# Accents
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 1, 2017, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083 "2017-03-01T04:33:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Xerulian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xerulian)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/1 "2017-03-01T04:33:52Z")
Is there an accent for any language that makes the letter o sound like oo (ü in german)?
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### Author:  [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/2 "2017-03-01T04:49:33Z")
Well, ü in german does not have the sound represented by -oo- in English words like look, book or food (and, as we can see from comparing “book” and “food”, -oo- can have represent more than one sound in English). So I think to get an answer to your question you’re going to have to clarify what sound you want to find represented by o + [accent].
Can you give us a word that, in your dialect of English, has the sound that you want? And can you also identify your dialect of English?
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### Author:  [@Xerulian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xerulian)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/3 "2017-03-01T05:08:23Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Can you give us a word that, in your dialect of English, has the sound that you want?
I mean like in food, dude, or lewd. I thought that the german ü sounded like that but I guess I could be wrong. My dialect of English is American English.
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### Author:  [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/4 "2017-03-01T06:00:51Z")
In the relatively few languages that I am familar with, that sound is represented by ‘u’, with or without an accent, and u: is the standard IPA representation for the sound. English is unusual in reprsenting it with -oo-, and doesn’t do so consistently; the same sound can be represented by -ew- (threw) or -ou- (you) or -u- (dude) or just -o- (do), while -oo- can represent different sounds (the sound in ‘book’, as already noted, but also the sound in ‘flood’).
I guess what I’m saying is that there’s no reason to expect that any language represents this sound with ‘o’ plus an accent. It’s one of the (many) vagaries of English that the sound can sometimes be represented by -o- or -oo-, but that has no implications for how it may be represented in other languages
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### Author:  [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/5 "2017-03-01T07:47:12Z")
> [@Xerulian](#):
>
> . . .makes the letter o sound like oo (ü in german)?
We don’t “make a letter sound like” something. Letters don’t make sounds. Our mouths and tongues make sounds. And the letters don’t dictate how we make those sounds–we make those sounds by way of our native facility with the language. (Otherwise, illiterate people wouldn’t be able to talk!)
> [@UDS](#):
>
> . . . that sound is **represented** by ‘u’, . . . .
Right. Letters _ **represent** _ sounds, and often in English we use different letters to represent the same sound. By the same token, the same sound is often represented by different letters. (IOW, English orthography isn’t always consistent.)
If you realize this, you might phrase the OP differently.
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### Author:  [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/6 "2017-03-01T07:56:37Z")
I think the OP’s question is: is there any language in which the sound represented in the IPA by -u:- is represented by -o- plus an accent of some kind?
And while it would be a brave boardie who would say that there is no such language, I think it’s safe to say that we have no reason to expect that there would be such a language.
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### Author:  [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/7 "2017-03-01T12:14:34Z")
To clarify further: by “accent,” the OP means “diacritical mark.”
(Not “regional pronunciation pattern within a language,” nor “pronunciation interference by an individual’s first-learned language upon some later-learned one.”)
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### Author:  [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/8 "2017-03-01T12:25:26Z")
Thanks to all for not nit-picking.
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### Author:  [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/9 "2017-03-01T12:41:02Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#):
>
> To clarify further: by “accent,” the OP means “diacritical mark.”
>
> (Not “regional pronunciation pattern within a language,” nor “pronunciation interference by an individual’s first-learned language upon some later-learned one.”)
Are you sure about that?
I thought the OP’s question was more like “is there any regional accent which would make words like ‘pond’, ‘from’, ‘gong’ and so forth sound to me, a standard American accented person, like they were actually saying ‘poond’, ‘froom’ and ‘goong’?”
Need OP!
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/10 "2017-03-01T12:43:16Z")
> [@Xerulian](#):
>
> My dialect of English is American English.
Which one?
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### Author:  [@Frankenstein\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frankenstein_Monster)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/11 "2017-03-01T12:51:01Z")
> [@UDS](#):
>
> I think the OP’s question is: is there any language in which the sound represented in the IPA by -u:- is represented by -o- plus an accent of some kind?
