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.
