A particular steak-house chain in the Midwest had one of those trifold placards on the table that advertised its “Awesome Blossom”, a fried onion thing equivalent to the “Bloomin’ Onion” of another chain. It was a while before it dawned on me that in the place where we were, “awesome” and “blossom” rhyme: AH-sum BLAH-sum. But here in the South, they decidedly do not rhyme: AWW-sum BLAH-sum.
And then I began thinking about it. There are lots of words like that, namely, words that rhyme, or are homonyms, in one area of the country, but not in others. “Awful waffle” rhymes up there, but not down here. And it goes both ways. “Won’t” and “want” are homonyms here, but not up there. In some parts of the South, there is no difference in sound between “on” and “own” (both are ON in ON-ly). In other parts, they are more like their Northern counterparts.
I think you’re dealing with regional pronunciations more than anything else.
Still, although it may not be what you’re looking for, the closest term I can think of to describe what you’ve encountered in certain parts of the country is assonance.
According to my Concise OED (sorry, no online cite, but I’m using the dictionary I keep on my desk), assonance is defined as “rhyming of one word with another in accented vowel and those that follow but not in consonants…or in consonants but not in vowels.”
Or, as Rita remarked in Educating Rita (and this is a paraphrase), “It’s a rhyme that doesn’t.”
I would call it colloquialism: characteristic of or appropriate to the spoken language or to writing that seeks the effect of speech (The American Heritage Dictionary)
I appreciate the replies. It’s on the way, but not there yet:
In this instance, the words either rhyme propery, or are homonyms, in one region but not at all in the other.
Well, not really. Neither “awesome” nor “blossom” are colloquial. They are a part of the standard American language and, as words per se, are not particular to one region over another. It is merely that they rhyme up there but not down here.
Yeah, I’ve searched on this for days now. I’m quite the amateur linguist, and I was pretty sure that, if the term existed, I would find it. I finally gave up, and knew that, if anyone else had the answer, it would be a Doper.
Maybe there is no term yet assigned to this phenom.
Hmmm. Maybe first I would search for Greek or Latin roots from which to derive a term.
That result in rhymes or homonyms in some regions but not in others. Your statement is like saying that the only phenomenon with synonyms is ‘qualities of definition’.
Minnesota.
No, they aren’t. In the South, the “awe” syllable has the famous drawl. The “blos” syllable doesn’t. Chicagoans don’t drawl at all. Thus, the words rhyme in Chicago. They do not rhyme in the Charlotte.