Thicknesse: Question on Pronunciation

[Carol]

Carol earlier:
> > > Or how about "merry," "marry," and "Mary"? All homonyms for me,
though I realize that Easterners, Southerners, and possibly
Midwesterners may distinguish among them, or at least between one or
two of the three.
> 
> 
> montims:
> but surely...  is it the r that causes this problem?  Because the
vowel sounds are the same as heaven, haven't, haven.  What about Harry
and hairy?
> Do they sound the same?  Truly, they are all enunciated very
differently (as opposed to variedly...) by this Brit...

Carol:

Nope. The vowel sounds (for me and Americans like me) are all a short
e (altered by the "r," true, but in the same way for all three words),
so I think they would all rhyme with your pronunciation of "very").
And, yes, "hairy" and "Harry" sound the same to me.

So, "Have a very merry Christmas, Harry," involves three rhyming words
and could be spelled "Have a vary marry Christmas, Hairy," with great
harm to the sense and grammar but none at all to the sound of the
sentence. "Harry" and "Mary" also rhyme (for me).

BTW, when I was in London and asked the cost of overseas postage, I
was immediately asked, "To America?" Pretty clearly, I don't sound
anything like an Englishwoman.

Carol, who did rather enjoy being addressed as "love" (or is it
"luv"?) by the bus drivers