Yeah, a co-worker (originally from elsewhere) once asked me where “Erin” was and I stood there confused for a bit because there was no other women there. Took me a minute to realize she meant “Aaron.”
Eta: I would never read the name “Shari” and think it was pronounced “Sherry”!
At that point she had only heard my name and not seen how it’s spelled. I believe her point was that I wasn’t pronouncing it correctly. I do pronounce my name slightly different than I say “sherry” but I guess she didn’t hear it that way.
She was from the northeast, I bet. While not 100% identical, up here Aaron and Erin sound nearly the same: maybe 95% similar (how to tell? one of my former coworkers was named Erin because his parents are mean. People would say Aaron and it would fluster him because he’d then have to explain it’s spelled Erin, so there’s obviously some difference). Dawn and Don, on the other hand, are absolutely identical.
Here, Erin and Aaron are absolutely identical, but there’s a HUGE difference between Dawn and Don.
Same here (Chicago.)
I’m not so sure on that. In the video, when it was slowed down, I definitely heard some bit of a diphthong when the actual founder said the name. There seems to be some narrowing after the /e/ vowel before approaching the /a/ vowel.
This video teaches how the E vowel in general is pronounced in Swedish, and I hear it very strongly here, too. It almost has a /j/ sound to it:
(It also sounds more close than I would say the /e/ vowel, closer to /i/.)
The main difference is indeed not the emphasis, but the pronunciation of the second syllable.
Looking back, I would say that the correct pronunciation would more accurately be transcribed as OUT-lye-ər. In other words, the primary stress is on the first syllable, but the second syllable is still stressed more than the last syllable, and thus has secondary stress.
Or, to use IPA, it would be /ˈaʊtˌlaɪ ər/, while I find myself wanting to say /ˈaʊt li ər/.
The OED doesn’t give it secondary stress, but since it’s a dipthong and the final vowel is a schwa it’s longer and sort of automatically has a little more stress (because the schwa never takes stress. Lucky schwa…)
And I think you’ve just described why some people hear the UK “condom” as two stressed syllables.
In the same way that, in my dialect, sad and bad differ. Sad and marry have what phoneticians call a lax vowel, while bad and Mary have a tense vowel. It exaggerates the difference, but imagine bayd and Mayry, except the y is very short. As I explained in an earlier post, to me Mary, marry, merry are all different but merry is the same as Murray.
I think an example more people might be familiar with is the word “man.” Much of America tenses the vowel in that word, but not the vowel in, say, happy. And, evne if you don’t tense that vowel, most of us are probably familiar with the exaggerated expression “Mayun!” or possibly “dayum” for damn.
I also wish to point out that your distinction is not quite the distinction I described above. The Canadian raising changes the dynamic a bit, as does having the merry-Murray merger.
What I find interesting is that the latter is mostly a Northern (particularly North Eastern) phenomenon, but I’ve also encountered it from Texans because of their harder R sound. The /r/ just overwhelms the /ɛ/ sound.
Good description. Now I’m still confused why “sad” and “bad” don’t rhyme (for you) 
. I realize I’m at a disadvantage in that I don’t understand the technicalities or proper terms for this stuff.
It may be because in your accent they do rhyme. “Sad” and “bad” rhyme in my accent, but “Mary”, “merry” “Mary” and “Murray” are all different.
I believe there is an accent in which “sad” rhymes with the way the first syllable of the word “advertisement” is pronounced in my accent ( which is not the same as the way “ad” is pronounced. )
All I can say is that sad and bad do not rhyme for me. Sad and bayd, is the only way I can describe it. Mad, glad, bad all have that vowel, while all other words ending in ad have the same vowel as sad. In a similar way (actually the opposite), can, ran, and began all have the vowel of sad, while all other words ending in an have the vowel of bad. And to confuse the issue, it is only the modal can that has the lax vowel. In “You can can tomatoes, can’t you?” the second and third words are distinctly different. And the vowel in can’t is like the one in the third word. And this is all standard in Philly. Wiki has a long careful description of this. Under Philadelphia dialect, I believe.
Except that Japanese will lengthen the syllables into ゲーリー geerii where the “ee” and “ii” are pronounced twice as long so it doesn’t sound like a Japanese word.
A similar thing happens with Dave. Because there isn’t a “v” sound it usually becomes a “b” sound. “debu” is a word meaning fat, but Dave is transliterated as “deibu” or “deebu” among other choices, but never “debu”.
Yes, that’s true and I was completely wrong about this. I checked a variety of British and American Garys and found that they are variously transliterated as ゲーリー geerii (e.g. Lineker, Player, Indiana) and ゲイリー geirii (e.g. Oldman, Moore, Cooper).
The only ガリー garii I could find is Gary Medel, a Chilean footballer.
Garry Kasparov ends up, weirdly. as ガルリ garuri.
I wonder how many accents this is true for. As long as I’m not emphasizing the second word in that sentence, its vowel becomes a schwa for me, and almost completely disappears. But I don’t think of that as how I pronounce “can.” I had a similar conversation with one of my 8-year-olds after telling him “that” is spelled like it sounds. He said, “No it’s not. It would be spelled ‘thet.’” Like “I know thet you went.” I realized that is a way we both pronounce it sometimes, but never pronounce it that way for something like "That table is the one I want. Or “that’s right.”
It’s true for mine as well - but I’m from NYC and the Philadelphia accent is very similar to but distinct from the NYC accent.
Whenever these “what’s your pronunciation” topics come up it makes me wonder about “vernacular” vs “real” pronunciation. For example, having grown up in the Chicagoland area, in everyday speech I’ll say “yer” “dere” and “fronchroom” but when asked I’ll say they’re pronounced “your”, “there” and “front room”.
Does this happen to anyone else? Or is your vernacular pronunciation perceived to be the “real” one.
Another example would be the Mary/marry/merry thing. In everyday speech those three words are almost indistinguishable coming out of my mouth. But if I were to enunciate each of them separately, they would be recognizably different yet still very close together. (And murray, would def not be one of them). And I would call the enunciated versions the “real” ones.