives me crazy!

poe=po in a po-boy sandwich! which is in turn a reference to poor boy.

When I first moved away from Louisiana the things I got teased about were the word quarter, we pronounced it quat-er not quart-er and tourist we pronounced as toor-ist. The Cajun dialect heavily influenced our speech, as a small child I spoke mostly Cajun French, any business or visiting my parents did was all done in Cajun French.

Jamie yes we say that too, are you getting down.

This post was edited by ravencajun on Fri, May 17, 13 at 2:26

That "standard" pronunciation link sounds like door to me...

Where I'm from poor, pour, pore, door, soar, sore, lore, more, moor...all sound the same to me. On the other hand ant and aunt are to distinct sounds.

Beth

This post was edited by Beth_in_MA on Fri, May 17, 13 at 9:24

Beth-
That's very interesting. In the list of words you provided, there are several different sounds there, depending on the word. Try listening to the standard pronunciation of door below and tell me if it sounds like the standard pronunciation of poor to you.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pronunciation of door

I was just thinking.....uh, that would be jest thinkin', that poor sounds like two syllables to me.....poe er. Aunt is pronounced like ant.

Well now that I've read them all outloud repeatedly, I can't remember how I say it! And it all sounds odd... do you ever do that, say a word so much it sounds odd even when you know it's correct?

Once I moved to the south, I heard the other pronunciation of 'aunt'.
It rhymes with 'font ' on the tongues of most people around here.

Kudzu9 - Except for a slight inflection difference, the phonetics sound the same to me in the poor and door recordings. It might be different if the same person was pronouncing both words, but with two different voices, I can't really say that I hear any significant difference in them. To me the two recordings are like me and my brother saying the same word - it sounds the same and different at the same time.

This is a great quote from the MW dictionary on pronunciation:

In truth, though, there can be no objective standard for correct pronunciation other than the usage of thoughtful and, in particular, educated speakers of English. Among such speakers one hears much variation in pronunciation.

Here is a link that might be useful: MW on

kudzu, no it does not...hearing aids might be required.

This post was edited by arkansas_girl on Fri, May 17, 13 at 14:53

Oh. poor is pronounced like moor on M-W. No alternate. Hm. I think I hear pour or pore more often around here (south).

But aunt is spelled like auto? So why not say it that way? Not that I do, but I understand the thought process. How did it get to be like the exoskeleton creature that is tiny and has six legs?

Southern California native -- most of us pronounce poor like tour.

I suspect it depends on where the person is from and if there is a dialect involved in the area...

Raven Cajun..In my mind the Cajun is the most beautiful of all dialects...the most manly sexy of all OH My Gawd...do I love to hear it...not the made up southern sheet that you hear on tv but the real thing...

ron all wells....Please...I have only heard that as a joke...never heard a human say that.....that's funny...maybe it depends on who you associate with...never heard them call all wells...and believe it or not, I know lots of people associated with oil wells as owners, workers/laborers etc etc etc.

Arkansas girl is right ..acting stupid or totally ignorant people

Pronouncing words differently in different areas doesn't surprise me but it often is a matter of education and it also is often a matter of association...if you have a higher education but live and deal with people generally on a much lower educated level or no education you tend to lower your level in associating with them....

arkansas_girl: Did you know that there is a lot of interesting things going on in the brain when it comes to language, much of which is still not understood? The brain often reacts to what it EXPECTS, not what is actually there whether it's language or vision (I won't get into the amazing things we see and do not see that are respectively not there and there, since we are talking about what people hear in this post).

The reason almost everyone who speaks English as a second language has a discernible accent is due to this. The brain fills in unfamiliar sounds with familiar ones. I can read French fluently. I can't speak it without a heavy "American" accent , because my brain uses sounds I grew up with (something my cousins in Quebec tease me about). I learned French as an adult, which has a lot to do with it.

Because I personally don't hear a difference does not mean I need hearing aids. It means that for my brain, language is a set pattern and unless said wildly differently, even when I listen for a difference, my brain is going to hear both sound like "or". I grew up hearing all those words I listed before and many more with the "or" sound to them, so my brain fills in that sound. That is all. It does not mean in any way, shape, or form that I cannot hear, or that I need assistance in hearing.

I'm not sure what other sound I'm supposed to be hearing. Could some please tell me what the sound difference is? As I said before, I can here the slight differences in the intonation (the female has an upward lilt that almost drags the word into two syllables, whereas the man's is flat) but what is the phonetic difference?

Beth-
Interesting observations, and they make a lot of sense.

As for the phonetic difference, this is what I am hearing:

1. Poor sounds close to the "poo" sound in dog poo or Winnie the Pooh! In comparison, the sound in door is like oar or roar or tore.

this is funny. I did not read all of the posts. But I don't know how poor and tour could sound alike.

