Pronouncing ''marry'' and ''Mary'' as /me@ri/ is not silly.
* Tom wrote on another forum:
<<Quote-''I do teach the distinction between the three vowels, because they are all different in British English and I feel it is important to have a knowledge of British English even if you want to speak American English.
The original poster should remember that pronunciation is seldom taken seriously in ESL classes. 99.999% of English teachers probably don't even know the mary/marry/merry distinction is an issue. They certainly neglect much more serious points.''>>
<<Quote-''Mxsmanic,
Even if you're learning American pronunciation, it's useful to know what to expect when listening to British speakers. Besides, learners have to know [@], [e..(r)] and [e] anyway, so it's no big deal teaching them to pronounce ['m@ri(:)], ['me..ri(:)] and ['meri(:)].
'Pronouncing "marry" as ['me..ri(:)] is silly anyway. I think you'll agree it's more logical to pronounce it ['m@ri(:)].>>
Excuse me Tom, but pronouncing ''marry'' as /me@ri/ is not silly, but it's simply the way the word is pronounced in my accent.
Why do you think it's silly to pronounce ''marry'' as /me@ri/ instead of
/m{ri/? It's not silly.
Re: 'marry';'Mary'
These words are homophones like mail and male near as I can tell.
Those words are distinct for me:
"marry" - [m{r\i]
"Mary" - [mE@r\i]
and also, "merry" - [mEr\i]
I'm one of the few Americans who make the complete Mary-merry-marry distinction. That said, there's nothing wrong with pronouncing two or all of them as homophones. It's just a matter of different dialects having different phonology.
There's definitely nothing wrong with merging tense and lax vowels before /r/. I don't know why Tom (the administrator of this forum) seems to think that there is. It's not silly to merger tense and lax vowels before /r/.
yeah, and I make whales [hweilz] / Wales [wailz] distinction....So what [hwat]?
Well, the words do have different letters. On the other hand, many words have shifted in proununciation in English from their orthography to have homophonic pronunciations with other words, even in standard British English. If Tom wants to say stuff like that, then he should say the entire English language is silly and not bother teaching it to people and find a more static language to teach, like Esperanto maybe.
Does anyone here distinguish 'Mary' and 'merry' by vowel length alone? Don't be shy.
<<Does anyone here distinguish 'Mary' and 'merry' by vowel length alone?>>
It's a difference of vowel quality for me.
I don't distinguish any of those words at all.
<<I don't distinguish any of those words at all.>>
Then you're part of the "lax-vowels before /r/ club" (I'm in the club too)! That's not surprising as you're a speaker of Western US English. Many North Americans don't distinguish any of them, while many distinguish two of them, and then there's the rare breed like Lazar who distinguishes all three.
Growing up it never occurred to me that because there were three different spellings for three words I pronounced exactly the same that that meant that someone somewhere else might distinguish them. The first time I heard of such a thing was when my mom (a native Californian who doesn't distinguish the three either) was talking about a college professor (from the East Coast) she had had who playfully scolded the students in her UC Berkeley class for not distinguishing the three. I remember thinking, "but who would *ever* say any of those differently? That's weird." But such are dialectal differences ;)
|||I don't distinguish any of those words at all. |||
Neither does my Canadian partner, which caused my mother a great deal of amusement when she came to stay with us a while ago and asked him to say the 3 words. For us of course (British) the 3 words are distinct.
Of course, then there are individuals with (at least primarily) tense vowels before /r/, such as myself; the only lax vowels that appear before /r/ at least for me are /I/ and /@/ (and that is only if you treat [@] or [V] in such a position as not just an allophone of /A/, at that). Of course, though, I am rather weird as Americans go, as I use /o/ rather than /O/ across the board before /r/, as this is a position where most Americans generally prefer /O/, besides some southern dialects and such which still distinguish /o/ and /O/ before /r/.
Yeah and I actually do have one tense vowel before /r/, which is /A/, but that's kind of expected. However, all other vowels before /r/ are lax, like /Er/ /Ir/ and /Or/, never */er/ */{r/ */ir/ * /or/ which some dialects have. You have an interesting hybrid situation, Travis.
<<Neither does my Canadian partner, which caused my mother a great deal of amusement when she came to stay with us a while ago and asked him to say the 3 words. For us of course (British) the 3 words are distinct.>>
Yeah Canadian English generally doesn't distinguish those either.