This is simply how Kenyans pronounce the word.
So does “berry”, for me and a lot of others.
I’ll link to this Wikipedia page, which explains a number of mergers. The one we’re talking about is the “Mary–marry–merry merger”, which my dialect has, which means I pronounce all three of those words the same way. The article has audio files, so we won’t need to use the nasty precise notation actual linguists use to discuss phonology, which has been a bone of contention here in the past.
His English vowels are influenced by his native Arabic.
John Wayne pronounces it “burry”. My cite is True Grit.
From Philadelphia. (I wish all the posters on this thread had identified their origins.)
For me, “bury” and “berry” are indeed homophonous, but “burr-y” describes them both.
As for “Mary”, “marry”, “merry”, all three are distinct, but the last is the same as “Murray” and sounds like “murr-y”.
This has got to be the most variable sound in English.
My dialect merges the two vowels into the same sound, and I bet yours does too, but the difference in dialects that don’t have the Mary-marry-merry merger is between an /ae/ and /e/ sound as the vowel in the first syllable. Note the spelling difference and two different written vowels.
I’m from Chicago and so is my husband. Neither of us have ever heard the burry pronunciation, so I’m curious. What part of the city are you from?
Am I the only one who feels something hinky about the prominent mention of the term,* American,* in the OP? Maybe Cabbage did, too.
In my experience this is a dialect difference between black and white people. In general, black people say “burry” and white people say “berry”. See also Ambalance/Ambyulance (for “ambulance”), Ant/Awnt (for “aunt”), etc.
I could be mistaken and this is an urban/suburban issue, rather than racial. I hear it mostly from rap songs guys I know from the city.
Awnt was the standard pronunciation in New England. My Connecticut wife grew up saying it. It’s a regionalism, not black/white or urban/suburban.
I’m pretty sure that ambalance/ambyulance is also regional.
I bet you pronounce “marry,” “merry” and “Mary” the same, too. Right?
Born and raised in Tinley Park (a suburb, not Chicago proper, for those who aren’t local) to parents from Mount Greenwood and…I don’t know the name of Dad’s neighborhood. That part southeast of Roseland that’s almost Indiana.
I’ve lived on the North Side (first Rogers Park, now Irving Park) for, holy cats, 16 years now. I do spend a lot of time talking with Black people living on the South Side, though, so that may influence things.
I have heard “bury” pronounced by Americans in at least three ways. Trying to use words/vowels that will be good examples for most all American English speakers:
- First vowel as the vowel in bet, wreck, led.
- First vowel as the r-colored vowel in bird, curt, verb.
- First vowel as the vowel in buck, mud, nut.
My own pronunciation is the first, as I hail from the New Orleans metro area. We also do cot/caught as separate pronunciations, and merge Mary/merry with marry being separate.
Uh…yes I do?
Then you are part of the aforementioned Mary-marry-merry merger. Here’s a map. Approximately 55% of people in that survey did pronounce them all the same. Meaning, of course, that 45% of folks did not (some pronouncing all three differently, some with two of the three different.)
It might. My mother’s family was from Elmhurst and the Austin HS area, my dad’s from the northern suburbs, and my husband the southwest side - Marquette Park area.
It’s a big city and with people from all over, there are a lot of different pronumciations, aren’t there?
No. In Hawaii, *bury *would be a homonym with berry, in both standard and pidgin English.
I pronounce Mary, merry and marry all differently from one another, but do merge berry and bury (with an eh sound). Barry rhymes with marry (like cat). And
Mary - Carey
Merry - Kerry
Marry - Carrie
if you’re from the North of England, you pronounce it thusly. (Bury is a Town in Greater Manchester).
