Hour/Our homonyms?

Juan   Tuesday, August 17, 2004, 12:28 GMT
They sound slightly different to me, especially the schwa at the end of the two words.

OUR: Sounds like the first schwa in P[O]LICE

HOUR: Sounds like the last schwa in IDE[A]
Juan   Tuesday, August 17, 2004, 14:30 GMT
Come on. Any native speakers out there? Jordi, what's your take on this? You can sympathise with me, can't you? This is specially in reference to non-rhotic variety.
Boy   Tuesday, August 17, 2004, 15:12 GMT
Juan,

My friends and I have been grown up to pronounce these two words wrongly. We used to pronounce them like this:

Our [ .. 'we:(r) ]
Hour [ .. 'wa:(r) ]

I notice that native speakers of my country still pronounce them like that.
Anyways, your sugesstion looks to me correct. I now pronounce them the way you have suggested above.
Damian   Tuesday, August 17, 2004, 16:42 GMT
You're probably fed up hearing this from me but I slightly pronounce the "r" so a schwa is non existent. Also, both words sound more or less the same. To me, some people from the south of England seem to say something like "aaaah" for both words but they are hampered by having a marble in their mouths. :) In Yorkshire I heard one or two mainly old people actually aspirate the "h" in hour.....I had never heard that before so I reckon it is dialectal locally.
Random Chappie   Tuesday, August 17, 2004, 17:13 GMT
Sorry, I've got a chunk of nectarine in my mouth.

I've been on the internet for two aahs.
Aah fam'ly's from the saa(u)th of England.

The "aaah" isn't as exaggerated as some may be tempted to think (judging from the string of "a"s) but for the most part, Damian is correct.

Actually, I do pronounce a very slight schwa at the end of "hour" but I don't after "our". Thus, "I've been on the internet for two aah-as."

Also, I've noticed that I'm beginning to pronounce "about" as uh-baaht, and so are many other people from the south of England. Bad, bad, bad, must change habit.
Konrad Valentin   Tuesday, August 17, 2004, 17:54 GMT
They are homophones (i.e. sound the same).
Ailian   Tuesday, August 17, 2004, 18:16 GMT
They are homophones for many dialects, but not all (as Random Chappie beautifully demonstrated). ;) I know that my Bostonian friends would say "ah" for "our", but "aah-ah" for "hour", which is pretty much the same as M Chappie, it seems. :)

Thinking of other dialects, I know of some who pronounce "are", "our", and "hour" the same as well as some who pronounce "are" and "our" the same, but not "hour". Crazy, no?
Jordi   Tuesday, August 17, 2004, 18:39 GMT
This is how I pronounce this. There definitely is a schwa at the end of both and they sound exactly the same to me.
Our [ a'ue ]
Hour [a'ue ]
Sanja   Tuesday, August 17, 2004, 19:12 GMT
I pronounce them like Jordi (I'm not a native English speaker though).
Homonyms   Tuesday, August 17, 2004, 22:05 GMT
What about ''flour'' and ''flower''? Do you pronounce ''flour'' and ''flower'' the same way?

I do. I pronounce them both with two syllables [flau-..r].
Mxsmanic   Tuesday, August 17, 2004, 22:34 GMT
I usually pronounce "are" and "our" identically, as monosyllables ([Ar]). I pronounce "hour," "flower," and "flour" with two syllables, a dipthong followed by the unstressed vowel with rhoticity ([AU@r]), and they all rhyme. Sometimes I also pronounce "our" the same way, but it's unusual for me.

For what it's worth, I'm a native speaker of General American English without any particular regional accent.

There's much variation on fine points of pronunciation like these, even from one native speaker to another, and in fact even in a given individual's own speech (as in my case). It's really not something to fret over; it's a bit like deciding between [iD@r] and [AID@r] for "either" (I can never even remember which one I use most often myself).
D   Wednesday, August 18, 2004, 00:08 GMT
'Our' can be pronounced like 'are' or like 'hour'. So either
'our hour' or 'our are' will be a pair that sounds the same.
Many people change from one pronunciation to the other depending
on the stress of the word (since hour sounds like two syllables but
are is one short syllable)

Nobody pronounces 'hour' and 'are' the same.

Flour and flower sound the same in all the American accents I know, but the m-w online dictionary gives them slightly different pronunciations.
Most people make them bouth sound like 'hour'. This is a more subtle pair because it is mostly influenced by accent, whereas in every accent we distinguish 'hour' from 'are'.
Juan   Wednesday, August 18, 2004, 02:04 GMT
Jordi wrote:
<<This is how I pronounce this. There definitely is a schwa at the end of both and they sound exactly the same to me.
Our [ a'ue ]
Hour [a'ue ]>>

(Perdona mi ortagrafia y gramatica, pero es que tengo tiempo de no escribir en espanol. Tambien el teclado no le he podido configurar. Ademas a Tom le gustan que escriba uno solo en ingles)

Jordi, para mi la vocal "schwa" suena bastante diferente en ciertas palabras. Tiene una tendencia frustrante a cambiar. No se si tu opinas lo mismo. Te dare ejemplos para ver si lo puedes ver de mi punto de vista. Haber si los hablantes nativos de ingles tambien pueden entender lo que quiero decir.

IDE[A] En esta palabra, la "schwa" (que es la ultima vocal) suena come una version corta de la vocal en B[U]T.

OC[EA]N, VIS[IO]N, SEV[E]N Aqui la "schwa" suena, en mi opinion, como un "e" breve de P[E]T cerca de la punta de la boca.

GU[I]TAR, F[I]NANCE, D[I]RECTION La "schwa" suena un poco como la vocal en P[I]T

P[O]LICE, ID[O]L, TABL[E] La "schwa" una vez mas suena comu una version corta de la vocal en la palabra SH[O]T, WH[A]T, P[O]T.

T[O]DAY, T[O]MORROW, KANG[A]ROO Otra vez la schwa tiene a dar a la vocales en W[OU]LD, G[OO]D, P[U]T es como una corta "u" etc.....

Aun asi ellos claman que es la misma vocal!? Eso es absurdo para mi.
Te lo juro que eso es lo que escucho. El diccionario tambien me apoya en esto. He visto que en una palabras como FOR, BUT, WAS, WOULD, THAT etc tienen mas de una manera de pronunciar las. Es decir, existe el WEAK FORM donde se reemplaza la vocal corriente por una SCHWA. Es increible. El ingles me deja SPEECHLESS. :-)
Juan   Wednesday, August 18, 2004, 02:10 GMT
In English

IDE[A], IKE[A] Schwa tendency to sound like a short version of the vowel in B[U]T

OC[EA]N, VIS[IO]N, SEV[E]N Schwa sounds like a short version of vowel in P[E]T

GU[I]TAR, F[I]NANCE, D[I]RECTION Schwas sound like short version of vowel in P[I]T

P[O]LICE, ID[O]L, TABL[E] Short version of P[O]T

T[O]DAY, T[O]MORROW, KANG[A]ROO Short version of G[OO]D, W[OUL]D
Juan   Wednesday, August 18, 2004, 02:15 GMT
Boy wrote:
<<Anyways, your sugesstion looks to me correct. I now pronounce them the way you have suggested above.>>

Yeah, for me the schwa in HOUR has a tendency to sound like an A (PART) sound and the schwa in OUR a tendency to sound like an O (PORT) sound. They're both at the tip of the mouth. That's all they have in common in my humble opinion.