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How do you pronounce Merry?


Amethyst
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How do you pronounce Merry?  

126 members have voted

  1. 1. How do you pronounce Merry (as in Merry Christmas?)

    • sounds like Mary
      89
    • sounds like Murray
      3
    • doesn't sound like either of these
      34


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4 minutes ago, Amethyst said:

Yes! Great video! He actually mentions Philly a couple times! 

When my sister moved to New York, she picked up this flattened “a” sound and said she was getting “mAaaaahhh-rried”. It sounded so weird to my ear, coming from my sister’s mouth! 

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20 minutes ago, Amethyst said:

Yes! Great video! He actually mentions Philly a couple times! 

Yeah, except he isn't pronouncing Mary and merry right. At all. Mary is pronounced like he pronounces merry; i don't know what craziness he's attempting changing 'Mary to something with a stronger R?' Is he nuts? No, its just that merry has a short E!  I saw that video but couldn't link it, 'cause he does NOT get it right.

Marry he seems to do okay with.. 

I've found an audio clip that gets it right, but they won't embed...

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1 hour ago, Wheres Toto said:

Me too.  

Merry rhymes with very, marry rhymes with carry, and Mary rhymes with fairy.  

Pour and poor are definitely the same, paw is different - no r sound in paw. 

Don and Dawn are different.

Central NJ.  Same for me.

However, my mom, who is from the outer boroughs of NYC, pronounces 'pour/poor' a lot like 'paw,' with no 'r' at the end, and 'paw' like 'poor,' with an 'r.'  Years ago we had a long and exceptionally confusing conversation in which I thought she was talking about 'caulk' when she was actually saying 'cork.'  I couldn't understand why she thought it would be a good idea to put that gray weatherstripping material on my walls.  Took us a while to figure that one out.

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2 hours ago, Wheres Toto said:

Me too.  

Merry rhymes with very, marry rhymes with carry, and Mary rhymes with fairy.  

Pour and poor are definitely the same, paw is different - no r sound in paw. 

Don and Dawn are different.

I think Laura and Lora are just different ways to spell the same thing, so sound the same?

Reminds me of people who can't tell the difference between Newark and New York. 

Merry, Mary, Marry are all the same (IL born & raised). They rhyme with very, carry, fairy, berry. 

Paw is like the first syllable in Awesome. Pour, Pore and Poor are the same, though I can make Poor sound different, but I usually don't. 

Don and Dawn are different.

Lora rhymes with flora, but Laura is Law-ra. 

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1 hour ago, Matryoshka said:

 If you hear Dawn/Don differently (which I don't), I think for you Laura most places would rhyme with Dawn, and Lora with Don?  Although I'm still not completely clear on this.  All of this is a bit of a muddle, as we all seem to overlap these sounds, but differently!

This would be true for my DH, but not for me, and we both hear Don and Dawn as separate sounding names. DH is from Northern California.

If you drove an hour in most any direction from my hometown, you’d hear a different accent, but yet my DH and I pronounce almost everything alike while being from opposite ends of the country. The few things he pronounces differently are subtle.

Accents are fun. 

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1 minute ago, historically accurate said:

Merry, Mary, Marry are all the same (IL born & raised). They rhyme with very, carry, 

Same, including the fairy and berry that got cut off.

I am from north central Pennsylvania, but we had TV stations from NYC when I was really young and then some from medium sized cities in both NY and PA. 

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5 hours ago, cjzimmer1 said:

That's how I feel. 

Someone upthread said to say it with the short e sound like pet. So I'm sitting here trying to make that sound between and M and an R and I can't even make those sounds in combination.  

Seriously!  I can't make these words sound different from each other!

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5 hours ago, cjzimmer1 said:

Someone upthread said to say it with the short e sound like pet. So I'm sitting here trying to make that sound between and M and an R and I can't even make those sounds in combination.  

LOL

So, do you say "meh" and "May" the same?  For 'meh', I mean like "the soup was just kind of meh".

And as to adding the 'r' sound to the end, I think our syllabification is a bit different.

