It’s not willful and it’s not just people being obstreperous. Phoneme development takes place at an early age. Much of language development in infancy is learning not to distinguish sounds that are not distinguished by the people around you.
If you haven’t learned to distinguish two phonemes at a very early age, it’s very unlikely that anyone will be able to teach you to hear the difference once you’re grown. People aren’t doing it to annoy you.
Well, can you theoretically distinguish the vowels in Kate, cat, and kept? For me, that’s the Mary/marry/merry distinction.
In my speech, baron has the cat vowel and heron has the pet vowel.
In my SE Louisiana dialect, in which the Mary/marry/merry is incomplete (only the latter two rhyme) and the caught/cot merger has not taken place.
I pronounce “baron” and “heron” so that they do not rhyme. In person, it would be a cinch to explain this, and even to teach you to make the same exact distinction. Over the Internet, I will have to resort to a small bit of phonetic trickery to make the point. Herewith:
the “a” in my “baron” is EXACTLY the same as your “a” in “bat”
the “e” in my “heron” is EXACTLY the same as your “e” in “bet”
Now then. With that explanation, I’m gambling a little that you pronounce “bat” and “bet” the way an overwhelming percentage of Americans do. I think there are a few American dialects that merge “bet” and “bit” … but I believe the so-called “short a” of “bat” holds up from sea to shining sea.
It’s really the affect of the medial “r” in these words that seems to cause all the trouble 
If Midwestern American speakers take “Aaron/Erin/baron/heron” and re-imagine them as nonce words with different medial consonants, they can derive how other speakers distinguish these words.
But to use real-word examples, from my dialect:
“Aaron” is to “Erin” as “packer” is to “pecker”
“baron” is to “heron” as “Massey” is to “messy”
My wife knows two people, Aaron and Erin. Among our social set, the names are unfailingly pronounced “Boy Aaron” and “Girl Erin.”
The vast majority of people in the various media pronounce Mary, merry, and marry as homophones. There may be a few who do not. It is simply not the case that ordinary pronunciation of the words are (mair-ee), (meh-ree). and (mah-ree). That would cause uncontrollable giggling across the great American heartland. Only someone who lives in a fishbowl would think otherwise.
I don’t know why you’ve lumped me with Mr. Fish Bowl, because I agree with you. I was just trying to address your theoretical understanding of a possible distinction.
Anecdotally: I don’t think this is quite true – I perceive that “Mary” and “merry” get merged in Newscaster Speech, but that “marry” gets distinguished from the other two. Folks from many linguistic backgrounds speak on-air idiolects that all approach “perfect Newscaster Speech”, but I’d think it would be common for aspects of these speakers’ native dialects to slip in.
I concede that my own pronunciations are probably affecting what I’m perceiving.
My mom, from Iowa, has always ‘warshed’ the clothes when doing laundry- and to me, heron, Erin, Aaron, and baron all sound the same.
Is it like ah-ron as opposed to erin? “Erin” from Erin go Bragh would be how I would rhyme them all…
The above is an error I caught too late for the edit window. It should be:
… in which the marry/Mary/merry merger is incomplete (only the latter two rhyme) …
Not like that – see my post #83 for an explanation of how “Aaron/Erin” are distinguished by the Americans who do.
You misread my post. I was not annoyed. It was sounding as if some people never heard anyone pronouncing the three words differently. I have difficulty believing this. I believe people are raised to not make the different vowel sounds; but that is light years from “I don’t hear the difference”. If “not hearing the difference” is the case, then I’m truly amazed; I can’t fathom any phonemes that I can’t distinguish. Maybe I can’t pronounce them, but certainly I could hear the difference.
You’re hinting that some people have an aural version of color blindness.
Update: further posts indicate that the merry/marry/Mary mergers can indeed hear the difference when spoken by easterners, but they do not say it that way themselves. This I can understand.
