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Book and buck don't rhyme as far as I'm concerned. I don't mind people pronouncing buck as book but I don't like it when they pronounce book as buck. Look and luck are different too. The same goes for words like good and should.

I heard a programme on Radio 4 a few years ago about good books and it sounded as though they were talking about gad baks.

Hi Orson

What about wood and food?

I wonder if other languages have so many anomalies - probably not!

I was once ridiculed by an aquaintance for pronouncing "tooth" as "tuth" (as I do). I asked him if he pronounced "book" as "boo-k" rather than "buk".

Chrise

Yet we pronounce `truth` as `trooth` - it`s all weird but we all seem to think our version is the correct one!

too true, tyke!

PaulH@1911. I agree about posh people 'talking down' but many accents seem to be 'put on' to me. They seem like regional affectations. I have flattened vowels and say bath, castle and cubs in a particular way...as they are spelled, not baarth, caarssew and cabs. So Bath Buns often provokes hilarity in the estuary english. Similarly my Newcastle raised eyebrows among the Northern tribes who think it's Nucassl. If bath was baarth and Newcastle was either Noocarssul or Nucassl or Noocarsuw then the words would have been written like that. Don't get me started on Birmingham etc bloimey.

Hi granama1
I think the distinction in the pronunciation of Newcastle is mostly about where the stress is - those in the know stress the second syllable.

Way I bonnie lad....I used to live there and me and me marra used to gan doon thu Toon for the odd stotty cyakye tha nars.

(I did my PhD there).

One local chap said if you go into a pub and listen to the general hubbub, Geordie is quite 'sing-song' but if you go into a pub in Yorkshire it's Morse code 'dahdahdaditditditditdahdahdah'. Hubbubs are quite interesting.

Sorry, stotti key ache, is what I meant to say.

Watching one of those Norwegian dramas on BBC4 I was surprised when they said yem for home. (It's actually hjem but they said yem.) That's because it reminded me of school holidays I spent in County Durham when I knew that to gan yem meant to go home. It cannot be coincidence and there are similar words in Swedish and Danish.

As for tooth, I remember one boy at school who pronounced it tuth and that annoyed me. He was from Birmingham. I cannot find a dictionary that gives that pronunciation so it must be a minority dialect. A little research tells me that the Anglo-Saxons pronounced it so as to rhyme with "both", so that doesn't help.