Re: watch your language!

Dorothy J Heydt wrote:

In article <OGSJi.274$ih1.124@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Mike Schilling <mscottschilling@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Kurt Busiek" <kurt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:200709241012258930-kurt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 2007-09-24 09:48:27 -0700, "pullo" <pullo004@xxxxxxxxx> said:


"Richard R. Hershberger" <rrhersh@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1190650209.436473.194100@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Sep 24, 12:04 pm, Ben Goodman <good...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[mary/merry/marry]
Some people genuinely can't hear the difference. I would hazard
to >>>>> guess that this is most people who grow up in areas where
the sounds >>>>> are confounded. I suspect that this is mostly with
vowels. People can >>>>> hear the differnence between non-native
consonants even if they can't >>>>> say them.

Merry is distinctive but I'm having trouble thinking of an audio
distinction between Mary and marry. In written form they sound
different - not that that makes any sense. :)

I grew up one town over from Lawrence Watt-Evans, and while
there's a >> world of linguistic differences, we have the Mary/marry
difference in >> common, at least.

"Mary" rhymes with "wary." "Marry" rhymes with "Larry."

Well, yes, and for me they all rhyme with each other. Mind you,
I can hear the distinctions others make between "merry" (vowel
as in "met"), "marry" (vowel as in "cat"), "Mary" (vowel as in
"day" with a different offglide). I just don't pronounce them
that way.

Another way to say it is that "Marry" and "Larry" have the same
vowel as "can" as in "able to", while "Mary" has the same vowel as
"can" as in "metal container".

In my dialect, western USian, Larry/Mary/marry/merry all have
the same vowel, and so do can 'container / can 'able'.* Though
the latter vowel, if unstressed, frequently degrades to schwa,
like most unstressed vowels. I remember, though, reading about
another dialect (probably southeastern) in which a farmwife whose
vegetable garden has been unusually productive says, "We'll eat
what we kin, and what we cain't, we'll can."

*And it's not the same vowel as Mary/merry/marry, either.

The newsgroup alt.usage.english has initialisms for some of the various
mergers. MIMIM means "Mary is merry is marry". Another is CIC, which is
"caught is cot".

St. Louis is basically MIMIM but CINC (caught is not cot).




Brian

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