Who would think that a simple word and confection as scone could be so controversial. Every time we celebrate a birthday at work, we have cakes. One of our number enjoys a cream scone, so there is always a packet in the mix. This always leads to a debate about the pronunciation - scone, pronounced "skon" to rhyme with gone, or "skone" to rhyme with cone.
Every time this happens I am driven to distraction! My first degree was heavily linguistics based, so I try to explain… The main misunderstanding, which arises every time we eat a scone, is that "skone", to rhyme with cone, is posh and southern, and "skon", to rhyme with gone, is not posh, and northern. So, I’ve found a map to illustrate how the word scone is something of an anomaly, and doesn’t follow the standard rules of English. There are lots of other words, of course, but none of them crop up so often or so infuriatingly!
I found this wonderful map which explains how the pronunciation of this word varies across the UK, and doesn't really follow the usual dialect rules.
One of the aspects of this map I find most fascinating is that whilst "skon" is most common in the north of England, "skone" is most prevalent in Durham, Lincolnshire, Northumberland and Derbyshire. None of these counties could be in any way described as southern. Most of the the south is fairly evenly divided, apart from London. So, this pronunciation conundrum is clearly not a north/south issue. As I point out every time this pesky subject arises, even the Queen pronounced it "skon"!
So, now I have a really good map which illustrates the argument very clearly. I think I'll be using visual aids next time we have birthday cakes! And that's before we get onto the jam first or cream first debate!