Re: OT: Definitely Not YAEPT: English phoneme inventory?
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, July 19, 2003, 17:23 |
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On Sat, Jul 19, 2003 at 12:58:25PM -0400, Doug Dee wrote:
> How does M-W reflect the 3-way merry/marry/Mary distinction?
For "merry", only one pronunciation is listed: /'mEri/.
For "marry", two are given: /'m{ri/ and /'mEri/
For "Mary", three: /'mEri/, /'m{ri/, and /'mejri/.
> (Around here, "merry" has the vowel of "pet" usually labeled /E/, "marry" has
> the vowel of "pat", usually labeled /{/, while "Mary" is distinct from both.
> Some people say it has the same vowel as "ace",
And M-W seem to agree with them.
> but that doesn't work for me since I
> think "yeah" has the Mary vowel & it doesn't sound like "yay".
Well, for me, "yeah" has the same vowel as "pat", so if Mary had that
vowel, it would remove the "marry"/"Mary" distinction. Or at least, it
would if the distinction existed in my 'lect; all three of those words
are perfect homophones for me.
-Mark
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