It’s basically like the phonics “rule” that words ending with a single consonant in between a vowel and a terminal “e” makes the vowel “long.” Like “mate” vs “matte.” Same sort of idea, except involving a terminal “y” instead of an “e.” Also, see “lady” vs "laddy, “Rudy” vs “ruddy,” “wily” vs “willy,” “tiny” vs “tinny,” “puny” vs “punny,” etc.
I’m not sure how I would pronounce them if I weren’t thinking about it in a sentence, but reading them in isolation they are not the same vowel. Pa and paw are not the same.
SE Ohio.
And I say “law-yer.” My husband thinks it sounds like “liar.” The jokes write themselves.
Even when I try, I have trobble making or hearing the difference between Mary and merry, even though I conceptually know what they should be.
Marry, on the other hand, is easy, because it’s that stereotypically British sound, as in Harry Potter.
Mary is spelled “wrongly”, it really should be spelled Mairy or Marey.
I think Harry and hairy are the same too!
I can understand that. But wouldn’t that mean that Mary is pronounced like “mawry” and Marry is pronounced “Mairy”? Or vice versa? Is that how some people say one of them?
Throwing out another one: do these words exactly rhyme for all y’all?
Daughter
Water
Otter
For me, the last two rhyme, the first is different. “Aw” vs “ah.” /ɔ/ vs /ɑ/. Now, I understand that for a lot of people who are also not part of the caught/cot merger that it’s the first two that rhyme. For me, it’s the latter two. It’s also possible that the “ah” I have in “water” is not quite as “strong” as an “ah,” but it’s definitely not the “aw” in “daughter.”
I don’t see how you get that. The examples I showed above would suggest that “Mary” is pronounced with what we called a “long a” in grammar school and “marry” would be pronounced with what we called a “short a.”
This is also why the whole “long a” and “short a” thing is irritating as it doesn’t cover other types of “a” sounds like “aw” and “ah.”
So, here’s the idea:
tiny - pronounced with a “long i” /aɪ/
tinny - extra “n” makes it pronounced with a “short i” /ɪ/
lady - pronounced with a “long a” /eɪ/
laddy - pronounced with a “short a” /æ/
ergo:
Mary - pronounced with a “long a” /eɪ/ or /e/
marry - pronounced with a “short a” /æ/
Down here in New Orleans:
Daughter – /ɔ/ in the first syllable, rhymes with ‘water’
Water – /ɔ/ in the first syllable, rhymes with ‘daughter’
Otter – – /a/ in the first syllable, rhymes with ‘blotter’, ‘potter’, and ‘Mr. Kotter!’
daw-ter (daɔtɚ)
wah-ter (wɑtɚ)
oh-ter (ɑtɚ)
vowel in the last two are identical; daughter has the “aw” sound that the others do not.
Actually, now that I’ve said it a number of time, I think my “water” has a vowel between the one in “daughter” and “otter.” I think my “otter” might be closer to /a/ or /ä/, while “water” is probably closer to /ɑ/ and “daughter” is /ɔ/.
So some people pronounce “Mary” like “Mayree”? Like “lady” is pronounced like “laydee”? I don’t know what those symbols mean.
Yes, which is exactly why I gave a phonetic transcription in my original post and used the imperfect terms “long a” and “short a” that many of us Americans were taught in grammar school. You know: “a long vowel says its name” and all that. I refer you to my original post:
So it can sound like “Mayree” or something similar to that, except with the “y” part clipped off, like the Spanish pronunciation for the final vowel in “José.” It’s not quite an “ay” sound, but registers as such in English to many speakers. To my ears, I don’t hear it as strong as “Mayree,” but if you clip off the tail of the “long a” sound, you’re there.
“Mary” can also be pronounced with like the “short e” in “bet” /ɛ/, but with a bit of a schwa after it, so it’s a diphthong /ɛə/. You can hear an example here.
Also, if you don’t make the distinction, it’s a bit difficult to hear it, as you’re used to merging all three sounds into one. (And now that I listen to various examples more, saying it’s the “ay” as in “lady” is overstating the sound. It’s not a long diphthong like that. Try to say “lady” without gliding into the end of the vowel sound, and you’ve got an idea of one of the pronunciations.)
Yes, pretty much. Except to my ears, “Mayree” would sound exaggerated – that’s what Jackee Harry’s character Sandra used to call Mary (Marla Gibbs) on the old 80s sitcom 227.
To me, when people do distinguish “Mary” from “merry”, their “Mary” starts off just like my “mare” – in my dialect, “May” and “mate” have the same diphthong, but “mare” has a different one (a centering diphthong) due to the influence of the /r/. I actually believe this pronunciation of “mare” (that is, with a different diphthong from “mate”) is common in American English, if nowhere near invariable.
So … maybe it’s helpful to say that “Mary” for many American speakers can sound like “mare-ee”?
The centering diphthong I just posted about is very close to this – just with the first element pronounced slightly higher: /eə/.
We get a lot of mileage out of /eə/ down here – “mare”, “man”, and “ma’am” (but NOT “Mary”) all have that diphthong for local speakers. “Map”, “mat”, “Mack”, and “mass” all use another vowel altogether – /æ/ (so-called ‘short a’), which I think is close to 100% usage in the U.S. for words like “hat” and “lap”.
I don’t know what the phonetic symbols mean. It’s easier for me to understand what you are saying by just spelling out exactly what you are saying, like “mayree”.
I have never heard anyone pronounce Mary like “mayree” so that is probably where my confusion comes from. Everyone I’ve ever talked to pronounced Mary and Merry the exact same way. To my ears anyway. Maybe they are saying it different to them, but it sounds the same to me.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to explain it.
Thanks! I also think “mare” and “mayor” are the same, so take that!
