Re: curious Minnesota vowels


John Atkinson wrote:
"Harlan Messinger" <hmessinger.removethis@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote...
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.

I don't know about England, but here in Oz we have both /m@ri:/,
stressed on the second syllable, our usual pronunciation for the French
name; and /ma:ri:/, stressed on the first syllable and with the FATHER
vowel ([A:] in RP), the form mostly used by local girls of this name --
I suspect Irish English influence there, since it's a common name among
Irish-Australians.

Note also /m@'riy@/ and /m@'raya/, which are in complementary
distribution (and can be spelled with or without -h).

.

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