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"How do you pronounce Mary/merry/marry?" (media.piefed.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/map_enthusiasts@sopuli.xyz
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[–] 3 points 1 year ago* (6 children)

Can you explain ... how?

With IPA or 'sounds like' analogies?

I am genuinely baffled here, PNW accent, they're all the same.

I would pronounce all of these the same.

First syllable same as 'mare', a mature female horse.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/mare

(US pronounciation)

Although I'd say it faster and with less obvious of a 'y' sound.

Second syllable would just be... E, like the letter E, as in whee! or bee or see or sea or flee or flea.

Mehr-ee.

What are you guys doing, how do you modify this to come up with two or three distinct pronunciations for the different words?

Different vowel sounds?

???

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    ˈmeəɹi, ˈmæɹi, and ˈmɛɹi as in Mary, Marry, and merry. Longish a, short a, short e

    Edit. O wait, you're the same dude I responded to above. Nvm.

    Edit2.

    Mary rhymes with airy,

    Marry rhymes with carry,

    Merry rhymes with very.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Woop, sorry about double posting, but I'll have to look up those IPA symbols... because again lol:

    Mary Marry Merry?

    Airy Carry Very?

    Berry Weary Fairy Ferry Nary Hairy Larry?

    ... these are all the same, all perfect rhymes to me.

    Ok... so, at an IPA chart...

    https://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa-chart-with-sounds/

    ˈmeəɹi

    Becomes Meyh-uh-ree, where ... I guess the first two vowels roll or blend? Or is there just an extra syllable in there?

    This makes me think of how I would lazily/casually say mayonnaise: Meyh-uh-nayz.

    If I wanted to convey being more ... proper, intentional, or perhaps demeaning, I would say: Meyh-oh-nayz.

    ˈmæɹi

    Is basically Mehr-ee, as I say all of these.

    ˈmɛɹi

    To me, this also sounds like two syllables, Meyh-uh-ree, though I can at least tell that pitch wise, it is in between the other two.

    So, to my ear, if you were to say airy or very, I'd basically be hearing you add in an additional 'uh' syllable in the middle of the words, along with the pitch differences.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    So I've been talking to myself for a while out loud now...

    I agree with the 'uh' insertion. The word seems as if someone added a neural sound to stretch the vowel without adding another syllable though.

    As for marry and merry I definitely hear a vowel color change. Merry is 'brighter' and I hear a definite 'ɛ' as in bed; and marry/Mary a neutral ʌ or ə; the vowel in Mary sounds longer, as if prolonged by inserting an 'uh' to enunciate (maybe over-) clearly.

    Oh and in response to the rhymes. To my ear weary does not rhyme with the rest of your examples but weary does rhyme with teary. Berry only rhymes with ferry, Larry, and Harry. And Fairy rhymes with hairy but not the others.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    Ah, you bring up a good point with 'weary'.

    Sort of like 'mayonnaise' for myself, I will just sometimes shift the vowel sound.

    Sometimes, its 'weer-ee', sometimes its 'wehr-ee'.

    'weer' being the same as in queer, 'kweer', but without q/'k', and 'wehr' again being like mare, 'mehr', but just with a 'w' instead of an 'm', so 'wehr', I guess also like werewolf, or just where.

    I'm not sure if that's a weird personal quirk of mine, or a general PNW accent thing, I can just say that I grew up hearing about half of people pronounce it one way, half pronounce it the other way, so the way i 'solved' this 'problem' was to... just sometimes flip between both, trying to match whoever I was speaking with.

    I would actually have to look it up to see what the dictionary correct pronunciation is, hah!

    Also, it would seem that for words actually spelled *airy, you pronounce them all the same, with what I am understanding as roughly an additional -uh syllable... hey its a consistent rule and makes sense!

    Then *★rry words are also all rhyming for you, which is again a consistent spelling to pronunciation rule, just with the different vowel pitch or brightness or color, that to my ear does not have an -uh insertion.

    But uh ... assuming you meant 'neutral sound' not 'neural sound'... I think when two vowels are sort of rolled or blended together, this is called a 'dipthong' in phonetics.

    There is some specific term for this, and I think the extent to which they are smoothly blended, vs rendered as sort of two distinct syllables... there's also some term for that.

    So... what is probably happening is that you have a larger phoneme library than me, a larger set of total distinct sounds you are used to making words with, and this is basically a foreign, near incomprehensible concept to me, sort of like taking a native Japanese speaker and trying to teach them how to make a clear distinction between 'r' and 'l'.

    Like uh, when I learned a bit of Spanish... I just basically cannot roll my r's.

    I would have to do like, weeks to months of intentional vocal training to actually teach myself how to properly roll my r's, with all possible proceeding and subsequent vowels, I can only do it with some, and it's basically like trying to make my mouth do a trick, do a cartwheel, vs just normally walking, if that makes any sense.

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