On Wednesday, May 18, 2022 at 1:18:04 PM UTC-4, Quinn C wrote:
> It occurred to me that to some Americans, "Derry Girls" sounds the same
> as "Dairy Girls". How unfortunate.
>
> That reminds me again how I heard an ad for the shaving equipment seller
> Harry's and thought to me "They're pronouncing it weird. I see, they're
> deliberately pronouncing it like 'hairy'". Later I learned that this
> pronunciation is natural to some speakers and was probably the reason
> for the naming of the company.
>
> Many of these dialect phenomena take an incident like that for me to
> notice them; I don't usually pick them up from just listening. It
> probably plays a role that English is a second language and I'm usually
> busy understanding.
The Mary/marry/merry merger prevails, alas, in most of the US.
(For those afflicted by it -- you know who you are -- dairy is Mary
and Derry is merry.) It claims a lot more territory than the cot/
caught merger.
I recently met someone called Terry. Turns out he's spelled Tarry.
He, and more relevantly his mother, are from Kansas City,