--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...>
wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Brian M. Scott <BMScott@...>
> To: Piotr Gasiorowski <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 8:47:34 PM
> Subject: Re[2]: [tied] Re: Asian migration to Scandinavia
>
>
> At 6:05:02 PM on Tuesday, September 16, 2008, Piotr
> Gasiorowski wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > The merger of the MARY, MERRY and MARRY lexical sets
> > (regularly distinguished e.g. in RP and Scottish English)
> > is a fairly recent dialectal phenomenon (of course almost
> > general in the Englishes of North America).
>
> I think that a significant (but probably shrinking) minority
> of Americans distinguish <marry> from the other two (/æ/ vs.
> /E/); only a very small minority distinguish <Mary> from
> <merry>.
>
> Brian
> I've only heard people from New York City area
distinguish /meRi/, /mERi/ , /maeRi/ in the US
> When did it die out elsewhere?
Can't answer that question, but in the hope that it might be of
interest to anyone: In Canada, from what I've heard, I think the
three pronunciations are all distinguished from Northern Ontario to
British Columbia (i.e. the western three-quarters of the country),
among the _majority_ of speakers in this area; in the east, from
Southern Ontario to Newfoundland, from what I've heard the majority
of people pronounce the three the same, but more educated people
distinguish all three, and certain regional varieties in the east
also distinguish at least two of the three. I myself distinguish all
three, perhaps because of my parents' Caribbean pronunciation, but
also because many teachers come from the social strata that
distinguish all three (and most of my peers, friends, and
acquaintances, not of Caribbean extraction, also distinguish all
three -- but of course it varies by individual, with for example
people from Southwestern Ontario now living in Ottawa using the one
pronunciation for all three, and many Ottawans adopting this
pronunciation or the majority pronunciation in the US). But from the
voluminous American television that I've watched over my lifetime
(and from travel through the US), I think Brian is right about
American pronunciation, there are enough people who distinguish all
three or at least two, and not only in the New York area but from
various locations, that it would probably not be entirely accurate to
say that the merger of the three is general. But the number who
merge the three into one seems to be growing every year, as young
people in the U.S. (and Canada too) seem to choose this single
pronunciation rather than the three or two distinct pronunciations
they may have heard from some elders (just my impression). And the
words <parent>, <Sarah>, and <Aaron>, which in my early childhood I
heard often enough with /aer/, I now almost only hear with /Er/, even
among those who distinguish /aer/ from /Er/. Even my father
corrected me in childhood from saying /paer&nt/ to say /pE&r&nt/
instead, even though both pronunciations are considered correct by
Webster's dictionary (but not by Oxford, which only allows /pE&r&nt/).
And which will prevail, /daet&/ or /deIt$/ (the latter of which is
the only one considered correct by Oxford)? There are so many
multiple pronunciations and ambiguous spellings in English, I really
wish anglophones could muster the collective will to reform the
English language, if not in pronunciation then (preferably) in
spelling (a wish that of course has been expressed before and by many
people) -- I am sure it must be the least phonetically spelled
language of any alphabetic language on Earth. It's more like Chinese
or Japanese where a word's written form must merely be memorized, not
sounded out. I find this very regrettable, illogical, completely
unnecessary, and therefore somewhat disgraceful really (and English
has gone backwards from being near-phonetic in Anglo-Saxon times to
near-unphonetic today), and I envy more phonetically spelled
languages. I also admire the ability of German and Slavic languages
to build complex vocabulary from native roots rather than depend
entirely on borrowings from Latin, which leads to unusual and
unnecessary contrasts (of the sort: noun "mind" vs.
adjective "mental" -- why not e.g. "mindly", as funny as it may
initially sound? Cf. German <Geist> and <geistig>) that forces one to
learn two languages in one.
(Sincere apologies for rambling on and going completely off the
subject of cybalist, but I've always wanted to say the last
statements publically somewhere where they might be appreciated.
Hope I haven't tried the patience of cybalist members. My apologies
if I have, I won't post any messages like this again.)