Beh-ril, burr'uhl, and burl

[Barnhart]

Merry, marry, and Mary sound alike to me.

Beryl and barrel sound the same to me; but, burl and burrell are distinct
from the first two.  I'm not sure if I have a distinction between burl and
burrell.

Regards,
David

barnhart at highlands.com

American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on Monday, July 24, 2006
at 3:09 PM -0500 wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: Beh-ril, burr'uhl, and burl
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>
>If you're just asking about "Beryl", it isn't another "merry, Mary,
>marry",
>insofar as the 3M combo refers to words that are all distinct in some
>dialects but fall together in various combinations in others.
>
>Me, I distinguish them all, as well as
> - Beryl , with the same vowel as "merry"
> - barrel, like "marry"
> - Burl
> - Burrell (I think: distinct in my mind from "Burl", but my speech
>recognition software isn't treating them as different and on playback I'm
>not sure my production is either)
>
>-- Mark
>[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]
>
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