--- Howard Brazee <howard at brazee.net> wrote: > On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 10:57:40 -0800 (PST), Philip Hart > <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> wrote: > > > So who here can verbally distinguish between "merry", "marry", and > > "Mary"? > > When I say them, I think I hear differences. But my mother Mary Dawn > objects when she hears someone call her Mary Don. Eh? "Dawn" versus "Don" is a different distinction. My first semester at UC Berkeley as a grad student in linguistics. Phonology 101 with John Ohala, first day of class. John (as I know him now) sets up the "vowel trapezoid" on the blackboard and articulates the cardinal vowels, pointing to each in turn, down the front (left) and up the back (right). (I have to use approximate English spelling equivalents here rather than IPA, International Phonetic Alphabet, which even if I managed to type it in here would not come across in e-mail. "bEEt" means "the sound of the EE in 'beet', and so on.) bEEt cOOt bAIt cOAt bEt cAUght (=AW) bAt cOt (= AH like the "a" in fAther for most Americans) A hand goes up. "Professor Ohala? Would you pronounce those two again?" John smiles a little and points to the bottom two on the right side. "These two?" "Yes, please." (Pointing.) "AH. AW. AH. AW." "Are you saying those sounds are different?!" About two thirds of the class turns to stare at the questioner in disbelief. ("Can't you hear it?") Then most of the rest of the class has their turn for disbelief. ("Hear what?") Welcome to the Lower Back Vowel Merger. > Brits (or at least English), complain when USAmericans treat Harry and > Hairy as homonyms. Not all of us do. -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel [This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.] __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com