I take back my earlier comment. I do hear a slight difference in the vowels of Aaron and Erin, as well as baron and heron (heron and Erin rhyme for me).
Third me on Knead’s misconception.
I take back my earlier comment. I do hear a slight difference in the vowels of Aaron and Erin, as well as baron and heron (heron and Erin rhyme for me).
Third me on Knead’s misconception.
Re: Are Aaron and Erin homophonic?
Not at all–some of Erin and Aaron’s best finds are gay.
(ducks)
I’m from Missouri, and my son (raised in Ohio) constantly teases me about my pronunciation of vowels before “r”. “Cord” sounds exactly like “card”, and “fork” comes out as “fark”. I’ve lived in Ohio for a long time, and I have learned to hear, and usually pronounce, the difference, but sometimes I fall back to my Missouri accent (and prepare for my son’s teasing). But I still don’t hear or pronounce any difference in Aaron, Erin, baron, and heron.
Off-topic: This is my second attempt to post this. Usually when I open the message board, it automatically logs me on. (I have cookies enabled.) But sometimes it doesn’t. This time, I noticed that it didn’t have my user id in the proper place, so I entered by id and password, but then it came back and said I was not properly logged on, and it lost my reply, so I had to do it again. Anybody have any idea why it logs me on automatically sometimes, and not other times?
I live in Jersey, but grew up on Long Island.
To me, Aaron and Erin are totally different, as are baron & heron, marry & merry, hawk & hock, Don & Dawn. But father and bother rhyme. Could somebody explain how father and bother wouldn’t rhyme? I’m confoozled.
East coaster here (MA, NJ, GA) and none of the aforementioned words rhyme to my half-deaf ears.
Green Bean, father has an “ah” sound and bother has a “cot” (short o) sound. To me anyway. I’m not a linguist so I’m wouldn’t know how better to describe it.
Again, I don’t hear normally so I’m not sure how representative my sounds are compared to normal folks.
Not even close. I grew up in the South, and “Aaron” rhymes with “hey run”, not “baron”, and definitely not “Erin” or “heron”. (“Erin” should rhyme with “heron”).
breaknrun
Green Bean, father has an “ah” sound and bother has a “cot” (short o) sound.
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I think Green Bean is considered correct. The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) uses a single symbol, considering it to be the same sound. (looks like a child’s sans serif “a”, without the riser that goes over the closed part). “Father”, “cot”, the German word for cat “kat”, all same vowel sound. Of course technically words don’t have sounds, speakers of words have sounds. I’d have to hear you speak.
This doesn’t help. For those of us who think “bother” and “father” rhyme, “cot” has the exact same vowel sound as both of them.
I just wanted to say that reading this thread (especially the OP) as a Detroiter for whom Aaron, Erin, baron and heron rhyme was really amusing.
I mean, I read:
and I see four words which ALL RHYME WITH EACH OTHER (in my accent). It felt like I was reading a comedy. 
So, 'round Metro Detroit, all of those rhyme.
None of the aforementioned words, with the exception of Don and Dawn, rhyme to me, a Boston native. However, I can see how Don and Dawn wouldn’t sound the same.
How the other words could sound the same is a complete mystery to me.
Don and Dawn? Wow…
Do “tot” and “taught” rhyme for you too?
Here in New York, “Dawn” and “taught” would (most often) be pronounced almost as if they had an “r” in them, i.e., “Dorn” and “tort”. Not quite, but almost.
In Georgia, where I grew up, “Dawn” and “taught” are both heavy-diphthong material. The southern “aw” sound starts off like the “a” in father and then closes down to a sound akin to the sound of the “o” in border or moist (except without the “r” or the “i” following).
In neither locale would you mistake Don for Dawn.
I think many folks involved in this thread are misusing the term ‘rhyme’.