Swedish? Stor, bror, att bo… (no “accent” though)
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### Author:  [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/12 "2017-03-01T12:53:43Z")
English does it: tomb, womb, Scone (the place in Scotland, not the bakery item).
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### Author:  [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/13 "2017-03-01T13:41:31Z")
Perhaps not exactly what the OP is looking for, but maybe of interest:
- in the Malagasy language of Madagascar, the unadorned letter “o” represents the phoneme /u/. Malagasy borrowed the English word “book” as _boky_, pronounced approximately to rhyme with American English “duke”.
- in Dutch, the digraph “oe” represents the phoneme /u/. The French digraph “ou” represents the same sound.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/14 "2017-03-01T13:43:29Z")
I have an answer. The French ‘eau’ (sounds like English ‘o’) is pronounced ‘oo’ (/u:/) in at least one French _accent_.
This answer probably isn’t what OP wanted, but it lets me segue to my own question. I once knew a young woman from North Africa who had spent much time in Avignon (southern France). She pronounced ‘beau’ like English ‘boo,’ ‘eau’ like English ‘ooh.’ I assumed this was a southern French accent — IIRC she told me so — but I’ve no corroboration. Is this a known French accent, or did the charming woman just have a personal affectation of speech?
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### Author:  [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/15 "2017-03-01T13:50:23Z")
> [@septimus](#):
>
> I once knew a young woman from North Africa who had spent much time in Avignon (southern France). She pronounced ‘beau’ like English ‘boo,’ ‘eau’ like English ‘ooh.’ I assumed this was a southern French accent — IIRC she told me so — but I’ve no corroboration. Is this a known French accent, or did the charming woman just have a personal affectation of speech?
If her native language was one of the Berber languages, this makes sense. Those languages don’t have an /o/ phoneme and speakers may be likely to substitute /u/ when speaking French.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/16 "2017-03-01T14:02:57Z")
> [@bordelond](#):
>
> If her native language was one of the Berber languages, this makes sense. Those languages don’t have an /o/ phoneme and speakers may be likely to substitute /u/ when speaking French.
She was light-skinned Arab, but there might be a connection. I don’t recall hearing that sound change from other Arabs.
Her French was much more fluent than mine, although every 3rd noun was ‘machin’ and most of her expletives were ‘Je m’en fiche.’
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### Author:  [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellis_Aponte_Jr)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/17 "2017-03-01T14:09:57Z")
Doesn’t Brazilian Portuguese do this? Like with the name “João Gilberto” the last “o” sounds like /u/
(…assuming Aspidistra’s interpretation of the question)
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### Author:  [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/18 "2017-03-01T16:14:44Z")
> [@septimus](#):
>
> She was light-skinned Arab, but there might be a connection. I don’t recall hearing that sound change from other Arabs.
Moroccan Arabic only has /o/ as a variation of /u/ as pronounced after the so-called [emphatic consonants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emphatic_consonant), which European languages like French lack. Algerian Arabic doesn’t have an /o/ in native vocabulary at all, though it can be found in French borrowings.
Many Tunisian Arabic speakers also do not use /o/ in native vocabulary. As one moves closer to Libya, the prevalence of /o/ increases – Libyan Arabic and Egyptian Arabic both contain the full-fledged phoneme /o/.
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### Author:  [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/19 "2017-03-01T16:18:38Z")
Since we’re not helping OP particularly by citing languages not English, I’ll join in with another without even the “o” grapheme, but it is a case of [non-“u”]grapheme+diacrtic becomes “u”: the [shruk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubutz_and_Shuruk) in Hebrew.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2017, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/accents/781083/20 "2017-03-01T16:24:35Z")
> [@bordelond](#):
>
> Many Tunisian Arabic speakers also do not use /o/ in native vocabulary. As one moves closer to Libya, the prevalence of /o/ increases – Libyan Arabic and Egyptian Arabic both contain the full-fledged phoneme /o/.
Maybe that’s it! (To preserve her anonymity :rolleyes: I hadn’t mentioned that she was Tunisian, but she was!)
Does anyone else pronounce French ‘beau’ as /bu:/ ?
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