Hello-
I am curious, Paul: do your wife and kids
pronounce the “merry/marry” group as Midwesterners do? I was
raised here in CT and I find that I pronounce the merry-Mary-marry complex with
the same vowel sound (although may is, as Richard said, like bay). Now I
wonder if this is a “New Englandism” or if it is the result of
having a father born and bred in Michigan.
I do pronounce orange with the “or”
sound, but there are other words I use which shift pronunciation depending on
context. Aunt, for instance, is a word I pronounce with an “aw”
sound in nearly every case – but then I have an Aunt Lori, and the word then is
pronounces like “ant.”
Dialect fascinates me.
-patty
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of
English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul E. Doniger
Sent: Saturday, March 18, 2006
8:41 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: merry, marry, Mary
Your pronunciation matches my own to a tee, but then,
I too was born and raised in NYC. Here's another word that holds some
fascination for me: orange. In my ear the first syllable sounds like the
word 'are', but my wife and kids, who are New Englanders, pronounce it
like the word 'or'! The opportunities for teasing are endless.
As a TA at the University
of Iowa, I once performed a
magic trick for my students. I wrote the words “merry,”
“marry,” and “Mary” on the board, turned my back to the
board, and had one of the students point randomly to one word after another. I
asked the only student in the class from New
York to pronounce the word being pointed to (which I could not see).
I amazed the class by correctly spelling each word he pronounced (which all
sound the same to Midwestern ears).
In my (New
York native) dialect there are four different and
distinct vowel sounds after the m’s in the following sentence:
Phoneticians out there
can correct me, but I think my pronunciation of the vowels might be described
as follows:
merry – lax mid
front vowel, like the e in bet
may – tense mid front
vowel, as in bay
marry – lax low
front vowel, as most Americans (but not, say, Chicagoans) pronounce back and
cat
Mary – vowel
between low front and mid front (the one many Chicagoans use in back and cat).
Midwesterners generally
pronounce merry, marry, and Mary the way New Yorkers pronounce Mary.
________________________________
Richard Veit
Department of English
University
of North
Carolina Wilmington
From: Assembly
for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Beth Scholler
Sent: Saturday, March 18, 2006
4:35 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Question: Language
change and malapropism
" it's hard to hear the difference among the
words, merry, marry, and Mary (the all sound like merry).
I'm from the midwest and they have always sounded
alike, the meaning being made clear in context. Lippi-Green also made the same
reference, but I'm curious--how are they "supposed" to sound? Or,
perhaps it's better to ask how other parts of the country pronounce them.
lurking student and future English teacher
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