mary/marry/merry
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Vowel mergers before "r" in eastern New England

Survey question | Results

Here's the question from the survey:

B. Different pronunciations: Please tell us whether the following words sound the same or different...

3. Mary, merry

[e]~[E]

same

diff

7. merry, marry

[E]~[a]

same

diff

11. berry, Barry

[E]~[a]

same

diff

16. herald, Harold

[E]~[a]

same

diff

23. fairy, ferry

[e]~[E]

same

diff

People who indicate that the words in these pairs sound the same as each other have a merger of the indicated vowels before /r/. About half of the NH respondents have this merger.

Virtually none of the MA respondents do-- they indicate that the words are not pronounced the same.

Results

Map showing 3 types of merger by region

Graphs for each merger comparing southern NH and MA.  These graphs show the stark difference between northeastern MA and southeastern NH, which are neighboring regions.

Please address questions or comments to Naomi Nagy.  This page was last updated 6/15/05.