According to Mxsmanic, the distinction that many people make between ''Mary'', ''marry'' and ''merry'' is not phonemic. Here's what he has to say about it:
Quote-''There is no reason to teach ESL students to make these distinctions; a great many native speakers do not make them, and so they are irrelevant.
As Steve says, ESL students have much more pressing problems than this.
The goals of ESL teaching are entirely pragmatic: students pay lots of money to be taught to communicate effectively in English, both in writing and in speaking. They do not care about linguistic trivia. The distinctions between mary, merry, and marry, where they even exist (I don't make them as a speaker of American English), are insignificant to the natives, and thus are doubly insignificant to ESL learners. ESL learners have to spend their time learning to distinguish between pan and pin, or between thick and sick.
An interesting thing about ESL is that the goals are significantly different from those of merely academic language classes of the type found in many general-purpose education institutions. ESL has a specific, extremely practical target, like job training or the teaching of a trade. Academic instruction has no real target; it's just a "for your information" type of teaching.
I prefer ESL because there's a clear objective and there is a clear sense of accomplishment when that objective is reached or approached. Traditional academic teaching is largely a waste of time in comparison.
I'm not sure what the utility of teaching the 3M distinction is if a majority of English speakers don't make the distinction, particularly since it is not phonemic (minimal pairs involving Mary vs. merry are extremely rare). Even without training, they'll recognize the words in all three forms; and unless they want to speak with a _specific_ pronunciation without an accent, there's no point in learning the distinctions that I can see.
The distinction between cot and caught is similar, as is the distinction between voiced and voiceless 'w'.''
http://www.antimoon.com/forum/2004/5586-2.htm
Is that true?
Quote-''There is no reason to teach ESL students to make these distinctions; a great many native speakers do not make them, and so they are irrelevant.
As Steve says, ESL students have much more pressing problems than this.
The goals of ESL teaching are entirely pragmatic: students pay lots of money to be taught to communicate effectively in English, both in writing and in speaking. They do not care about linguistic trivia. The distinctions between mary, merry, and marry, where they even exist (I don't make them as a speaker of American English), are insignificant to the natives, and thus are doubly insignificant to ESL learners. ESL learners have to spend their time learning to distinguish between pan and pin, or between thick and sick.
An interesting thing about ESL is that the goals are significantly different from those of merely academic language classes of the type found in many general-purpose education institutions. ESL has a specific, extremely practical target, like job training or the teaching of a trade. Academic instruction has no real target; it's just a "for your information" type of teaching.
I prefer ESL because there's a clear objective and there is a clear sense of accomplishment when that objective is reached or approached. Traditional academic teaching is largely a waste of time in comparison.
I'm not sure what the utility of teaching the 3M distinction is if a majority of English speakers don't make the distinction, particularly since it is not phonemic (minimal pairs involving Mary vs. merry are extremely rare). Even without training, they'll recognize the words in all three forms; and unless they want to speak with a _specific_ pronunciation without an accent, there's no point in learning the distinctions that I can see.
The distinction between cot and caught is similar, as is the distinction between voiced and voiceless 'w'.''
http://www.antimoon.com/forum/2004/5586-2.htm
Is that true?