I disagree – adults can indeed learn to distinguish by ear phonemes that are not native to their dialects. There is a learning curve, yes, but it’s not particularly steep.
Now then … accurately producing these unfamiliar phonemes in fluent, conversational speech is a whole 'nother ball of wax. However, even this difficulty can be largely overcome–Hollywood voice coaches make their living guiding their students to do exactly that. And while the results aren’t usually 100% on the nose, it’s normally close enough.
Same here, Cleveland area. As someone upthread said, If I were to say “I know Aaron and Erin,” you would be able to tell the difference.
Sitting here talking to my computer is allowing for such a minor distinction in pronunciation that I wouldn’t notice it in normal conversation. Plus it is hard to figure out how baron can have a “b’a’t” sound… That to me would be the bah-ron and ah-ron I referred to…
And I have known many an Err-in spelled Erin (dated a Scottish girl and asked her why she was named after Ireland, actually) if female and Aaron or Aron if male, but never an Ah-ron or Air-ron…
Most people have to be taught to perceive the difference. But even if a phonetics student doesn’t perceive the differences at first, the teacher can introduce fundamentals that will help the student get there from here.
Some people are kind of like phonetic prodigies, and all this stuff comes more or less naturally to them. They are kind of like human tape recorders … in casual speech they will use their native dialect, but they are also uncannily skilled at adopting other dialects if it suits them. I would bet Gary Oldman and Hugh Laurie are like that.
Oh, but it can. If it helps, try pronouncing the “r” as the onset of the second syllable. Do your best to wrest the “r” away from the “a” that precedes it.
Take your own pronunciation of “bat”. Can you lop off the “t” and extend the “short a” sound? Can you say “baaaaaaaaaaaaaa” with that same “short a” in “bat” stretched out long? If you can say that, you can work towards something like “baaaaaaaaaaaaaaa … (pause) … run”. After that, you work on pronouncing the same utterance with the pause reduced, and then with the pause eliminated. Finally, you’d work on shortening the “aaaaaaa”.
Quasi-phonetic spellings are admittedly tricky. The spelling “ah” makes me think of the so-called “short o” of “cod”, “rock”, etc. That particular vowel is not relevant to this immediate discussion, I don’t think.
I very much doubt that there are no phonemes that you fail to hear. But, maybe you’re just really skilled in that area. For the vast majority of people, there are a lot of phonemes that they can’t distinguish by ear, and, despite what Bordelond says, I believe the majority of people are extremely resistant to being taught to distinguish them.
For example, most Americans I talk to can’t hear the difference between some combination of [a], [ä], [ɑ], [ɒ], and [ɔ], sometimes all of them. One of my friends can’t hear the difference between the low vowels and [ʌ] (making homophones of golf and gulf).
Almost all English speakers have trouble distinguishing by ear the non-aspirated and aspirated consonants in Indian languages – k/kʰ, g/ɡʱ, tɕ/tɕʰ, dʑ/dʑʱ, ʈ/ʈʰ, ɖ/ɖʱ, t̪/t̪ʰ, d̪/d̪ʱ p/pʰ, b/bʱ – as well as the dental and retroflex plosives – ʈ/t̪, ʈʰ/t̪ʰ, ɖ/d̪, ɖʱ/d̪ʱ.
No American news reader, no one, pronounces “Beijing” correctly or distinguishes any of the Chinese sibilants and affricates (which is one of the reasons I think we should have just stuck to Peking).
My gf tells me that half the time I get them right, and half the time I don’t- and I can’t hear the difference all the time (but am learning to) between the double letter transliteration and the back of the throat h’s…
Now you’re making me go back to my fishbowl comment. Those are foreign phonemes you’ve indicated. Still they can be learned. But the distinctions of Mary/merry/marry are heard over and over on television and in movies. For an American to claim nonexposure to these phonemes and then claim one cannot distinguish them is disingenuous, unless one lives in a fishbowl. 