The syllabicity of spoken "Canton" and "Akron"
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[Preface: The nitty-gritty questions about pronunciation discussed below are expressed in common spelling (not a phonetic alphabet) because the people who have written them down here are non-phoneticians. What they have recorded are their best approximations of how they think they are saying "Canton".]
After reading "'Cant-idates'" (11/12/25) and "Can't even" (11/13/25), I submitted this comment:
As for "can't", there are quite a few "Cantons" in America. I'm from the one in Stark County Ohio, and some of the people there pronounce the name not as "Can-ton", but as "Cant-un".
This prompted Mark Liberman to ask:
Is that your way to representing [ˈkænʔn̻], i.e. the second syllable as a glottal-onset syllabic nasal?
In turn, that prompted me to ask all the members of my extended family and my high school classmates:
How do you pronounce "Canton"?
Can-ton
or
Cant-on
or
some other way?
It's obvious that I was mainly interested in where the syllable break occurs or if it is indeterminate.
My classmates, family members, and friends kindly replied as follows:
1. I am all for can ton.
2. I say Can-ton run it altogether!!!!!
3. Seems that I pronounce it in several ways. Mostly “Can ton”. But sometimes, when I’m not thinking about it, I’ll say “Cant ten”. Extra T and an E in the second syllable.
I find that often I’m like a mockingbird. My pronunciations change based on the participants and context of the conversation.
I think that’s why I have different pronunciations of Canton. Even with native speakers there is a lot of variety.
(Other members of the lists expressed similar sentiments.)
4. I pronounce it Can ton.
5. First four letters of "canter" (gait of a horse).
6. One member of the family pronounces the name Cánt un, with strong accent on and nasalization of the first syllable and the second syllable also nasalized (but not so heavily) and almost swallowed into the throat.
7. For me it is Can-ton
———-
The following are not specifically / entirely about Canton, Ohio
A. From my Austrian niece-in-law: If you are referring to the Swiss district, the word stress is on the second syllable.
B. From my Sinologist brother, Denis: When "canton" is used to mean an administrative district, the accent is on the first syllable. I have no idea why the accent is placed on the second syllable when it is used as the name of a city in China. Vic, when you looked into this matter, did you find any reason for this? Perhaps it just has to do with the vagaries of usage by English speaking merchants and expatriates. Perhaps they wanted to differentiate the city in Guangdong from the word for an administrative district, so they changed the accent in the first case.
I have never heard an Ohioan pronounce the name of our city with an accent on the second syllable. All my life I've heard it accented on the first syllable.
Never noticed where the syllables are divided. That's a subtle question. The vowel in the second syllable seems to be elided most of the time: [VHM: N.B.!]
CANT-'n…. is close to what I remember hearing. I don't think we would say "CANT-on" or "CAN-ton
C. From Diana Shuheng Zhang (sticking mainly to the Canton, Ohio theme): I'm not a native speaker — but I pronounce it (and my intuition is that many Chinese non-native speakers too) like 'Can-ton. Stressing the first syllable. I am wondering if Indian non-native speakers, and those who are native to languages that habitually place stress on the last syllable (e.g., French), would pronounce it differently (Can-'ton or Cant-'on). Another interesting point might be to survey if the "on" is pronounced in rhyme with the "on" in "cone" or in "congress" — or, the British "scone" /ʌn/ or American "cone" /oʊn/. I guess the best approximation for my own pronunciation of "Can-ton" would be: "Canon" with an infixed "t". :) Perhaps Commonwealth speakers might do "Can-tong", or "Can-tʌn"?
