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

Mark Mandel thnidu at GMAIL.COM
Thu Jun 10 01:29:41 UTC 2010


This, from the people who say /'wUst@/ for "Worcester" and /'tS^mlI/ for
"Cholmondeley". (shakes head)

m a m

On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 6:29 PM, David Wake <dwake at stanfordalumni.org> wrote:
>
> 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 have
> split Mary/marry/merry, this sounds very different from the actual
> pronunciation to be heard from Maryland natives.
>
> When I arrived fresh off the plane to grad school and my roommate told
> me he was from (what sounded to me like) "Marilyn", I had no idea what
> he was talking about.
>
> David

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