Pronouncing Bury

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning, Martha.

Good morning. Who is this and where are you?

This is Stacey Young, and I am in Eureka, California.

Well, welcome. What can we do for you, Stacey?

Well, I don’t believe that the word B-U-R-Y is a homonym with B-E-R-R-Y.

-huh.

Really? Why not?

Well, you know, that’s funny because I thought it would have been that I was an Air Force brat and just grew up in different regions of the United States, and it turns out that my parents don’t say the word the way I do either.

So now I don’t know if I’m just a pretentious person that, you know, read it long before I heard it and just assumed it was pronounced very.

Oh, that’s probably it. Thanks for calling.

No, no, no. All right. So you don’t say B-U-R-Y to rhyme with B-E-R-R-Y.

Correct.

Where did you spend the most time?

Midwest. Well, I mean, now I’ve been in California for a very long time.

What, 20 years, 30 years?

Growing up, I was in the Midwest. Alabama for a year and then four years in Illinois.

How long in California, 20, 30 years?

Yeah, we could say that now.

Okay.

Let’s just zero in on this.

Most people throughout the English-speaking world do say B-U-R-Y the same as they say B–R-R-Y. Barry and Barry, they say them identically, exactly the same.

However, there are a bunch of people, not many, that say B-U-R-Y differently.

And there are two reasons that they might.

The first reason is that it’s a pronunciation spelling, which is probably what you’re doing, which is they see that it’s spelled differently.

And so they say, yeah, that can’t be right.

Why would that sound like that other word?

It doesn’t look like the other word.

U is never pronounced that way.

I think I’m going to make it follow the more typical pronunciation of the U and pronounce this as bury.

It’s going to be bury. Like fury and jury.

Yeah.

Just kind of follow some other rules.

And that’s logical.

And we do that often throughout the language.

However, the reason that some other people pronounce it differently is because they still retain an ancient pronunciation from a bazillion years ago when Middle English was weird and there were a bunch of dialects and the pronunciation wasn’t settled.

Because what happened was the old word that meant to bury, to put something into the ground, someone or something into the ground, had one pronunciation.

But it was borrowed into all these different dialects throughout what is now the United Kingdom in a lot of different ways and a lot of different spellings.

What happened was one of those pronunciations stuck with us and one of those spellings stuck with us, but they don’t match.

So the pronunciation that matched the spelling didn’t stick with us and the spelling that matched the pronunciation didn’t stick with us.

And that’s where we are.

Yeah.

So it’s just a weird quirk.

And it’s happened just a few times before.

I think left is another one, L-E-F-T, it happens also, just a few times, where just through tradition, that one spelling stuck and that one pronunciation stuck, and there are two different traditions of English that just don’t coincide well.

It’s very strange, and English is a weird little beastie.

Stacey, I’m interested that you say B-U-R-Y as bury, and your parents say it as bury?

Yeah, that was what was really the most fascinating out of this whole conversation.

I was stunned to find out that they don’t say it that way because I proposed it to them as the way I proposed it to you, where I spelled it for them and said it’s not a homonym.

And they’re like, really?

Well, I find that really interesting because I will tell you that I grew up saying Barry, B-U-R-Y, being Barry.

But I have a very, very close friend from Baltimore who says Bury and has always insisted that it’s Bury.

And the two of us spent so much time together that, and this is someone I really admire and am close to, and I picked up that pronunciation and I’ve done a complete 180 on it.

Just, just, yes.

I’m thrilled.

I am so glad that you brought this up.

So that is one of the pockets where the old pronunciation is retained.

Is that right?

Baltimore?

Baltimore?

Not always Baltimore, but part of Maryland, New Jersey, and Eastern Pennsylvania.

So these are all geographically contiguous.

You know, it could be like Martha.

You could have had a teacher or somebody that you respected who influenced you or just somebody who you just liked the way it sounded coming out of their mouth.

Or it just made a lot of sense to pronounce it that way.

It really does.

Well, you know, I was horrified when I was reading the Harry Potter books to find out that I had been pronouncing Hermione wrong until book four.

Oh, it’s so common.

J.K. Rowling spelled it out for us.

I’m like, what?

Well, if you listen to the books on tape and Jim Dale reading, he says Rubeus Hagrid.

And a lot of people are like, it’s not Rubeus?

What?

What?

Oh, no, you’ve totally ruined that for me now.

Stacy, this has been an eventful call for you.

Thank you, Stacy.

Call us again sometime.

You’re a lot of fun.

Thanks.

Take care.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Bye.

There’s so much more to say about this, but the Middle English thing is really cool.

So it wasn’t the only word that happened to where you get all these spellings and all these pronunciations, and it’s kind of a mix and match.

It’s kind of like finding socks in the dark, you know, and you leave the house, and you’re like, I guess this is the spelling and pronunciation of the word meaning to put something in the ground that we’re going with.

You know, the stripes and those colors, that’s what’s happening.

This is the way it’s going to be.

Well, we’d love to hear your stories about language, so call us 877-929-9673.