@Pizzagirl—I don’t think anyone can explain the Northern Cities Shift!
More seriously, all of the major vowel shifts going on right now (so the Western, Southern, Northern Cities, Scottish, and Australian Shifts) can be thought of as a reorganization of the same size as the Great Vowel Shift—but whereas there was pretty much just Britain for geographic range back then, now English is spread out enough that you can’t have just a couple competing systems.
@dfbdfb@Pizzagirl On a trip to Hawaii a few years back I asked the hotel desk clerk for a pen. She went to the back office and rummaged around a bit and finally brought back a safety pin. Apparently there is some secret way of pronouncing “pen” differently from “pin” that most of us don’t know about.
You must be from the South. I know people who have very little of their Southern accents left, but they pronounce pin and pen the same. Here in California, pin and pen are readily distinguished from each other.
@nottelling Mississippi it is. My wife is semi-fluent in several languages, and she and my daughter laugh that I cannot pronounce the word “French,” which I pronounce “Frinch.” When I try to pronounce it the “proper” way, I end up saying “Franch.” I literally cannot make the sound they are trying to get me to make.
I still say water like a Philadelphian - wooder. I cannot say that watt-er thing.
And it drIves me batty when my kids say Mary-marry-merry the same! You wouldn’t say share and shack the same, so why would you say Mary and marry the same? You wouldn’t say mat and met the same, so why would you say marry and merry the same? Why do these people let the presence of an r take over everything? Lol.
When I was first pregnant I didn’t have a baby name book but I had H’s pocket guide to world mythology. I seriously considered Andromeda as a name and it’s funny because it’s such a long and almost ponderous sounding name and the girl would end up being called Andi.
Years later I met a young girl named Persephone. What a beautiful name. Just watch out for the pomegranates.
I never had a daughter either but names like Andromeda and Persephone are just too out there for me. But, great if that works for someone else. Luckily, we get to name our own kids whatever we want!
“Out there” in terms of unusual THESE DAYS. Some people like unusual names, others don’t . I prefer classic names. But as I said, luckily parents can name their own kids anything they want.
When my third was born, as a prank we reported to my family that we’d given the baby a traditional Swedish name, pronounced “Veeroos”, but spelled Virus. It was pure nonsense but we had fun with the reaction, as my parents stutteringly tried to say nice things about our choice. In reality we’d chosen a family name which sounds quite mainstream. One of my older kids thought “Virus” was a lovely name and used it in earnest for a couple of weeks. We still occasionally use the name as an affectionate family inside joke.
^During my first pregnancy, I would answer any question regarding a possible baby name with “We are naming the baby Elvis”. I would get and “oh” and then “what if the baby is a girl”? I would again say Elvis.
I love doing genealogy research and Mr R’s family has been here since the 1700s so I’ve had a lot of fun looking through those records. You could tell the parents were really grasping for names by the 13th, 14th delivery.
Oh sure, they started out with Sarahs and Johns but by the youngest ones we were getting Patience and Triumph.
My RA my freshmen year was named Persephone. Wonderful woman and the name was more than fitting.
Ha! Say mattress and metric. Those first syllables clearly don’t rhyme. Now say matry and metry with the same first syllables. Now just take out the t sound and you’ve got marry and merry. Don’t let the r “pull” or change the first vowel!
My kids pronounce my own first name differently from how I say it. Sigh!
I used to say that we could go with Greek mythology and name a girl [url="<a href=“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iphigenia%22%5DIphigenia%5B/url”>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iphigenia"]Iphigenia[/url] or [url="<a href=“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocasta%22%5DJocasta%5B/url”>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocasta"]Jocasta[/url].
Or, if it was a boy (to steal a line from Addams Family Values), we could go with a Biblical name like Cain or Ananias.
