Sunday, January 22, 2012

pronunciation - What's with the 'o' in 'one'?

Generally, o's at the start of a word are either short (as in 'operation') or long (as in 'open'), or related sounds. However, the word 'one' has a very different initial sound, which (as far as I can tell, from playing around with Mathematica's WordData constructs) is unique apart from related words like 'once', 'oneness' and 'oneself'.



How did this o come to be pronounced this way? Or, alternatively, how did this /wĘŚ/ come to be spelt with an o?

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