Episode 63 (The Oxford English Dictionary)
In a Manner of Speaking
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The Merger of Mary, Mary and Mary in American English
In a large part of the US, you know, those words are pronounced the same. I looked up at the OED for Mary and yeah, we got the Mary for British and Mary for American. There's so much variation that I'd like to be able to reflect within the parameters of what we can do. With our South African English, I was able to record all the words twice. And broadly, I used the audio of the speaker who also spoke Afrikaans for the words of Afrikaans origin and conversely.
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Before moving into lexicography, Dr. Sangster headed the BBC Pronunciation Unit and completed a D.Phil. in sociophonetics. Catherine’s linguistic research interests include accents and dialects, Germanic languages, the phonology of conlangs, language and gender/sexuality, and Latin and its Anglicization.
