Erin grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, but when she moved to New York City, she found that people often told her she pronounces Erin as if it’s spelled like the masculine name Aaron. Has Erin been pronouncing her own name wrong all these years? In parts of the United States, particularly the Western and Central states the pronunciation of the words marry and merry sound the same, but in the Northeast and Montreal they sound slightly different. Something similar to this merry-marry merger also happens with the names Erin and Aaron. In other words, it’s a dialectal difference. Speaking of pronouncing the name Aaron, check out Key & Peele’s “Substitute Teacher” sketch. This is part of a complete episode.
The so-called “lifestyle influencer accent” you hear in videos on TikTok and YouTube, where someone speaks with rising tones at the end of sentences and phrases, suggesting that they’re about to say something important, is a form of what linguists...
Meg in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, gets why the state highway department encourages drivers to use their blinkers when changing lanes, but placing a digital sign at the Sagamore Bridge that reads Use Ya Blinkah is, well, a lexical bridge too far. Meg’s...
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