Re: USAGE: English, Masculine, Feminine

Steg Belsky wrote:

> On Jun 14, 2004, at 11:14 PM, Arthaey Angosii wrote:
>
>> Emaelivpeith Emily:
>>
>>> emily says [ ho:mz ]. I have one of those interesting speech registers
>>> that notes all three vowels in Mary, Marry & Merry (which Pacific
>>> Coast
>>> speakers hear & say as an even [ E ] instead)
>>
>>
>> Apologies for contributing to YAEPT, but I'm curious... I'm one of
>> those Pacific Coast speakers, and I'd like to know what vowel values
>> you have for Mary, Marry, and Merry.
>> Do you also have distinct vowels in Caught vs Cot? They both have [A]
>> for me, but I'm told it's more common to have [O] and [A],
>> respectively.
>> --
>> AA
>
>
> Here's NYC (or at least one kind of NYC dialect):
>
> Mary = /me@ri/
> marry = /m&ri/
> merry = /mEri/
/me:ri/
/m&ri/
/meri/
(equivalent to yours)

>
> (all /r/s are of course usual American English approximants)
>
> caught = /kO(@)t/
> cot = /kat/~/kAt/
/ko:t/ = caught, court, quart (not that the latter is used much. In
fact, you probably have pretty decent odds of finding that most people
my age don't know what it is, let alone how much it is)
/kOt/ = cot.

Cot and caught are more likely to drift apart then closer.

--
Tristan.

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