Subject: Re: Beh-ril, burr'uhl, and burl

[Mark A. Mandel]

Joel asked

    >>>>>

If you distinguish them (as I do; I could hear the differences
between the pronunciations), why *isn't* it another "merry, Mary,
marry"?  Only because I need to have 3 (or 4) different words
semantically?  But you do (as I could have).

 <<<<<

I guess I was being over fussy. You were asking about three pronunciations
that you spelled out in quasi phonetics, but I didn't see a clue as to what
word(s) you meant until you or somebody explained that the mention of
weather was intended to allude to Tropical Storm Beryl. So I was thinking
about the vowels when I wrote the first paragraph, and hadn't seen any
mention of several words pronounced distinctly and some dialects and merging
in various combinations in others. Then I read further down the thread and
supplied the other words.

-- Mark
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org