Teacher Discussion Forums

The OED claims "poor" rhymes with "cure", and even uses the word "poor" as the exemplar of that vowel sound.

For me, the word rhymes with "saw". How about you?

Do you agree that many speakers - including those who are basically RP speakers - use a different pronunciation, making "poor" an ill-chosen word for a chart demonstrating the phonemes of RP?

To my mind "poor" to rhyme with "cure" is upper-class English, and if I say it I seem to be imitating her majesty, and one feels one ought to say "shew" instead of "show" as well. (anyone know the phonetic symbol for the vowel in "shew"?)

I agree that poor rhymes with saw, but wonder if it may be that in some accents, cure rhymes with both of them? Does the Queen say "cyoor"? I say "cyewer", rhyming with fewer.

"poor" sounds like "lure" to me but not at all like "cure" or "saw"

For me, poor and saw have the /Ɔ:/ vowel while cure and lure have /ʊə/.

n.b. the phonetic symbols work in my preview, I don't know if they will for everyone else.

My accent has cure with a /j / before the diphthong but none there for lure

I have a bit of a /j/ in lure too, but it's less pronounced than in cure. I wonder if it can be considered more as a transitional glide between the /k/ at the back of the mouth and the /ʊə/, which is more central.

I'm sorry, I should have perhaps made it clear that for the OED there is a y or /j/ sound after the consonant in "cure", while in poor there is not (for that would make "pure").

Where are you from again Macavity? Poor is said in the way the OED describes in some places in the North of England, I believe. (sometimes with a very pronounced split in the oo-uh so it sounds like two vowels)

I'm from East Anglia but have a Surrey family background. It's always hard to try and think what is said in an East Anglian accent because there are always people mixing it up with RP (or other accents) and little dialect consciousness in the region, and of course variety within the region too, but I think you can often hear both pronunciations there.

pure and cure are the same for me, and poor is just like pure without the "y", so for me they rhyme.