American English Varieties, Part I: Mary-Marry-Merry

As I mentioned last week, there is more than one variety of English in the United States. Today, I’d like to look at the factors that make them different. According to noted Linguist, William Labov, there are three major dialect regions in the United States — the Inland North, the South, and the West. Each of these regions pronounces their vowels differently. The way the variations are pronounced rely on the placement of the tongue and associated articulators when a word is spoken. And all of this changes depending on which part of the country you grow up in. Let’s look at the long, high and mid vowels using a classic example of Mary-marry-merry to help illustrate the point.


In this first sample http://www.alt-usage-english.org/mmm_bc.wav, the speaker pronounces the /æ/ phoneme the same way for all three words. Thus this speaker is an example of what Linguists call the Mary-marry-merry merger, found predominantly among speakers in the US, more specifically in the North or "yankee" region of the US.


In this second sample http://www.alt-usage-english.org/mmm_rf.wav, the speaker has a three-way distinction, and therefore pronounces the vowels in each of these words differently. This linguistic behavior is characteristic of other regions of America, like the Southern or "dixie region.


Where do you fit in? So, far, I fit in with the "Yankee" viariation of English. Come back next week as we continue to explore the different variations of American English.