this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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Is this a quote? I don’t understand how it doesn’t rhyme.
It does in an American accent, I guess
In my accent (UK), "cross" rhymes with "boss", and "sauce" rhymes with "horse". Pretty sure boss and horse don't rhyme.
If I'm understanding correctly then the words "sauce" and "source" are indistinguishable when spoken by a brit?
Pretty much yeah!
Source will have emphasis on the r.
Its important because if youre at the dinner table and ask for sauce wrong, mum will pass you 273,000 lines of javascript.
That's borderline child abuse
and horse doesn't??
Depends on who you ask.
It’s the same in Aussie English
Looks that way...
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/sauce
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/source
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/course
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/horse
Wait, so the non-rhotic accent adds an "r" into words that don't have one? I guess all your "r"s at the ends of words need to go somewhere...
Huh? Well, yes, but that's not what's happening, here. What you're referencing is "that sofa is red" becoming "that sofa rizz red". I'm not adding an "r" to "sauce" haha.
Are you adding an r to cross or removing one from horse?
Neither?
You are adding or removing a letter sound if horse rhymes with sauce.
Eh. The British phonetic for horse is "haws". And the British phonetic for sauce is "saws".
Apparently the Brits lose as many R's as those of us in New England.
'Saws' is the standard American pronunciation - au makes a sound like 'aw'.
British adds an r to sauce.
I actually grabbed formal pronunciation (though it was a simplified form). The proper form for UK pronunciation for sauce would be: sɔːs, often typed as "saws"
That ɔː symbol is typically associated with the word "thought", and is best described by me as an "awww" sound with a slight hint of an "r" hidden in it.
The formal US pronunciation is sɑːs (much easier to type, lol). The a: sound is the "ah" sound in "father". That's often typed as "saas" because it's not a heavy h
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/sauce
British: I'd type it as "sawse"
American: I'd type it as "sahse"... but as I said, it's not a heavy h, so it's not quite as accurate as
saasI'm not familiar with phonetic spelling at all really, especially when it comes to British English, so I'm not approaching the subject with any authority..
I dont know if it's just a disconnect between proper phonetics and real language or differences in accents, but after listening 3 examples form different speakers, there is a very present r sound. That not being present in the phonetic spelling is confusing to me. And the 'translatwd' 'Saws' nor 'sawse' convey how the word is spoken. I've actually seen 'sawse' used as a stylized American spelling with emphasis on the 'aw'.
The difference between standard pronunciation and conversational pronunciation is staggering. Factors for that include
importance in the sentence. If you order tomato sauce with your pasta, the "sauce" part is rather unimportant as it can be inferred from standards.
surrounding words. In a sentence, preceding and subsequent words (or part-of-words) can influence the pronunciation.
vigilance. Tired speakers tend to slur their words more than usual.
general talking speed. The faster the individual talks, the more corners they will cut with their pronunciation.
Words are pronounced according to the speakers expectation of the conversational partner. You speak slower and more clearly to someone learning English as a second+ language than to your childhood buddy.
Word lists without context are much better for judging what people expect to hear when they anticipate the word. Here are some samples for the word sauce and horse. The 'r' in horse is pretty much silent in BE, but not in AE.
Source: I studied computational linguistics with a minor in phonetics.
Honestly, the every British UK audio I hear for the word "sauce" sounds like "Saws" without pronouncing the S at the end as a "Z" sound. I wonder if it's a dialect?
I'm Bostonian (give or take), so I'm unaware of missing R's most of the time, but hyper-aware of them when I listen for them. British folks say "sauce" similar to how I would. Throwing that R in the trash.
Nope, just not rhoticising the "r" in "horse". Different to just removing it, which would create "hose".
Any r sound at all in sauce is adding a sound. If you notice it doesn't have an r.
There's no 'r' sound in sauce, you're right, and that's why I don't put one there :P
Well unless you speak differently than the now 5 differently accented British speakers I just listened to, you do indeed add an r sound to sauce.
The British pronunciation of horse, despite some subtlety that varies across accents on the r (which is also a thing here) is not remarkable from an American ear.
If it were an issue of rhoticity your horse would sound more like the American sauce, but its the other way around.
You're being rather pushy, here. I do not add R to sauce, or remove one from horse. I, like many other English speakers, just don't rhoticise the R in horse.
Okay? I didn't say anything about being remarkable. It's just different. Rhotic accents will hit the R, while non-rhotic ones won't. I'm not sure what your problem is, here.
It is an issue of rhoticity. Literally the only difference is the rhotic R. I say horse like sauce because I don't rhoticise the R. This doesn't make my horse sound like an American sauce - and why would it? Why would a non-rhotic speaker pronounce a word without an R anything like a rhotic speaker's R?
A non rhotic r in horse does not make a non rhotic r in sauce. That's not a question of rhoticity because how you pronounce the r sound doesn't matter....its that there's an r sound at all in sauce.
You agreed with this in another comment regarding the British pronunciation of sauce sounding like 'source'. That again has nothing to do with the rhoticity of the r in source, only that there is an r in sauce.
Yet here you refuse to come to the same conclusion that you did on another comment because 🤷
I am not saying this is specific to you, I'm saying this is a difference in the pronunciation of the word between british and american english. I think the issue here is the comparison to another word rather than someone just linking side by side pronunciations of the word in question: sauce. Horse and source are irrelevant. Side by side there is a clear addition of an r sound in sauce from American English to British. Neither is wrong or right, and there's nothing you should be getting offended over here.
There is no R sound in sauce.
There is no R in sauce.
Been pretty consistent on this, dude.
There is no R sound in any of this. As someone else pointed out, it's an "aw" sound. Saws. Haws.
You can type that all you want, but the fact is that there is an r sound when you say sauce . Delusional, I guess.
It's an "aw" sound, like in "saw".
...which UK accent? Big place, loads of regional differences.
I'm from the East midlands.
"Why Im I being fired, Bauss? Is it because I pronounce it 'Hoss?'"
Probably, yeah
Because sauce and horse are long and cross and boss are short, right?
I'm not a native speaker but our lord and savior Dr Lindsey made a great video about British English and what Americans get wrong about it.
For me as a second language learner, cross rhymes with boss but sauce neither rhymes with horse nor boss. But that's just me tho.
Great video! His stuff is brilliant. I'm a native speaker but every now and then one of his videos will pop up in my feed and I'll end up learning about how I talk lol. Highly recommended for anyone interested in fascinating deep dives into speech.
Whenever there are these kinds of threads there's always loads of people posting things like "sauce rhymes with boss not horse" or something.
This rhyming and text based approach is confusing because in different accents words might be pronounced differently than how the writer is pronouncing them and they may all rhyme or none of them may rhyme.
If you're not familiar with phonetic spelling (most people I know aren't) then audio clips with the differences are probably the way to go. Just typing random words isn't a great way of comparing accents.
Per the (extremely fascinating) video, it seems that phonetic spelling from the dictionary doesn't always capture the correct pronunciation, or mechanically what is happening with the mouth... E.g. US "blue" with the 'w' at the end where we release the lips when done with the o. Hm.
I hadn't really thought much about how, mechanically, one has to reposition one's tongue, jaw, and lips to shift between the end and beginning of words and that can lead to a glide(?) or modulation if we speak without stopping airflow between words.
I suppose we should think of pronunciation in terms of motor planning for tongue, jaw, lips, etc. to be more accurately descriptive.