"one" as [wQn]

[Legion]

Wiktionary claims there are dialects of British English where "one" is pronounced [wɒn]. Is this true, and if it is, what are those dialects?

[Astraios]

All of them except posh people and Welsh people, IME.


EDIT: There's also people who pronounce <won> as /wQn/ too, but that seems to be a different thing. I have /Q/ in <one> but not in <won>, for example.

[AnTeallach]

Wiktionary claims there are dialects of British English where "one" is pronounced [wɒn]. Is this true, and if it is, what are those dialects?

http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2010/09/one.html

[finlay]

All of them except posh people and Welsh people, IME.


EDIT: There's also people who pronounce <won> as /wQn/ too, but that seems to be a different thing. I have /Q/ in <one> but not in <won>, for example.

Northerners only. It doesn't happen in scotland either, and I don't tend to hear it from southerners.

[linguoboy]

So what happens to want in these dialects? (IMD, won, one, and want all have the same vowel, but I know Chicagoans for whom want is /wahnt/.)

[Astraios]

Nothing, I wouldn't have thought. It's just /wQnt/.

[Travis B.]

So what happens to want in these dialects? (IMD, won, one, and want all have the same vowel, but I know Chicagoans for whom want is /wahnt/.)

Mind you, these Chicagoans probably front historical /ɑː/ (LOT, PALM) to [a], resulting in a front-back contrast of [a] versus [ɑ]. (My mother has this, and she's from Kenosha.)

[finlay]

So what happens to want in these dialects? (IMD, won, one, and want all have the same vowel, but I know Chicagoans for whom want is /wahnt/.)

I have /wʌnt/ – that seems to be limited to Scotland, at least in the UK, though. Most Englandy accents have /wɒnt/ and /wʌn/ - ie a different vowel.

[Richard W]

The pronunciation [wɒn] for "one" and indeed for "won" is generally assumed to be a spelling pronunciation, which would make it a (lower?) middle class phenomenon. Other examples include "wonder" (thus homophonous with "wander") and "trouble". The prefixes "con-" and "com-" show a lot of variation between the two vowels, which is not to be confused with vowel weakening to schwa.