[Ads-l] Crayon pronounced dialectally as crown

[Ben Yagoda]

As the Harvard survey reports, the “crown” pronunciation is definitely a thing here in Delaware County, outside of Philadelphia. I moved here in 1994 with crayon-using daughters age 3 and 5, and thus was immediately presented with this initially baffling pronunciation.

> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Date:    Tue, 10 Nov 2020 22:23:15 -0500
> From:    Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM <mailto:bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>>
> Subject: Re: Crayon pronounced dialectally as crown
> 
> The pronunciation of "crayon" was one of the questions in the Harvard
> Dialect Survey conducted by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder. Here are their
> results of (self-reported) responses to the question:
> 
> http://dialect.redlog.net/staticmaps/q_9.html <http://dialect.redlog.net/staticmaps/q_9.html> (includes map)
> 9. crayon
> a. [æ] as in "man" (1 syllable, "cran") (14.13%)
> b. [ejɑ] (2 syllables, "cray-ahn") (48.64%)
> c. [ejɒ] (2 syllables, "cray-awn", where the second syllable rhymes with
> "dawn") (34.53%)
> d. [aw] (I pronounce this the same as "crown") (1.46%)
> e. other (1.24%)
> (11514 respondents)
> 
> You can also see the breakdown by state -- here's Missouri:
> 
> http://dialect.redlog.net/staticmaps/state_MO.html <http://dialect.redlog.net/staticmaps/state_MO.html>
> 9. crayon
> a. [æ] as in "man" (1 syllable, "cran") (6.99%)
> b. [ejɑ] (2 syllables, "cray-ahn") (39.86%)
> c. [ejɒ] (2 syllables, "cray-awn", where the second syllable rhymes with
> "dawn") (47.54%)
> d. [aw] (I pronounce this the same as "crown") (4.98%)
> e. other (0.62%)
> 
> Joshua T. Katz later replicated Vaux and Golder's survey questions with his
> own widely circulated heat maps. Here's the "crayon" map:
> 
> https://www.businessinsider.com/22-maps-that-show-the-deepest-linguistic-conflicts-in-america-2013-6#americans-cant-even-agree-how-to-pronounce-crayon-4 <https://www.businessinsider.com/22-maps-that-show-the-deepest-linguistic-conflicts-in-america-2013-6#americans-cant-even-agree-how-to-pronounce-crayon-4>
> 
> Here's a Language Log post I wrote in 2013 when Katz's maps went viral:
> 
> https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4676 <https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4676>
> 
> --bgz
> 
> On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 6:07 PM Cohen, Gerald Leonard <gcohen at mst.edu <mailto:gcohen at mst.edu>>
> wrote:
> 
>> Would anyone be familiar with the U.S. dialectal pronunciation of
>> 
>> crayon as crown?  A colleague at my university tells me her husband
>> 
>> was at first puzzled and then in disbelief (and mightily amused) when
>> 
>> he first heard her refer to a crown (crayon).  She grew up in Springfield,
>> Missouri
>> 
>> (SW part of the state), as did her sister, who also says crown.  So too:
>> the baby
>> 
>> sitter who took care of her way back when.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Another member of our community also says crown (crayon) and grew up
>> 
>> in central Missouri.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Can anyone share any information on this dialectal feature?
>> 
>> 
>> 


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