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

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:13 PM -0500 6/9/10, Dan Goodman wrote:
>David Wake wrote:
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>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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