hawking and horking sound the same
I felt some embarrassment when, on asking an American colleague one time, “What bird’s that?” he replied, “That’s a hock.” Normally I’m pretty quick with these differences, but I had already identified it as a hawk and was waiting for him to tell me what kind – him bein’ a huntin’ type an’ all. So, what is he telling me? I thought, and was trying to recall a type of hawk that was called a hock. Decided I must’ve misheard. I *knew it wasn’t a bottle of overly sweet white wine! Of course, I had asked too broad a question for the answer I wanted and he had to repeat himself three times before I caught on.
As a non-rhotic speaker I pronounce hawk and cork alike and, for that matter, caulk. My colleague would pronounce ‘cork’ almost as I would, non-rhotic certainly, but perhaps with an almost unnoticeable diphthong (but not an intrusive ‘r’). His hawk, however, was ‘hock’. Does this suggest an origin on the east coast perhaps? He was living in California at that time but I don’t know his home state.
