Bury

<<This is only tangentially related, but how was the vowel 'y' pronounced in Middle English (eg. in 'yclept'). This comes from Old English 'ge-' I believe, so probably [i:]?>>

m-w.com gives [I"klEpt], and dictionary.com gives [i"klEpt].

<<The "ferry-furry" merger (which only occurs in the Philadelphia area) is a further merger which happens after the two NURSE mergers. In the "ferry-furry" merger, [E.r] and [3`] merge into [3`].>>

Oh. So couldn't the ferry-furry merger also be called the third NURSE merger?

Yeah, I suppose it could.

<<It seems to me though that this word should have become [b3`r\i] in the first NURSE merger.>>

Not really. The fern-fir-fur merger only changed /Er\/, /Ir\/ and /Vr\/ to /3`/ at the end of a word "fur", before a consonant "fern" and at the end of a morpheme boundary "stirring". Otherwise it didn't change them, so "bury" wouldn't have become [b3`r\i] from the merger.

<<Not really. The fern-fir-fur merger only changed /Er\/, /Ir\/ and /Vr\/ to /3`/ at the end of a word "fur", before a consonant "fern" and at the end of a morpheme boundary "stirring". Otherwise it didn't change them, so "bury" wouldn't have become [b3`r\i] from the merger.>>

Right. So it should have been [bVr\i]? But in RP and other accents that don't merge hurry-furry, it is pronounced [b3:r\i], right? Someone above mentioned that this is due to borrowing from another dialect. What dialect is this?

I think in RP it's ["bEr\i]. That's what they give at dictionary.cambridge.org.

(I don't merge hurry-furry, and I pronounce it ["bEr\i] as well.)

<<Right. So it should have been [bVr\i]? But in RP and other accents that don't merge hurry-furry, it is pronounced [b3:r\i], right? Someone above mentioned that this is due to borrowing from another dialect. What dialect is this?>>

Yeah, I've read that the pronunciation of "bury" as /bEr\i/ with /E/ as the vowel actually has a long history dating back to the Old English period, when the disappearance of the phonemes /y/ and /y:/ took place. They merged either with /i/ and /i:/, /e/ and /e:/ or /u/ or /u:/ depending on the dialect, and eventually the merger to /i/ and /i:/ replaced the other two. But the pronunciations /bIzi/ and /bEr\i/ for "busy" and "bury" resulted from a dialect borrowing from the dialect that merged them with /u/ and /u:/. I'll post a link to that website if I find it.

<<Right. So it should have been [bVr\i]? But in RP and other accents that don't merge hurry-furry, it is pronounced [b3:r\i], right?>>

I'd think that in most varieties of English "bury" is homophonous with "berry". Some dialects pronounce it /b3`i/ which is probably due to spelling pronunciation.

Here's the website http://alpha.furman.edu/~wrogers/phonemes/phone/rules/unround.htm

It discusses "busy" but not "bury".

There is a Town and Metropolitan Borough in Greater Manchester, North West England, called BURY, and the locals, as well as Lancastrians/Mancunians in general, pronounce it something like "Boo-reh".

http://www.manchester2002-uk.com/towns/bury1.html