Hi again and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast.

My name is Mandy, and this is our 123rd episode.

That was the very end of the Bird and the Bees rendition of Caroling, Merry, Merry Christmas. That was the very end of the Bird and the Bees rendition of Carol of the Bells.

While the context of the song tells us that they were singing Merry Christmas, Mary, spelled M-E-R-R-R-Y.

Without that context, I would not know for sure if they were saying, Mary, M-E-R-R-Y,

Mary, M-A-R-R-Y, or Mary, capital M-A-R-Y. This is a perfect time of year to talk about the

Mary-M-M-A-Merry merger. I'm one of the 57% of Americans who pronounce the words

Mary, Mary, and Mary the same.

When two sounds that were, at one time, pronounced differently,

start being pronounced the same, we say a merger has occurred. Probably the most well-known

American-English pronunciation merger is the C-C-C-C-C-T merger, where the words C-O-T and C-A-U-G-H-T are pronounced the same.

Since only about 40% of Americans have merged these sounds, we still treat them as separate

sounds on pronunciation.

As I said earlier, about 57% of Americans pronounce Mary, Mary, and Mary the same, using the same R-controlled vowel.

On pronunciation, we call this sound the A-I-R sound, and we use the IPA symbol of the

combination of the short E-single plus the R-sound symbol. We call it the A-I-R sound because, while it is pronounced more like a

short E followed by an R sound, it is often spelled like a long A. There's so much that can be

confusing about the A-I-R sound and the Merry-Merry-Merry merger that is difficult

to even know where to start. First, this merger is most widespread in Rhodic accents.

ROTIC means that the R sound is pronounced when it occurs before a consonant sound.

Standard American English is rhodic, while many accents of the East Coast, including Boston and New York, are non-Rodic.

Received pronunciation of England is also a very well-known non-rotic accent.

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