Re: Asian migration to Scandinavia

> > 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>.

OT, but I went to school with a girl named Mary Christmas! Always
wondered what her parents were thinking.

- Chris Gwinn