It's more like MEH-ree.   Whereas Mary is more MARE-ee (which seems to be about how the people that conflate them pronounce all three...)  I think something similar might be going on with "marry", as the 'mar' does NOT have the "AR" sound in car or far.  It's like the 'a' sound in happy- which I realize is not at all the usual 'a' sound when followed by an 'r'.  LOL, but a double letter does mean a short vowel!

Edited by Matryoshka
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12 minutes ago, Matryoshka said:

LOL

So, do you say "meh" and "May" the same?  For 'meh', I mean like "the soup was just kind of meh".

No, those have very different sounds. Meh has a short e and May has a long a sound.

And as to adding the 'r' sound to the end, I think our syllabification is a bit different.

It's more like MEH-ree.   Whereas Mary is more MARE-ee (which seems to be about how the people that conflate them pronounce all three...)  

I think your right about the syllabification.  If I move the r sound to the second syllable I can at least get the short e sound.  I would just never naturally put the r in the second syllable in those words and was trying to get the short e and r to blend and it just wasn't happening.

 

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6 hours ago, Wheres Toto said:

 

Pour and poor are definitely the same, paw is different - no r sound in paw. 

Don and Dawn are different.

I think Laura and Lora are just different ways to spell the same thing, so sound the same?

The southern English accent misses off most terminal r sounds. So there's no r sound on pour or poor either. 

Don has a short o and eta Dawn sounds like awe.

I pronounce Laura and Lora the same - using the sound in the word or. Lauren, however has the same short o sound as  in box.

Edited by Laura Corin
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Just now, Laura Corin said:

Sorry, no. I was being vague. Dawn is like awe.

All my short O's sound just like awe...  pot, dawn, don, pop, crop, plod... 😂

But long O is like moan and groan, or flow.

I'm realizing we might pronounce Laura and Lora the same way for the same reason Mary/merry conflate do - where we put the syllabification and what the R does to the vowel if it blends. We say LOR-a for both, but a lot of places here your name is pronounced LAW-ra. (Here Lauren is the same too... LOR-en).  Well, except Ralph - isn't he Lor-EN?

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1 minute ago, bibiche said:

Like the guys from Car Talk!! (Would that be Cah Tawk or Cah Tok?)

Well, yeah, they're from here!  (Except they're full-on Boston non-rhotic; I'm rhotic but apparently still have Boston vowels...)

And, talk and tawk and tock all sound exactly the same, silly!  So the spelling wouldn't matter... 🤣

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As a Carrie, born to Don and Dawn, I do ask that people *try* to pronounce people’s names as they pronounce them themselves.  I’m not asking for perfection, considering my own mother no longer pronounces my name correctly, just reasonable effort.

In NJ, Carrie, Karen, Sharon, Marion, marry, Larry, narrate, etc.... short a, as in apple. (Newscaster apple, not southern drawl ayupple!)

Don is Don.

Dawn is the epitome of NNJ/outer NY boroughs accent.... you grab your coffee, walk the dog, and answer a call to talk to Dawn.  Awe awe awe awe awe awe.
 

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I used to work with someone name Merry Anne. That's how she spelled it. This is when I was living in Philadelphia. I couldn't figure out why people pronounced it just like Mary Ann. I figured they had never seen it in writing. Most of these people I worked with were from Philadelphia too. So I guess there's plenty of variation, even for those of us native Philadelphians.

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15 hours ago, RootAnn said:

Y'all are hilarious. I went looking for someone who says them differently. I found this.

 

Is this how you do it?

These all rhyme to me.

Yes, these subtle differences are what make the most sense to me. The name Mary has more of a stress on the first syllable. There are a lot of 'Mary-xxx' hyphenated names in my in-laws (Irish Catholic from NYC), and they are all MAry-xxx. (e.g., MAry-Jane, MAry-Beth, MAry-Ellen)

The word 'merry' is more flat without an emphasis on either syllable. The vowel sounds are almost identical for both Mary and Merry, though. 'Married' is more of the short 'a' sound.  I'm from non-Maritime Canada, so no accent except the 'normal' Canadian 'aboot' and 'eh' and 'sorry.' 😉

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4 hours ago, Carrie12345 said:

As a Carrie, born to Don and Dawn, I do ask that people *try* to pronounce people’s names as they pronounce them themselves.  I’m not asking for perfection, considering my own mother no longer pronounces my name correctly, just reasonable effort.

