The magistrate said "Merry", the defendant said "Mary"

[David Wake]

Sheridan, writing in 1762, said that R-dropping was found only in
northern English provincial speech.  It doesn't seem to have become
firmly established in the prestige accent of England until the
beginning of the nineteenth century, and I would imagine that it was
not imported into US Northeastern and Southern prestige accents until
still later.

David

On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 5:31 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: The magistrate said "Merry", the defendant said "Mary"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 6:13 PM -0500 6/9/10, Dan Goodman wrote:
>>David Wake wrote:
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>>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>Poster:       David Wake <dwake at STANFORDALUMNI.ORG>
>>>Subject:      Re: The magistrate said "Merry", the defendant said "Mary"
>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>Many Brits assume that "Maryland" is pronounced as though it were two
>>>words  "Mary Land", with successive SQUARE, happY and TRAP vowels
>>>(with the last syllable having secondary stress).  Since Brits havecx
>>>split Mary/marry/merry, this sounds very different from the actual
>>>pronunciation to be heard from Maryland natives.
>>>
>>Did Brits (and Americans who pronounce two or all of these differently)
>>split the sound, or did people who pronounce them all the same merge them?
>>
> Reminds me: I've been watching the video series of "John Adams"
> originally from HBO (based on McCullough's biography) and while I've
> been enjoying it, I've also been bothered by the apparent working
> assumption that all the Americans, from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania
> to Georgia spoke "American", quite distinct in their pronunciation
> from the British.  I'd have thought they might have tried a bit
> harder to represent New Englanders as speaking a bit more like the
> British, or at least like 20th century New Englanders (well,
> actually, Laura Linney as Abigail Adams isn't too far off in that
> respect), the southerners like, well, southerners, and only the
> Pennsylvanians (and neighbors) speaking rhotically.  Is my guess
> about what Americans would have sounded like in the 1770s-1790s that
> far off?  Would Washington and Jefferson really have sounded pretty
> much like Adams, and ditto Hamilton?  Maybe they just thought it was
> easier both for the actors and for the viewers who were supposed to
> tell the good (American) guys from the bad Brits.
>
> LH
>
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