BURR-Y is not 'non-standard' (was Eggcorn?)

[Alice Faber]

Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
> On Feb 19, 2007, at 5:16 AM, Charlie Doyle wrote:
>
>> It should be mentioned that vowels before /r/, historically, have
>> been flexible. The spelling "murie" for "merry" was very prevalent
>> through the 14th century (alternating with "myrie" and "mirie").
>> About the time of the GVS (though not necessarily because of it!),
>> the spelling "merry" gained prominence and eventually predominated.
>> Now we have the famous "merry"/"Mary"/"marry" paradigm; ARE there
>> speakers who might add "Murray" to the mix??
>
>
> my mother had "Murredith" for "Meredith" and similarly in some other
> trisyllables (which i can't now recall, though i wrote them down many
> many years ago).
>

There are at least three things going on here.

First, there are lexical items that vary dialectally as to whether the
vowel before /r/ is closer to /eh/ or to wedge (i.e., bed or bud).

Second, there's the more systematic Philadelphia-area phenomenon of
(nearly) merging MERRY and MURRAY (with a vowel quality closer to bUd
than to bEd).

Third, there's a tendency to hypercorrect, pronouncing words with
etymological UR with the bEd vowel. I've heard this on Philadelphia
radio stations, in traffic reports and the like. (Of course, I can't now
retrieve any of the examples that I noted, but it was the metrical
equivalent of pronouncing Giants receiver Plaxico Burress' name /bErES/,
or even /berEs/.

I've also heard instances of the second two phenomena in New York, but
both are far less common.

--
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Alice Faber
faber at haskins.yale.edu
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