Re: Are Aaron and Erin pronounced the same?
in reply to a message by Marie
I'm afraid that you must think, upon listening to them closely, that most Americans "have no idea how to enunciate." We are indeed not taught how to do so, or at least I was not. I'm from Austin, Texas and grew up pronouncing all of these word pairs exactly the same, and continue to do so, though I know others who pronounce them slightly differently. berry = Barry = bury. I presume it was a similar dialect issue that led the class to be very confused when my Latin teacher attempted to use the words "pin" and "pen" to demonstrate the difference between the short "i" and "e"; most of the class pronounces these words identically with the "i" sound, as in most words with "en". He would have been better off using "pit" and "pet", which are much more distinct. I would have said "pin" and "pen" were homophones (same pronunciation, different definitions). I find the differences in pronunciation across different English-speaking areas fascinating.