In NJ, Carrie, Karen, Sharon, Marion, marry, Larry, narrate, etc.... short a, as in apple. (Newscaster apple, not southern drawl ayupple!)

Don is Don.

Dawn is the epitome of NNJ/outer NY boroughs accent.... you grab your coffee, walk the dog, and answer a call to talk to Dawn.  Awe awe awe awe awe awe.
 

Lol, well exactly,  except of course Don sounds just like all the rest of those! How exactly is it different? Help me.

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4 hours ago, Carrie12345 said:

As a Carrie, born to Don and Dawn, I do ask that people *try* to pronounce people’s names as they pronounce them themselves.  I’m not asking for perfection, considering my own mother no longer pronounces my name correctly, just reasonable effort.

In NJ, Carrie, Karen, Sharon, Marion, marry, Larry, narrate, etc.... short a, as in apple. (Newscaster apple, not southern drawl ayupple!)

Don is Don.

Dawn is the epitome of NNJ/outer NY boroughs accent.... you grab your coffee, walk the dog, and answer a call to talk to Dawn.  Awe awe awe awe awe awe.
 

I dated an Albert in college. He always told me his name was Albert, not Elbert. Um, I never heard a difference in his pronunciations, and he couldn't fathom that I couldn't say it the way he said it - it all sounded the same to me.

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18 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

Southern England.  The e is like in 'pet' for me.

This is how I pronounce it. Same as cherry.

 

ETA: Northern New Jersey (15 min. from NYC) until the age of 13. Central Florida most of my life, including all of my adult life.

Edited by Lady Florida.
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17 hours ago, Amethyst said:

At least I don’t pronounce water/wooder quite as Philadelphian as I used to. 

I lost my NJ accent years ago but I used to say wawter. Bascially, watch an episode of The Sopranos and you'll know how I used to sound. Florida doesn't have a true accent and after living most of my life here I now have the Florida non-accent.

17 hours ago, Wheres Toto said:

So, dh grew up in South Jersey and I asked him.  He says Mary and Merry the same, they both sound like Mary to me. 

 

North Jersey here, 15 minutes from NYC, and they all sound different.

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2 minutes ago, Carrie12345 said:

This is more than any one cares, lol, but 

 

I want to clarify that all my talk/Don/dawn/coffees, while they all sound like 'aw' do not sound like NJ/NY - either one.  Their 'talk' and 'coffee' sound like twak and cwaffee to me, not tawk and cawffee... 😅.  And nothing like the Philly-esque one either...

My dad says 'warsh', but he's originally from Missouri...

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1 minute ago, Lady Florida. said:

I lost my NJ accent years ago but I used to say wawter. Bascially, watch an episode of The Sopranos and you'll know how I used to sound. Florida doesn't have a true accent and after living most of my life here I now have the Florida non-accent.

North Jersey here, 15 minutes from NYC, and they all sound different.

Mine isn’t gone, but it’s definitely gotten toned down. Unless I’m really excited or annoyed, and then fuggetaboutit, lol. 
 

My parents and sisters have been down south for 20 years now, and it’s weird to hear them talk. 

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6 minutes ago, Carrie12345 said:

This is more than any one cares, lol, but 

 

As a NJ native who no longer sounds like one, I care. I don't have time to watch now but plan to later. There are few very specific things I say that give me away. I've taken some of those "Where are you from?" tests and most are completely wrong. Or maybe they show how Florida has picked up words and phrases from all over because so many of our people come from all over. Anyway, there was one test that pinpointed my exact city in NJ because of a phrase. I say Goosey Night for the night before Halloween (which is also my birthday - the 30th, not Halloween). That term is only used in a small geographical area of NJ apparently. 

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1 minute ago, Carrie12345 said:

 

My parents and sisters have been down south for 20 years now, and it’s weird to hear them talk. 

Does their accent come back for a while after talking to someone in NJ? I could always tell when my mother had been on the phone with one of her sisters because she talked with her old New Jersey accent for a few hours. 😄 

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For me “merry” always has a short e like in “get” sound - not an r controlled e sound like in “per”diem or “her” or Gerber or Gertrude. Though I have been around people who do use the r controlled e sound — in which case it would rhyme with Murray. 

