While there are people talking about hearing the SOUTH-ern pronunciation, I notice no one has actually picked it in the poll.
Suth-ren and I’m near Toronto.
I have number of Suth-ren friends, one of whom (a tarheel) pronounces Ontario as On-tahr-io. We pronounce it On-tair-io (or something close to that).
I picture “South”-ern as something I’d hear on the BBC; just another jarring, oddball Britishism.
I suppose it sort of rhymes with love, in a tortured sort of way.
I’ll be the first person to admit to saying “South”-ern. I do live near Ottawa.
I don’t think I saw “south-ern” so much as I saw “sou-thern”, though.
I think the consonant sound at the end blows the rhyme for most of us.
Canadian prairies.
We pronounce it as SOU-th-ern. 3 syllables, slurred together.
You can do it if you try:)
an seanchai
IIRC then having the same vowel sound is assonance, which is a kind of rhyme but not a perfect rhyme.
Native Ottawan checking in (albeit with an English (Nottingham) father and southern Ontario mother)
Definitely suthern.
Don’t forget that “Ottawa born & bred” is pretty darn rare in Ottawa! (Especially in high tech) (And I have heard it before, but not often enough to remember who said it)
As per my location field, I live in WV, in the Appalachian mountains. The entire time I was growing up, it was pronounce “App-uh-lay-shun” or “App-uh-lay-shuh” (for the region); in the past few years, there’s been a trend towards saying “App-uh-latch-en” or “App-uh-latch-uh”, and it makes me stabby. :rolleyes:
I get stabby because in my experience is exactly the opposite with “Appalachia(n)”.
Well, I guess that just proves you can’t please everyone. 
I say “suthren” as a mockery of Dennis DeYoung’s pronunciation of “modern” in Styx’ “Mr. Roboto”. Other than that I’ve never heard it pronounced any other way but “suthern”.
To rhyme with “love”? Ummm, “suvren”? Would that be like “smove” for “smooth”?
I’m guessing this was a professor from India.
Southron used to be a common alternative for southern. I’m assuming that’s where the “suthren” pronunciation comes from.
Me too, Alberta raised, and its always suth-ern or suthren.
"Suth"ern, but occasionally, my father would pronounce south as “sooth,” as when driving, and looking at a map, “We need to go sooth,” but that was more along the lines of a deliberate mistake, almost an unfunny joke that only he understood.
But yeah, I’ve never heard "South"ern.
This pronunciation is fairly common – although not universal – among speakers of Indian English.