#also 'obsessed with' and 'fascinated by' are standard tumblr speak that arent intended to be value statements about people

[shatar-aethelwynn]

*nervously raises a hand* ummm as a former linguistics student who still casually interacts with the field I too am fascinated by the idea of cone and gone sounding the same. But it's not a judgement call about you. It's a fascination with the sounds. How do your other vowels sound? Which dialect of English did you first learn (which would shape how your default vowels are pronounced? Is there a specific sound environment situation involved here, such as being follwed by the nasal n? What are the phonetic rules of your native language, and do any of them apply in this situation? Do you have a sound merger between the different o-vowels that is observable in other words? Or does your native language lack the specific English vowels (we have so many of them) so in English its just hard for you to make the distinction? This is a topic that is genuinely fascinating. I want to hear you speak. Not for explotification reasons, but because language differences are amazing and I love to know about them so I can be excited that they exist. I can, in fact, fake an accent that allows me to say these words with the same vowel, so I know its theoretically possible even if I dont know whether that fake accent actually exists anywhere. Its a Descriptive not Prescriptive fascination.

let's settle this

rb + say in tags where you're from if you'd like