Posted by Victor Mair
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=71919&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-syllabicity-of-spoken-canton-and-akron
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=71919
[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
[Thanks to Lolita Cable, Barbara Weigand, Jack Knoch, Denny Wenger, Doug Mair, Ines Mair, Heidi Mair, Thomas L. Mair]
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=71919&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-syllabicity-of-spoken-canton-and-akron
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=71919
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