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English Language Learners

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  • I knew an American (educated, Massachusetts raised, a Longyear) who made 'mirror' sound like 'mere', and 'curry' like 'kirry' to my 19-year-old English ear. Commented yesterday
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    Most American dialects with one or more pre-R mergers produce only close/tense/"long" vowels in this position, so all of Mary, merry, marry have tense /e/ there and never open/lax/"short" /ɛ/ nor lax /æ/. That's because the tense–lax distinction is neutralized before R in the coda by these rhotic speakers, which allows broader phonetic latitude without affecting the phoneme perceived or produced. The same principle explains why they also have tense /o/ or tense /i/ there before R rather than the corresponding lax /ɔ/ or lax /ɪ/ vowels in that position that some other speakers have there. Commented yesterday
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    thanks. in their guide, vocabulary.com say that they only use /e/ in the diphthong /eɪ/. We should remember that a dictionary only offers a broad phonemic transcription, mostly of use to native speakers who already know the sounds of English, and only need reminding. IPA isn't useless for ESL learners, but when a recording is available too, learners should focus more on the recording rather than the transcription. Commented yesterday
  • 3
    It seems completely arbitrary and bizarre to indicate a merger in BrE in parry, but not in marry and carry. Obviously, parry is a much less common word, so lack of data may play a part, but I have never in my life heard anyone – from anywhere in the Anglosphere – have the marry/merry merger in carry and marry, but not in parry. I can only surmise that this is a simple mistake on Vocabulary.com, and that the UK pronunciation should have been written as /'pæri/. Commented 20 hours ago