Pronouncing the “N” as separate syllable at the end of words like “known” and “pattern”

Question

Over time, I have heard people pronounce the "n" on words like "known" (NO-en) and "pattern" (PAT-r-en), as though it were a separate syllable. The instances of my hearing such have been rare ones, but I can't help but think this is a remnant of some regional dialect, or perhaps due to European roots.

Where did this pronunciation originate?

Answer 1

I was brought up in North Essex (proper Essex, not that stuff near London they make jokes about). We always pronounced know-en as two syllables. The same goes for similar words. I still pronounce it that way, even though others look at me strangely. I think it goes back to the East Saxon dialect. I'm patriotic!

Answer 2

I have a guess for why this happens for past participles, with very little evidence to back it up. I do it for past participles such as known, grown, drawn, hewn, sewn, blown, flown, thrown, shown, mown (so mown is pronounced as in Moe 'n Larry). I believe I got this from my mother. Her father grew up in a German-speaking town in the Midwest. In German, all regular verbs have past participles that end with 't', and all irregular ones either end with 't' or 'en' (except for tun, meaning do, with past participle getan). So for a German learning English, it would be fairly natural to pronounce these past participles as if they ended with en.

The pronunciation of pattern may be a completely different phenomenon, considering @djm's comment on the Irish pronunciation of pattern.

Answer 3

Usually these types of words come from ancient times (Middle English, Anglo-Saxon, Gaelic). So for a word like known that comes from knowen (pronounced something like NOu-En), some people tend to do the emphasis as it would in former times.

I have also seen this type of behavior in foreign speakers… like myself.