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[Gary W. Swearingen]

William Palfreman <william at palfreman.com> writes:

> On Tue, 15 Apr 2003, Jeff Walters wrote:
> 
> > Yeah, but you guys (assuming you're from Britain) spell it colour and not
> > color.  What gives? :)
> 
> Because that's how it's pronounced.  English often has more distinctive
> vowel sounds than American English. We say it like col'er, you people
> say coll-or.  Remember that for us, "Marry merry Mary" are three words
> that actually sound different :-)

So how do "marry" and "Mary" differ?  Some Americans (with roots around
Ohio, maybe) say "Mary" "May'-ree" (and my name "Gay'-ree" :-o ) and many
say "marry" vs. "merry" (and "pin" vs. "pen") differently (though few
people normally hear the difference and I suspect that few even know how
they normally pronounce them).

Please say something about the pronounciation of "Halley" of comet fame.
The first 30 years of my life I always heard Hale'-eee, but then some
arrogant-sounding folks came on the TV before the comet return telling
everyone they should be saying Hal'-eee, based on what I don't know.
I that how all of you British say it?  Or in the dialect from Halley's
home region, or his modern decendents?  Or is it known how HE said it?
I'm not sure any of that matters; nobody tries to tell us to pronounce
"Paris" the way the French do (but maybe personal names are different).

As for "color", I think that few Americans say coll-or or cull-or; your
col'er looks about right, though I would write it cull'-er.  Nobody
there gets two sounds out of "ou", do they?  I'm not sure how "o" and
"ou" would effect a word differently, but either is OK by me.

As for "aluminium", we prounounce that pretty-much the same way, but we
prefer to use a different word for the metal, namely "aluminum".

BTW, I'd gladly change from "or" to "our", as in "color/colour", if 
ya'll would change from "re" to "er", as in "metre/meter".