2681: Dour’s Pronunciation Change was Inevitable Apr 23, 2024

While English is not written phonologically for a variety of factors including frequent borrowing from other languages and multiple significant sound shifts after spelling standardization, spelling how something is pronounced isn’t always a one-way street. Take the word ‘dour’, which traditionally rhymes with ‘moor’ i.e. [dʊɹ] in Standard American, but is increasingly being articulated as [daʊɹ] which would keep it in line with other similarly spelt words like ‘our’, ‘hour’ and ‘sour’. While there are certainly other ‘-ou-’ combinations that represent the vowel [ʊ] like in ‘would’, it is clear that ‘dour’ was influenced from the spelling, and other words spelt similarly. Notably however, all of these were originally pronounced with the single syllable [ʊɹ] ending since the time of Old English, with ‘hour’ being the latest to change, from [hʊɹ] still being used into the 17th century and onwards in some regional pockets to [haʊɹ] now being universal.