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the pronunciation between marry & merry

we all know that "man & men" have different pronunciations, which put into phonetic symbols would be like [mæn]&[men]. But yesterday, i saw a post which was posted by an American guy, he said that Mary marry & merry share the same pronunciation. the post is quite interesting but the thing is, marry and merry, their pronunciation is not identical, which if we put it into phonetic symbol would be like ['mærɪ] & ['merɪ], right? That's what i get by checking the dictionary for Chinese learners. And when i listened to the pronunciation of the words in Marriam-Webster dic., the three words sound the same but then i checked them out in Longman Dic., they sound differnent in British accent. i'm really confused about this. pls help me out. thank you.

For learning: English
Base language: English
Category: Language

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Zatana
Mar 06, 2013
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I can speak non-american english, so for me they are different :)

merry:- the "e pronounced as in air" sound is contracted as short as possible.
marry:- the "a pronounced as in cat" and the sound is held a little longer.

very vs vary.

very:- a quite short "air" sound.
vary:- a much longer "air" sound.

because not everyone is american !! :)

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In American English, they're definitely homophones. The thing to remember regarding English spelling is that it's absolutely ludicrous; our orthography is based off of how words USED to be pronounced 500 years ago, and since English has no central language authorities, we've never updated or standardized words. So while "marry" and "merry" may theoretically seem as though they should be different, in practice they hardly are. The difference is somewhat noticeable depending on the accent (like you said, in Standard British you can notice a bit of a chance), but in other places, like America or Canada, there's nothing separating them except context.

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Grant
Mar 06, 2013
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As you see, Americans do not distinguish the three words from pronunciation but from the context of words.

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OOPT

I agree with what the person above (할아버지 / 祖父) said.
I'm an American, and I think they are very close, but slightly different.
The best example I can think of is fairy and ferry.
* marry -- fairy (hairy)
* merry -- ferry
Hope that helps!

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Vic
Mar 06, 2013
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