# American accents: "ear" and "air"

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-accents-ear-and-air/974503>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 7, 2022, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-accents-ear-and-air/974503 "2022-11-07T10:53:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2022, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-accents-ear-and-air/974503/61 "2022-11-10T23:17:24Z")

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Ms. P (grew up in Columbia, MD) pronouces all three the same. Daughter, born in NYC but raised inside the DC Beltway, pronounces Mary and marry the same, but merry differently. Son, born and raised in the DC suburbs, pronounces all three the same.

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**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2022, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-accents-ear-and-air/974503/62 "2022-11-10T23:29:34Z")

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Yes, thank you, that was the name.

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**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\
**Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-accents-ear-and-air/974503/63 "2022-11-12T20:08:30Z")

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Perhaps it has to do with the quirks of English spelling, which do ultimately have an effect on speech patterns. “Ear” is spelled ike “bear” but “bear” rhymes with “air” and “bare” while “ear” rhymes with “bier” and “beer”, but looking at the way they are spelled might lead to some confusion.

Around here, we seem to have the merry/marry/Mary merger, where the vowel sound is approximately “eh” (a short e, not a long a) but wanders enough that we draw the meaning from context, not strict pronunciation. We generally have a fairly sloppy way of speaking, but I feel as though more content is extracted from the melody of an utterance than from the precisely-formed word sounds.

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**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\
**Post date:** [November 12, 2022, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-accents-ear-and-air/974503/64 "2022-11-12T20:32:56Z")

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> [@eschereal](#):
>
> “Ear” is spelled ike “bear” but “bear” rhymes with “air” and “bare” while “ear” rhymes with “bier” and “beer”, but looking at the way they are spelled might lead to some confusion.

It seems to have something to do with the Great Vowel Shift, but it’s not clear really what happened:

> <https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/9049/dear-ear-fear-gear-hear-near-why-are-bear-pear-pronounced-differently>

> **[Great Vowel Shift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift)**
>
> The Great Vowel Shift was a series of pronunciation changes in the vowels of the English language that took place primarily between the 1400s and 1600s (the transition period from Middle English to Early Modern English), beginning in southern England and today having influenced effectively all dialects of English. Through this massive vowel shift, the pronunciation of all Middle English long vowels altered. Some consonant sounds also changed, specifically becoming silent; the term Great Vowel

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