Alexa Settles Scone Debate Once And For All

Alexa has finally settled one of the debates about scones once and for all.

Amazon's virtual assistant has revealed how 'scone' should be pronounced, and we predict there will be a lot of disgruntled foodies out there once they hear it for themselves.

In celebration of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, you can ask Alexa how to say 'scone' simply by asking: "Alexa, what’s the correct way to pronounce scone?"

Alexa will reply and say that the correct way to say the word 'scone' is for it to rhyme with 'gone' when speaking the Queen's English.

Alexa will reply: "I pronounce it scone, to rhyme with gone, just like the Queen does."

There will be countless people who will feel vindicated by Alexa's answer, however, many Brits will continue to argue that the correct way to say 'scone' is for it to rhyme with 'cone'.

The debate over how to say ‘scone’ has divided friends and families for decades.

A study conducted by Cambridge University in 2016 looked into the different pronunciations of ‘scone’ and found regional differences for the way Brits say it.

The research found that pronouncing ‘scone’ to rhyme with ‘gone’ is 'much more common in the north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with between 80-100 per cent of people in these regions reporting this answer', the research report states.

People say ‘scone’ rhymes with ‘cone’ more frequently in the south of England. 

The debate over how to say ‘scone’ has divided friends and families for decades.

Lead researcher Dr Adrian Leemann said: "Everyone has strong views about how this word is pronounced but until we launched the app in January, we knew rather little about who uses which pronunciation and where. 

“Our data shows that for the North and Scotland, ‘scone’ rhymes with ‘gone’, for Cornwall and the area around Sheffield it rhymes with ‘cone’ – while for the rest of England, there seems to be a lot of community-internal variation.

"In the future we will further unpick how this distribution is conditioned socially.”

Now that's settled, do we put the jam or the cream first?!