Actually per Denis' question of why the accent is placed on the second syllable when the same word is used as the name of a Chinese city, may I propose a hypothesis that it might be an unconscious “exoticizing” or "hyperforeignistic" pronunciation. Anglophone naming patterns follow English toponym stress rules, many of which stress the first syllable. HOU-ston. PITT-sburgh. DEN-ver. WA-shington. HAMP-shire. HAR-vard. OX-ford. Consequently, CAN-ton, where English speakers naturally use the default English stress to process the word. However, “Canton” for the Chinese city is clearly not an English word. It is a 17th–18th century colonial exonym, based on Portuguese Cantão, which itself was a European mishearing of Guangdong. So loanwords, especially old colonial ones, usually not only enter English with foreign-sounding stress patterns, but are also perceived and processed by the English users as "exotic" — despite that they might share the exact same spelling as a legitimate English toponym. With a pre-signalled "this is not authentic English" mindset, English speakers would unconsciously shift stress away from the "English default" to signify the markedness of the word "Canton" as exotic. There's a socio-linguistic term to describe this phenomenon: "hyperforeignism" or "exoticizing pronunciation" — which I think suits the interesting contrast of "CAN-ton in Ohio" versus "can-TON in China", with respect to American / English speakers' tendency to pronounce them differently — though, naturally.
[VHM: Excellent observations!]
It seems that native speakers who have lived in the same area for their whole lives perceive the pronunciation of their most important toponyms in different ways.
20 miles to the north of Canton is the city of Akron. There are well over a dozen cities, counties, town(ship)s, villages, boroughs, and communities named "Akron" in the United States. Canton and Akron are served by the Akron-Canton Airport, which is approximately 10 miles distant from each of the two cities.
As with "Canton", there is a question about where exactly the syllable break occurs when you say / speak / pronounce "Akron". Does the consonant cluster get split across the two syllables?
Just as "Canton" has two vowels and thus two syllables, so does "Akron". How are the adjoining central consonant pairs, -kr- and -nt-, realized in the speech of different individuals?
We have seen, as reported above, that individuals pronounce "Canton" differently depending on how much they pay attention to what they're saying. If I'm speaking to a large, formal audience, I will clearly separate "can" and "ton" and enunciate the "n" and "t" clearly, "I'm from Cán-tʌn", but if I'm just casually chatting with a few people, I might say "Cant-ʌn" or even [ˈkænʔn̻], losing the dental in the middle.
Selected readings
- "Canton OH colloquialisms" (7/17/22)
- "Local toponymic pronunciations in northwestern Ohio and northern Indiana" (7/4/22)
- "Southern Ohioisms" (9/23/17)
- "The many sights and sounds of 'Buchanan'" (8/26/21)
[Thanks to Lolita Cable, Barbara Weigand, Jack Knoch, Denny Wenger, Doug Mair, Ines Mair, Heidi Mair, Thomas L. Mair]
Mark Liberman said,
November 17, 2025 @ 1:54 pm
"The nitty-gritty questions about pronunciation discussed below are expressed in common spelling (not a phonetic alphabet) because the people who have written them down here are non-phoneticians. What they have recorded are their best approximations of how they think they are saying "Canton"."
Why not have them record their preferred pronunciations, which would get past this problem? (Though not past the problem of self-monitored careful pronunciation vs. spontaneous speech…)
This could trivially be done via a Zoom or Facetime conversation, or even a plain telephone conversation using the recording feature on a smart phone.
Ross Presser said,
November 17, 2025 @ 2:04 pm
In the movie version of the play "Sweet Charity", the song "Rhythm of Life" rhymes it with Scranton. Both words are prounced with "tun" as a second syllable.
– Blew his way to Canton, then to Scranton
https://youtu.be/xKSA049xkiU?si=ifTOOIXLltDGzFSo
Yves Rehbein said,
November 17, 2025 @ 3:06 pm
FWIW take this a an etymological question – where does the syllable break go – and managed to befuddle myself. In my local idolect, Kante ("edge") exists as a synonym to Ecke ("corner", German cognate to edge) in the sense of area (e.g my "neck" of the woods). The Latin etymology of French canton points to Celtic, also in the sense of "rim, edge" or "corner", which is at the root of the placename:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Canton#Etymology_2
It is four clicks to French canton. I would almost have said Allemanic is more likely vis-a-vis Swiss Kanton (county, district or "state" [thus Wiktionary] to the degree that Swiss cantons are independent in the assembly); ultimately uncertain.
