h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Drone for me.
I'm, apparently, a posh Yorkshirewoman.


insists it rhymes with gone.

The Gruesome Twosomes are with me - but they are German really. (which leads me to believe that Mother Tongue is really the case when you learn to speak a language)

sk-own

I'd have thought it rhymed with gone. Aparntly, both are possible:

http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=scone&submit=Submit

What Deakie said: Scoon for the Scots place, scon for the cake.

And Sho - don't posh Yorkshirewomen tend to come from places somewhat north of Parsons Cross?

'I asked the girl in dulcet tone
To bring to me a buttered scone.
The silly girl has been and gone
And brought to me a buttered scone'
(can't remember the author. Betjemann?)
I think I say skown

To rhyme with town?

And they call it Lonesome Scone
Where the broken hearts stay

lol

Bel, I have now wasted best part of half an hour on that howjasay site making it say swear words and giggling my head off...

FB

I´d would say scone rhymes better with gone.

The 'c' of scone and the 'g' of gone are sounds produced from almost the same place inside the mouth.

Drone breaks the sound similarity with the 'dr'.

That´s said from the point of ear of a unusual user of the English language.

Yeah it's 'gone' for me. Kentish born and bred. I was told it was posh people who said it like 'drone' Little did I know it was only northerners

Drone for me and I'm from Lincolnshire. But some people tell that I speak poshly, other people tell me that I speak properly

My husband's from Lincolnshire and he uses the 'gone' pronounciation. Mind you, his mum is American. (She still speaks with an American accent, apart from the words she had clearly never heard before arriving here (eg, 'poodin' for pudding)).

I also pronounce scone to rhyme with 'gone'. Thames Valley upbringing, with Hampshire father and Nottinghamshire mother.

Mol

Gone for me too. I'm in the midlands but born & raised for 10 years in Kent then 10 years in Orkney so not sure where I got it.

Deb

@ Pin.

Not sure where posh Yorkshirewomen are supposed to come from. I've usually given my best Hard Stare to people who call me posh.

Bel and Maria - It's interesting that you'd both go for the gone pronunciation (but it's wrong )

I say it to rhyme with shone.

Bel and Maria - It's interesting that you'd both go for the gone pronunciation, and you're right to do so!

but they wouldn't pronounce it to rhyme with 'done'

I am a cockney. Brought up in the east end of London and not posh enough to have had 'fancy cakes'. I therefore have no social background to guide my pronunciation.
I feel inadequate in the presence of both skown and skon.
Look on the bright side, over the last 50 odd years I have dragged my sorry backside up the social ladder to a place where I can finally afford the odd 'fancy cake'. I have discovered that as long as you can convey the meaning of "gimme cake" it doesn't matter if you say skown or skon. Just make sure there is butter and cream.
Raise your pinkie when slurping your high tea and craftily swop skown and skon every time they are mentioned.


sceptic

I've seen a map charting the prevalence of rhymes-with-gone vs rhymes-with-drone...but I can't rememember whether it was online or on paper (not found it on teh interwebs yet).

What is well known amongst dialectitians (and possibly dietitians) is the local variations don't follow any discernable pattern - eg there's no clear north/south divide; there are pockets of one pronunciation within another; etc.

Oh...and I understand there are no class differences either.

(I wonder...did Nancy Mitford have anything to say on the topic? U vs Non-U an' a' tha')