/@r/, /e..r/ and /er/

How many of you differentiate the vowels in the following words?

hairy / Harry / Herry(i know herry is not a word, but its my friend's name)
Kerry / carry
ferry / fairy

I pronounce ''ferry'' and ''fairy'' the same. I pronounce ''hairy'', ''Harry'' and ''Herry'' the same.

Of course I differentiate between the pronunciation of the vowel sounds.

I pronounce all of those words differently.

Steve, thanks for your reply. So you pronounce ferry and fairy the same, hairy, harry and herry the same, but "carry" and Kerry differently? I'd appreciate it if you tell me where you are from... Is it a regional thing?

Dithean and mjd, so you differentiate all of them. How would it sound to you if someone pronounce them all the same?? And also would you tell me where you two are from too?

Ｇｕｙ, No, I pronounce ''carry'' and ''Kerry'' the same too. You sure have a long and weird name.

Ｇｕｙ, Are you the same person as ''guy''? The person that started this thread.

Ｇｕｙ,

I do differentiate them all. I'm from New Jersey near New York City on the East Coast of the U.S. We differentiate those words as we do for caught/cot and Mary/marry/merry.

How would it sound to me? It would sound like he/she were from the Midwest.

I pronounce Mary/marry and merry the same and also pronounce caught and cot the same.

If someone pronounced them all the same ~ I wouldn't know what they are talking about. I am from Scotland :)

Yeah, in Scotland they're pronounced differently.

Sorry, Ｇｕｙ is me indeed... there must've been something wrong with my PC when I posted that message. I'm sorry about the confusion.

So not differentiating these vowels is more of a Midwestern/west coast thing than the East Cost in the US, am I right? And for many Scottish people, it can be unintelligible...

To me, differentiating these vowels is kinda tricky, so I think I can't help but pronounce them more or less the same even if I tried to(which I don't even try most of the time) And throughout my stay in California for about a month I couldn't find them different when spoken my native speakers, so I was even more confused.

To those who distinguish hairy and Herry, fairy and ferry, what makes them so different from the other pair? A slight schwa between the "e" sound and the r?

Yeah, I think a slight schwa is a good way to put it.

Californians don't pronounce those vowels differently. They probably never will. If you're trying to learn to speak like an American, I wouldn't bother with trying to pronounce either the marry/merry/Mary vowels or caught/cot ones differently.

I make these distinctions.

[@ri(:)]

Harry [h@ri(:)]
carry [k@ri(:)]
marry [m@ri(:)]

[eri(:)]

Herry [heri(:)]
Kerry [keri(:)]
ferry [feri(:)]
merry [meri(:)]

[e..ri(:)]

hairy [he..ri(:)]
fairy [fe..ri(:)]
Mary [me..ri(:)]

Note that for me [e..] is more of a long vowel than a dipthong. In other words, it is not a slight schwa sound between the [e] and [r] (though writing it in Antimoon's Alphabet makes it look that way) that makes the distinction but the lenght of the (first) vowel. I'm Aussie & this is pretty typical (I believe).

Also:

caught [ko:t]
cot [kot]