pronuncation of BURY

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 05:01 PM 7/20/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>In a message dated 7/20/2002 1:59:58 PM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:
>
><< At 11:43 AM -0400 7/20/02, sagehen wrote:
> >  >Ed Keer said:
> >>>Actually, I didn't. I do keep my Marys distinct from
> >>>my marries. It's just that I don't distinguish merry
> >>>and Murray or ferry and furry.
> >  ~~~~~
> >Does the pronunciation of /bury/ fit into one of these divisions? I've
> >always pronounced it the same as /berry/, but one of my kids says "burry"
> >--like /furry/--which I thought she *might* have picked up during the year
> >she spent at school in England at age 12, though I don't remember hearing
> >that pronunciation there, myself.  One of the NPR news readers (Norah
> >Rahm?) also uses this pronunciation.  It always sounds odd to me.
> >A. Murie
>
>How about good ol'-fashioned spelling pronuciation as an explanation
>for this one?  "bury" doesn't LOOK as though it should be a homonym
>of "berry". >>
>
>BURY pronounced to rhyme with FURRY is common in New Jersey and probably
>elsewhere. The Midlands pronunciation of BURY in England was (is?) a rhyme
>with FURRY also, which I assume accounts for the historical variability in
>the US as well. The Old English ancestor of the modern word was BYRGAN, with
>a front rounded vowel, which unrounded in various ways in Middle English,
>depending on the geography.

I don't know about Iowa, but the bury-furry rhyme was common in my parents'
generation in Minnesota.  At some point I switched to bury-berry, probably
through schooling in "proper" English.