How the heck do you people pronounce tour? LOL

TWO ER or TWO UR, that's how we pronounce it. Lol
So I guess we pronounce it POORahhahahah

My friend pronounces OIL like OL and will like well. lol

Thanks Kudzu. I'll go and listen again knowing what you are hearing and I'll probably be able to hear it this time because I'll be actively listening for it.

I find linguistics, and how that the way we speak can change throughout life. You'd think that if you grew up saying something one way, you always would, but I know my "Boston" accent flattened out after spending so many years traveling around the country (more than 15 years spending about 8 weeks at time in several different areas each year). My two older sisters and oldest brother all say "cah" instead of ''car", but none of them have ever lived anywhere but Massachusetts. The younger of my two brothers, my twin sister, and I all say "car", but we've all spent extensive time outside of MA. However, we all still say "ahnt" (aunt), and not "ant" or "ont" (that last seems to be limited so a small area in the center of the country).

Uh-oh.... oh boy.... I should have not read this post. No, no, no... not good at all....

Yaw'll just mess up my English! Yikes!

As a non-American native trying to pronounce English so ya'll Americans can understand it... oh boy.... oh boy.... 'po gal.... (^_^)

I agree Beth, that sometimes spending extended time in different places may alter how one pronounces certain words. For example, I grew up in Windsor Ontario, which is only 5 minutes away from Detroit Michigan. Many Windsorites pronounce words in the same way as their American neighbours, as they are so close geographically, that regional speaking habits tend to fall into common ground in border cities.

When I moved to Toronto after finishing school, I was good naturedly teased by my new co-workers for pronouncing certain words so differently, such as saying 'Q-pon' instead of 'coo-pon,' which is how my Toronto peers pronounced it.

I eventually decided to make a conscious effort to change my 'Michigan' pronunciation of certain words to the way people around me said them. I simply realized it would probably be easier in the long run, than to constantly have to explain to people who assumed I was American, that in fact, I was actually born and raised in Canada.

Beth-
I grew up in Minnesota and thought that what we spoke was standard. Now, when I go back there, forty years later, everyone has an accent!

I try to pronounce words according to the phonetics given in standard American dictionaries, but I agree with others in this thread who point out that regional variations are also legitimate. As long as we can understand one another, variety is good...and sometimes even amusing.

Huuum, I didn't realize that pronounced sounds were subjective? To me, it is what it is and there's no room for interpretation. "Learn sumpin' new ever' day"...LOL

>> For me, poor rhymes with your, tour, pure

Linda, so, you say that poor, your, tour, and pure (as well as door) are all pronounced the same? Wow! So interesting!

For me, poor and tour are the same (poore, toore), where -as your is very, very different. I would pronounce door as dore, your as yore (so door and your would sound the same).

I agree completely with what joyful said (To me, "pour" and "door" ... sound like "floor" or "score" (even "albacore") ... or "four").

littlebug, you said "I have never heard poor rhyming with tour - exactly opposite of what he/she said!". Well, I'm from Massachusetts, and that's the only way I've ever heard it pronounced.

arkansas girl-
I think pronunciations are not so much subjective as that they just can differ by region. Whether they are accepted as standard is the issue. Quite a few words have a secondary pronunciation that is accepted by linguists, and you can see whether that is so when you look at the phonetic pronunciation for an entry in the dictionary. In addition, there can be many regional variations which don't conform to what is in the dictionary but are taken as "standard" by the community they are used in.

I had the same thoughts as you about pronunciation until I lived in and traveled through many parts of the U.S. and found out how many widely used variations there are...even if some of them aren't in the dictionary!

This reminds me also of the word Police ...as our men in Blue...

Where I come from in TX and the South and most every place I have ever lived they are called Police....or Palice Pulice or but lately when I watch the shows on tv it seems they introduce themselves as they bang on someones door as the Poe lise ...

What are they called in your area...

ruthieg
I agree it is a beautiful language, it just rolls off the tongue so smoothly.
If you have not heard this group of Cajun women sing I recommend listening, especially to them singing Amazing Grace in Cajun French. They are called Les Amies Louisianaises, I went to school with most of them and lived near their families.
http://les-amies.com/
here's a link to La Grace du Ciel, Amazing Grace

I find that my pronunciations change when I am back home for a while, right back to the way I spoke when I lived there. I have lived in many different areas and I lose my native pronunciations and take on the one of the area I am now living in. Not purposely or consciously, just happens. So region definitely makes a big difference.

Here is a link that might be useful: song

try this site:

http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php?sitepal