“Mary” vowel sound shifts depending on where I am. Sometimes same as merry, but sometimes closer to a short a sound. 

 

Edited by Pen
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6 hours ago, Carrie12345 said:

As a Carrie, born to Don and Dawn, I do ask that people *try* to pronounce people’s names as they pronounce them themselves.  I’m not asking for perfection, considering my own mother no longer pronounces my name correctly, just reasonable effort.

In NJ, Carrie, Karen, Sharon, Marion, marry, Larry, narrate, etc.... short a, as in apple. (Newscaster apple, not southern drawl ayupple!)

Don is Don.

Dawn is the epitome of NNJ/outer NY boroughs accent.... you grab your coffee, walk the dog, and answer a call to talk to Dawn.  Awe awe awe awe awe awe.
 

I had a very rude person absolutely ream me out because I pronounced her name "Dawn", the way that I pronounce dawn and Don.  I cannot pronounce it otherwise.  By having a regional accent, I am not making a stand against how your name is pronounced. 

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3 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

I had a very rude person absolutely ream me out because I pronounced her name "Dawn", the way that I pronounce dawn and Don.  I cannot pronounce it otherwise.  By having a regional accent, I am not making a stand against how your name is pronounced. 

See, this is where I get confused.  I pronounce them the same.  But it seems some people pronounce 'Don' differently than I do, and others 'Dawn'.   Am I at least getting one 'right'?  Which one should I be changing and how?

I get what I'm supposed to do to get Laura to sound 'right' in other contexts, but the whole Don/Dawn thing just confuses me mightily.  Fortunately all the Dons and Dawns I know are local, so no one's been bothering me about it... 😂

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1 minute ago, Matryoshka said:

 

See, this is where I get confused.  I pronounce them the same.  But it seems some people pronounce 'Don' differently than I do, and others 'Dawn'.   Am I at least getting one 'right'?  Which one should I be changing and how?

I get what I'm supposed to do to get Laura to sound 'right' in other contexts, but the whole Don/Dawn thing just confuses me mightily.  Fortunately all the Dons and Dawns I know are local, so no one's been bothering me about it... 😂

The engineer who reamed me out, was from the East Coast.  I live on the West Coast.  Her "aw" sound required me to contort my mouth to approximate the same sound.  I realize that if I grew up where she did, that it would come naturally to me.  But I didn't grow up there. 

I had a dorm parent when I was 11 who was from the South, they pronounced my name is multiple syllables (that I had never heard before!) but I wouldn't think of requiring them to drop their Southern accent when pronouncing my name. 

Another friend was from the south, and none of us on the West Coast could figure out why his parents had named him "Clock".  Until one day he wrote his name down and we were surprised to see that his name was "Clark"!  If I had known, I would have pronounce his name "my way" because I've always been taught that mimicking someone's accent is actually a form of ridicule. 

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37 minutes ago, Lady Florida. said:

As a NJ native who no longer sounds like one, I care. I don't have time to watch now but plan to later. There are few very specific things I say that give me away. I've taken some of those "Where are you from?" tests and most are completely wrong. Or maybe they show how Florida has picked up words and phrases from all over because so many of our people come from all over. Anyway, there was one test that pinpointed my exact city in NJ because of a phrase. I say Goosey Night for the night before Halloween (which is also my birthday - the 30th, not Halloween). That term is only used in a small geographical area of NJ apparently. 

I've lived in Northern NJ my whole life and I've never heard Goosey Night.  I'm about 30 minutes from NYC (without traffic).   We call that night Mischief Night. 

I say don to rhyme with bonbon.   Dawn definitely has the awe sound.   So does coffee.  

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53 minutes ago, Lady Florida. said:

As a NJ native who no longer sounds like one, I care. I don't have time to watch now but plan to later. There are few very specific things I say that give me away. I've taken some of those "Where are you from?" tests and most are completely wrong. Or maybe they show how Florida has picked up words and phrases from all over because so many of our people come from all over. Anyway, there was one test that pinpointed my exact city in NJ because of a phrase. I say Goosey Night for the night before Halloween (which is also my birthday - the 30th, not Halloween). That term is only used in a small geographical area of NJ apparently. 

Clifton?

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