Last sound long O, how many different last letters?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Trivia question: Given the set of English words that end in long O. How many different terminal letters are in that set? Assume rhotic American accent (that’s one where we know how to pronounce our Rs.) I’ll post the answer in a few days

Please put your answer in a spoiler section so that others can answer without influence. Reminder: the spoiler tags need to go on separate lines with nothing else on those lines. Otherwise, they don’t work.

I wasn’t sure where to post this, here in MPSIMS or in Thread Games. Mods feel free to move it if appropriate (as if they needed my permission to move it).

2

Do you mean English words that end in a long o sound? Because all words that end in an o that is a long o end in o.

Are foreign borrow words allowed?

3

I am getting 6.

e (roe)
h (oh, pharaoh)
o (of course)
s (mots, plural of mot, from the French)
t (depot, mot)
u (bayou, secondary pronunciation)

4

I found 9, or 10 if proper names are allowed

a - cocoa, whoa
e - foe, woe
h - though, dough
o - so, memo
s - apropos, malapropos
t - depot, escargot
u - bureau, bateau
w - window, fellow
x - gateaux, bateaux

If proper names are allowed, also d for Pernod, Gounod

5

Yes and yes. Once words are borrowed, they become English words, no different than native English words. True, there’s often a transition period where they may not be totally assimilated, but I’m willing to accept even those.

6

Damn, that’s good.

7

Bumping this thread, in case anyone else wants to take a stab at it.

As far as the correct answer, @bibliophage has all 9 of the letters I knew of, plus another one with capitailzed letters I was unaware of (but suspected there might be). Most excellent, bib.

8

9 letters, damn that’s good. I was thinking possibly J but can’t think of a word ending in oj. There might be some…?

ETA: I once knew a man with last name Nawoj, and maybe I was thinking of him, but he pronounced his name “na-VOY”. So, not a long O.

ETA-2: here are several words ending in OJ but I don’t recognize any of them: Words that end in oj | Words ending in oj

9

There are French names ending in silent-p such as Metrop. Don’t know if any have carried over to the English-speaking world.

10

Those look like Esperanto. Nouns end in -o in Esperanto, plurals end in -oj. Years ago I wrote an article for Word Ways listing all the English words ending in J. I scoured several unabridged dictionaries, including the OED. Total was about 40 words, including capitalized words.Fairly sure there were none ending in -oj.

11

I’m calling bayou into question. I’ve heard it mostly pronounced BUY-ou. Are we counting words where accents can come into play?

12

I’ve heard it pronounced ‘buy-o’ in a song lyric.

13

By CCR, who weren’t from the area. Or in Ramblin’ Man.

14

I was thinking of Ramblin’ Man and Jambalaya but just listened to Born on the Bayou and it does turn to an ‘o’ sound at the end.

15

Don’t worry about bayou. There are other qualified words ending in U, so it’s not needed to count that letter.

16

Dictionaries give buy-oh as a secondary pronunciation. If you don’t agree then let’s go with bureau.

17

Good replacement.