# Do leave and believe rhyme? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 12, 2003, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-leave-and-believe-rhyme/218489 "2003-12-12T01:31:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2003, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-leave-and-believe-rhyme/218489/21 "2003-12-14T21:37:19Z")
> [@](#): > > These two vowel sounds should be pronounced differently from each other. But they should make the same sound consistently, e.g., dog and frog should rhyme perfectly (something that New Yorkers have trouble with). I don’t think _should_ is appropriate when talking about differences in accents. Accents change over time and distance. Differences are differences, period. There’s no _should_ about it. Several sound samples of speakers with different accents are available in an [audio archive](http://alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml) at the home page of the alt.usage.english Usenet group. You can take a listen to some midwestern accents to check out how the vowel mergers work. There are several such sets of vowel mergers in the Midwestern accent. I’ve posted this list before, but here it is again for the sake of convenience – Mary, merry, marry caught, cot horse, hoarse do, dew pearl, purl But we do distinguish – tin, ten cot/caught, cart And Americans for the most part are rhotic, which means an “R” following a vowel is pronounced as an [r] and doesn’t merely affect a change in the preceding vowel. For the sake of courtesy, I would entreat non-rhotics, when spelling things phonetically, to avoid using an “R” to show a change in a vowel. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2003, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-leave-and-believe-rhyme/218489/22 "2003-12-15T02:28:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by acsenray \* > \*\*And Americans for the most part are rhotic, which means an “R” following a vowel is pronounced as an [r] and doesn’t merely affect a change in the preceding vowel. For the sake of courtesy, I would entreat non-rhotics, when spelling things phonetically, to avoid using an “R” to show a change in a vowel. \*\* I was badly misled by this when I first visited Italy at the age of 12. My Italian phrase-book’s pronunciation guide represented the Italian long [a] sound as “ar”. This is because it was written by and for non-rhotic speakers of British English, and not for rhotic Hiberno-English speakers who would dutifully reproduce the “r” sound. My favourite example is two girls I heard arguing over the correct pronunciation of the word “bath”. The girl from Kent said it should be “bahth” (long “a”). The girl from Liverpool disputed this, saying “there’s no ‘r’ in ‘bath’”. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2003, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-leave-and-believe-rhyme/218489/23 "2003-12-15T16:10:46Z")
That’s a fantastic story, **Hibe**. Then there’s the question of whether there’s an “R” in “warsh,” which is a completely different issue. ---
**Author:** ![hyjyljyj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/0ea827/32.png) [@hyjyljyj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hyjyljyj)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2003, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-leave-and-believe-rhyme/218489/24 "2003-12-15T18:22:07Z")
Moriah wrote: “Well, there’s the short ‘o’ sound represented in lot, cot, pot, hot, frog, hog, dog.” But no one I’ve ever heard uses the same short O (ah) sound as in lot and pot, in the word dog. They usually use the ‘aw’ sound instead for dog. Also for frog and hog, except for my wife as noted above. I expained the difference to her last night as follows: When you see a picture of a cute puppy, you say, “Awwww…” and when you have a moment of pleasure or insight, you say, “Ahhhh…” So in effect, there are no rhymes in the sentences, “The teacher taught the tot” or “The puppy pawed the pod.” The first sound is aww, the second ahh. Also, we learned the long O sound as the one in cone, toe, blow, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2003, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-leave-and-believe-rhyme/218489/25 "2003-12-15T19:30:59Z")
I don’t know how far you’re going to get telling your wife her accent is wrong, **hyjyljyj**. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2003, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-leave-and-believe-rhyme/218489/26 "2003-12-15T19:42:24Z")
By the way, **hyjyljyj** in your examples, In my Ohio accent, I’d parse the AH words and the AW words differently than you do. It seem to me that your categories are: (1) AW, and (2) AH/Short O. In my accent, I group them differently. The two categories are: (1) AW/Short O, and (2) AH. To me, “short O” is the same as AW. AH to me is an “A” sound, not an “O” sound. So under AW, I’d have – con, cocky, raw, cot/caught, pod/pawed, bother, sod/sawed, walk/wok, etc. Under AH, I’d have – Kahn/Khan, khaki, rah, father, etc. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-leave-and-believe-rhyme/218489.md?page=1)