Alternatively, I suppose it could be the case that -ton is etymological "town", in which case it would be no big surprise that the syllable boundary is respected. The Wiktionary confirms e.g. Washington. Surprisingly though, town is also held to be of Celtic origin, and the vowel coda is originally long in either case. So, that's indecisive.
This is no excuses for the bad pun of "cant-idate" (as per the lead). The flapped t does excuse it, though it takes some tolerance to accept for a foreign language learner. On the one hand, my puns on final t/d are unsuccessfull, e.g. knip in the butt as an honest mishearing. On the other hand, I recall Texans on vacation did not recognize "fancy", whereas flapped t is described as northern American, which is nothing to say about British ("fantsy" is already Middle English).
Taken at face value, then, Candid and cognate Welsh cann ("brilliant") would make for a nice place name in the spirit of the pun
Chris Button said,
November 17, 2025 @ 3:37 pm
Cant.on in Ohio
Can.ton in China
Jarek Weckwerth said,
November 17, 2025 @ 5:16 pm
@ Chris Button So, with the tongue firmly in the cheek, you mean ˈkæntɑːn vs. ˈkæntɑːn?
Julian said,
November 17, 2025 @ 5:29 pm
68yo Australian here:
City in China, should I want to be old fashioned: CAN-TON with short A (like can=be able, not long A like can = tin can); O like scone, not schwa; and double stress like fish-shop (there are a number of two-syllable Australian place names with that odd pattern (Dungog, Taree, Culcairn…). Offhand I can't think of any non-place name words like that apart from the fish-shop type).
Beach on Tuggerah Lake on the Central Coast of New South Wales: CAN-ton (same but with only one stress). Memories of those sand-in-the-pants feet-burning-on-the-asphalt holidays of childhood.
Lucas Christopoulos said,
November 17, 2025 @ 6:36 pm
"to the degree that Swiss cantons are independent in the assembly); ultimately uncertain."
Swiss cantons (canton de Vaud, canton de Fribourg, Appenzell etc.). are as the English "county." With the difference that they set their own political system, constitution, education system etc. Unlike the the rest of Europe (and most of "Western Democracies"), Switzerland is a "Direct Democracy," with "popular initiatives," "Mandatory Referendums" etc. the cantons have their own parliaments.
Terry K. said,
November 17, 2025 @ 7:50 pm
Gwang zhau for the city in China. Though I'm familiar with the term Cantonese, I've never had a sense of Canton (in China) as a place.
As for the city in Ohio, my inclination is that I'd most likely pronounce it like the two words can and ton. Because I'd most likely be using it in a context calling for careful articulation. But, if it was a place I referred to regularly, I'm quite certain that is not how I would pronounce it.
Victor Mair said,
November 17, 2025 @ 8:23 pm
@Terry K.
Guangdong (Guang East), is the name of China's most populous and wealthiest province.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangdong
It is paired with Guangxi (Guang West).
Their toponym, Guang ("Broad") goes back to the Han Dynasty, about two thousand years ago.
Chas Belov said,
November 17, 2025 @ 9:45 pm
Former Pittsburgher here.
CANT?n, Ohio
CAN-TON, China
AKrn, Ohio
I've never been to either Canton – have been to HK – but have been to Akron multiple times in the long past to visit relatives.
Tom Dawkes said,
November 18, 2025 @ 4:43 am
Cardiff (UK) has a district names Canton [k'antən ~ k'ˈantn̩]. The can- element is assigned to a Welsh name Canna, which appears in the name of the adjoining district Pontcanna "bridge of Canna". The -ton element is assigned to an English element meaning "large farm", and a Welsh form Trecanna is now used in Welsh language contexts, deriving from Welsh tref "farm>village"