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.
According to Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English (Bookshop|Amazon) by Ben Yagoda, the word smarmy, meaning “unctuous” or “ingratiating,” may come from a 19th-century magazine contest, in which readers sent in...
Mary Beth in Greenville, South Carolina, wonders: Why do we say four-oh-nine for the number 409 instead of four-zero-nine or four-aught-nine? What are the rules for saying either zero or oh or aught or ought to indicate that arithmetical symbol...
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