Err

Thanks, all.

#17 -- <blockquote>Quote
<hr>If I say the verse quoted in #13, err rhymes with prefer but not her or fur. <hr></blockquote> This is very surprising. The "fer" of "prefer" is not the same as "fur" to you? Who else pronounces "prefer" this way?

#16 -- Hi, LaGrande!

#18 -- That's some obscure knowledge!
Do people called Lucy have a tendency to enter into vague contracts? Lucy v. Zehmer, 196 Va. 493, is another one. Not the same Lucy, I hope.

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>The "fer" of "prefer" is not the same as "fur" to you?<hr></blockquote>Thinking about it again I believe my "..fer" may also differ slightly from "fair" and is therefore not a perfect rhyme for "err" either - but it is certainly closer to fair than to fur. Now that you have brought it up, I find myself unable to say whether this is normal where I live or just an idiosyncracy of my own.

Hello, VinnyD and shilgia. I'm feeling sociable today so I thought I'd drop in for a cup of tea.

I pronounce "err" to rhyme with "fur," (Midwestern U.S.), but so many people in this part of the country pronounce it to rhyme with "hair" (i.e., with the first syllable of "error") that I'm not sure which of the two pronunciations is standard in this part of the country.

The "hw" pronunciation for "white," "whether," etc. is still being taught here in the Midwest; I know that because when I was tutoring English to immigrants, several of them remarked on the difficulty of pronouncing those words. Their teacher required them to hold a sheet of paper in front of their mouths; the puff of air produced by "hw" would move it, and thus show that they had pronounced the words correctly.

I told them that when I was in elementary school, many years ago, our teacher had told us that there were two correct pronunciations for words such as "white" and "whether," one of them beginning with the "hw" sound and the other with a simple "w." "Choose whichever is easier for you to say," she said, and I have been using the "w" version ever since.

Is there really not one other person here who makes the merry/Mary distinction and does NOT rhyme "err" with "fur"? In other words, am I the only one here who says it with the "e" in "get"? I had expected Vinny to say it that way, since that would be an East Coast thing to do.

#22 -- Pull up a chair, La Grande. One lump or two?

#24 -- I'm trying out "To err is human" along with "err on the side of caution" and I'm just not sure how I say it any more. I still think I say it like Murray, not merry, but I'm not 100% sure. I'll have to catch myself saying it unawares, and that may be some time. It could be that I'm from the right coast but the wrong generation.

Let us know if you catch yourself saying it one way or the other.

Diana, I do make a Mary/merry distinction, and don't pronounce "err" with "fur". But I think my e is a bit longer than in "get".

I say 'err' that same way as 'air', and I don't make the Mary/merry distinction.

I do make the wine/whine distinction, but I am a bit old-fashioned. I don't hear it very often. One place I do hear it is on NPR. Their newsreaders seem to do it quite emphatically.

I say err the same way DianaHaddad does. I am from Louisiana, but grew up all over.
I do not pronounce the h in wh words. I've only known two people who always did it consistently. One was from Little Rock, Arkansas, and the other from Birmingham, Alabama.