From Merriam Webster
Main Entry: 2rhyme
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): rhymed; rhym·ing
Date: 14th century
transitive senses
1 : to relate or praise in rhyming verse
2 a : to put into rhyme b : to compose (verse) in rhyme c : to cause to rhyme : use as rhyme
intransitive senses
1 : to make rhymes; also : to compose rhyming verse
2 of a word or verse : to end in syllables that are rhymes
3 : to be in accord : HARMONIZE
(emphasis mine)
The point being that it’s the last syllables that must sound alike to make a rhyme. The first or preceeding syllables have nothing to do with it. Zanzibar and and car are examples of rhymes.
As for the OP, Erin and Aaron wouldn’t rhyme if you pronounce Erin’s last syllable as “in” and Aaron’s last syllable as “un” or “on”.
I don’t think that most North Americans are that stringent in their pronunciation though. I’m not.
This thread demonstrates:
Everyone from either New England or Ireland pronounces three separate vowels in marry, Mary, merry. (This is already very well known to dialectologists. This three-way distinction is one of the most useful isogloss delineators. An isogloss is, sort of like like an isotherm, a line on the map that bounds areas where a single dialectal feature prevails. When you get a lot of isoglosses converging, they enclose a recognizable dialect area. But more often they cross each other.)
I’m from Ohio and pronounce all three vowels exactly the same, thanks to the General American retroflex r-coloring. The isogloss dividing 3-way marry/Mary/merry from the single vowel area is the Allegheny Mountain ridge in central Pennsylvania.
Not only that, I have an Irish-American friend, also from Ohio, named Arin. Guess what— he pronounces his name exactly the same as both Aaron and Erin. As for the last syllable, it’s always a schwa in any case.
FYI, this question has already been throughly thrashed out in at least one other recent thread.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=99323&highlight=marry+Mary+merry
This thread also includes my explanation of the difference for Britons between the a of father and the o of bother, and why they’re the same vowel in America. This is where British English holds one more vowel phoneme than does American English.
Oh yeah, and this thread has explanations of marry/Mary/merry:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=114360&highlight=mary+merry+Mary
Raised in DC and Maryland, I say that Aaron and Erin aren’t homophones, but that Mary and merry (but not marry) are. However, my parents were New Yorkers, so I get teased for pronouncing Laura as Lawra (rather than Lahra) (viz chawklit, kawfee).
(hijack)
Speaking of isoglosses, has there been any change in the greasy/greazy distribution since last I thought about it in 1983? How about bag/sack/poke?
I know this has been beat to death already, but I thought I’d chime in anyway.
I’m born and raised upper midwest, USA (Wisconsin for those who care).
Erin, Aaron, heron, baron are all sound identical to me. As do Mary, marry, and merry. And father and bother.
However, Dawn and Don are completely different.
I only first became aware of the fact that people from other parts of the country pronounced all these slightly differently when I went off to college and dated a girl from Philadelphia. We had long and amusing discussions about Mary, merry, and marry. For the life of me I could not duplicate her pronunciations, which I could hear but not speak.
In spite of that experience, Everton’s statement that “None of those words rhyme with any of the others where I come from. Nor do merry/marry/Mary, nor do bother/father. In fact I can’t see any rhymes in this thread” still is astonishing to me.
Zanzibar and car are not rhymes. The precise definition of a rhyme is two words that have the same sound from the vowel of the last accented syllable to the end of the word. Since Zanzibar is accented on the first syllable, it doesn’t rhyme with car.
In my dialect, heron and baron rhyme, but neither rhymes with run, even though the last syllable is pronounced the same, because the accent is in a different place.
Mom of an Aaron here.
When I was pregnant, we’d had the baby sexed at the ultrasound, and when we found out he was a boy, we chose to name him Aaron. When I told a friend about my pregnancy, and told her the name we’d picked, she said, “So, you’re having a girl?”
OTOH, Airman’s grandfather (from PA) pronounces it Ahron (with the broad “A”).
Robin