Re: curious Minnesota vowels

John Atkinson wrote:

"Harlan Messinger" <hmessinger.removethis@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote..

Peter T. Daniels wrote:

Why wouldn't "Mary" and "wear(ing)" exhibit the _same_ vowel, whatever
the speaker's dialect?

Well, first of all it just now occurs to me this is the opposite of the usual phenomenon--usually we're talking about "marry" being pronounced like "Mary". Here, you say "Mary" is being pronounced "marry". In that case--any chance that it's *only* "Mary" that's pronounced this way? It seems to me that in some or all dialects in England "Mary" is pronounced with /a/, but "hairy" and "scary" aren't.

I've never heard any English speaker from England who doesn't pronounce "Mary", "scary", and "hairy" as exact rhymes. I'm know people exist who don't rhyme "Mary" and "hairy"-- the same ones that don't rhyme "scary" and "hairy" -- but they're rare.

It turns out I was thinking of "Marie", not "Mary". I was thinking of the pronunciation in "Calendar Girls". I don't know about in southern England, but in the US we stress the second syllable.
.

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