Mary, marry, merry

I would like to settle this issue ince and for all. I happen to be a native speaker of GenAm and have acquierd RP through personal training (many english people descibe my accent as "posh" when I'm visiting the UK or Europe. I use GA in the US and CAN, RP in the UK and Europe. Based on my own experience, listeniong to both GA and RP speakers, and reading JC Wells' book, I have concluded the following:

GENERAL AMERICAN

Mary ('a' has "trap" vowel while 'y' has "fleece" vowel)
marry (pronounced identically as Mary)
merry ('e' uses the "dress" vowel)

RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION

Mary ('a' takes the "square" vowel whule 'y' takes the "kit" vowel")
marry ('a' with the "trap" vowel and 'y' with "kit" vowel")
merry ('e' takes "dress" vowel while 'y' takes "kit" vowel)

In U-RP final 'y' sometimes pronounced like the 'e' in the French word 'fane' (final 'e' takes grave accent). "Fane" means 'withered' (masculine singular) although the other forms are pronounced the same (although spelled 'fanee', 'fanes', and 'fanees').

sorry.. I forgot to do a spell-check. Actually my spelling is excellent. It's my typing that's really bad...

ONCE and for all
ACQUIRED RP
LISTENING
English
while, not whule

Since GenAm is only roughly defined (if at all), there are many variations in pronunciation.

No one has ever commented that I have an accent, but I pronounce "Mary" like you defined "merry", but "marry" the way you described. There's one difference.

There's also a lot of Americans (perhaps a majority) who pronounce "Mary", "merry", and "marry" all the same, and there are also many Americans (like me) who pronounce all three words differently.

If I remember corectly, Macmillan English Dictionary (of NAE) has treated "Mary", "marry", and "merry" as homophones.

They're all homophones for me, and I'm pretty General American in my speech.

''Mary'', ''marry'' and ''merry'' are all homonyms for me.

Probably same with "vary" and "very". Some peeple distinguish them, and others don't.

What about the first syllable of "paradox" and "parent"?

<<Probably same with "vary" and "very". Some peeple distinguish them, and others don't.>>

I distinguish between those:

vary - [vE@`i]
very - [vEr\i]

<<What about the first syllable of "paradox" and "parent"?>>

The first syllables of those words sound the same for me.

paradox - [p{r\@dQks]
parent - [p{r\@nt]

Vary and very are the same for me, as are the first syllables in parent and paradox.

According to http://cfprod01.imt.uwm.edu/Dept/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_15.html
56.88% pronounce them identically. What does your GenAm accent sound like?!?

Thank you all.

For us Aussies the same as what you wrote about RP goes though our accent be different.

<<I would like to settle this issue once and for all.>>

I somehow doubt this will be the end of the topic :) It pops up at least every couple weeks.

http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t444.htm