The magistrate said "Merry", the defendant said "Mary"
Wilson Gray
hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Fri Jun 11 05:39:01 UTC 2010
On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 8:02 PM, David Wake <dwake at stanfordalumni.org> wrote:
> many speakers in the East Coast and in the South do not have the
> complete merger.
>
In the Southern BE of Marshall, TX, It's
Mary [merI], merry [mErI], marry [m&rI]
But, in Saint BE, it's
Mary, merry [mEri], marry [m&ri]
St. Louis joke from at least as early as the '50's:
It was a Christmas party and everybody was feeling merry. Till Mary
got mad and left.
Of course, the joke is spoken, not written. Buh chawl gnome sane.
-Wilson
--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain
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