A while back, somebody was talking about dialect-limited rhymes

[conuly]

Over here in linguaphiles.

Here's another link, with a video of another child singing the song, the cutest I've ever seen who wasn't actually a relative of mine!

(Interestingly enough, just on a tangent here, I know of two or three other versions of that rhyme that are standard nursery rhymes in English, that I often have seen in Mother Goose compilations, or elsewhere.)

The other day I picked up a used book, Shoes from Grandpa. It's a cute cumulative story about a girl who gets all sorts of clothes in rhymes.

Except the author is clearly not speaking my dialect here, because she makes some rhymes that I can't make. Scarf and laugh rhyming, I recognize (though for me to make the rhyme would mean changing the vowel in both words), but what really took me by surprise is when she rhyme blouse and bows (like something tied in a bow, not like somebody bowing down). No matter how I work it in my mind, I can't see how they rhyme! Unless one or both of those words is pronounced *very* differently over the pond, not just a little like the earlier example.

Any insight here?

Comments

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

They rhyme for me. Unless she means bows like you tie in ribbons.

[conuly]

That's what she means.

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

Then I have no idea.

Maybe nothing would rhyme so she went as close as possible. I've seen that before.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I'm just guessing here, and this is hard for me to try to convey in text, but when I run through in my head alternate pronunciations someone might use, the best fit for a rhyme is something like blose for blouse. That is it kinda sounds like blow or blows but the s is cut off more sharply than in blows.

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

They rhyme for me. Unless she means bows like you tie in ribbons.

[conuly]

That's what she means.

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

Then I have no idea.

Maybe nothing would rhyme so she went as close as possible. I've seen that before.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I'm just guessing here, and this is hard for me to try to convey in text, but when I run through in my head alternate pronunciations someone might use, the best fit for a rhyme is something like blose for blouse. That is it kinda sounds like blow or blows but the s is cut off more sharply than in blows.