My roommate contends that Thoreau and Thorough are homonyms.
I contend that the first is pronounced “Tha-Row” (emphasis on the Row, but very definitely an a sound then a row sound) and the latter is pronounced “Thur-oh”.
Thoughts?
I’m with you on this one.
~Tasha
me too.
Yup. It’s not like “through” and “threw”.
Yes, tha-ROE and THUR-oh.
Down here, we tend to pronounce the latter as “THUR-rah,” but otherwise, yeah.
The way I say them, the vowel sounds are the same and just the emphasized syllables are different: thuh-ROW vs THUH-row. So I think I see what your roommate is saying, though I wouldn’t call them homonyms.
I say “thor-oh” (to rhyme with borrow) for Thoreau, but that’s just the influence of names such as “Trudeau”. I’ve never heard anyone pronounce the name, so In could be totally off with it.
“Thorough” I pronounce similarly to “thurl”. Likewisem “Peterborough” is “pee-dur-burl”. However, “Scarborough” is “scar-burrow” or even “scar-bro”.
I was born in Peterborough. Maybe that has something to do with it…
From this page:
I also recall reading a quote from Henry in which he says something like “I’m Thoreau; the pronunciation is apt, for I do a thorough job.” So although we don’t have any recordings of the writer’s voice, the evidence is clearly in favor of Diosa’s roommate.
That’s pretty much how I’ve pronounced it, but with more of a schwa sound than an a sound in the first syllable.
Without peeking, and risking redundancy:
Thoreau: thor-OH
Thorough: thur-oh
Heh, so how do you pronounce “borrow”? I think it might be the same way I pronounce “burrow”. “Borrow” for me is BAH-roh, very different from “Thoreau”. 
For me, the first syllable of “borrow” rhymes with “bore”, “more”, “door”, and “floor”. The vowel in the second syllable is almost the same., just without the R-sound on the end.
“bore-owe”
:: check’s Sunspace’s location ::
Yep, Canada.
Eh? What was that?
(I love these comparative-pronunciation threads. It never seases to amaze me how differently we say things. A few years ago I went to my work’s US subsidiary, in Erlanger, Kentucky (near the airport and across the river from Cincinnati), and there were some people there from even further south, and we were talking about various things, and they kept mentioning “pins”. I was quite confused until I suddenly realised that they were talking about “pens”, the things you write with. (Or maybe it was the other way around.))
That’s almost how we hear and say them down this way. Only “thorough” is more “thur-ruh”.
I would say thor-ROW for the guy, and THOR-row for the, er, other word thingie.
Does that make them homonyms or not? I don’t thnk so. OTOH, I use the word “thingie” often when talking about parsing words.
Yup, that’s how I’ve always heard 'em both.
That’s odd. I’ve always heard Thoreau pronounced THUR-row. Thorough would be THOR-row, I suppose.
I’m with this, which I guess means I’m ready for Canada. Or at least Ontario.