What’s curious is that the various pronunciations of “mom” and “mum” only differ very slightly in closeness and roundedness: mom: /mɑm/ - open back

What’s curious is that the various pronunciations of “mom” and “mum” only differ very slightly in closeness and roundedness: mom: /mɑm/ - open back unrounded mom: /mɒm/ - open back rounded mom: /mɔm/ - open-mid back rounded mum: /mʌm/ - open-mid back unrounded Well, the odd one out is bits of Northern England: mum: /mʊm/ - near-close near-back rounded Still, those subtle phonetic distinctions, and their associated variations in spelling, matter quite a lot to people—if you (or a word you use) lack those slight markers, you’re “not from around here, are you?” But maybe not—as the article describes, often a word or pronunciation is just finding its way back to where it was originally from. People love to defend their language, but rarely know the subject deeply enough to go more than one level deep—an English teacher told me so, so it must be true!