stars and ours

[James Harbeck]

Just read a poem by a high school student from western Canada that
illustrates a standard Canadian pronunciation rather well: it rhymes
"stars" with "ours" -- quite reasonably, though I'm not used to
seeing those two words matched, perhaps because at least in my
generation and earlier ones, we were taught that "ours" was properly
pronounced like "hours," even if it almost never really was by us.
Evidently even that awareness of [aUrz] as a citation form is
disappearing. (This is from a well-educated kid, too -- a gifted
student, graduating high school at 16.)

That one's also common in much of the US, no?

James Harbeck.

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