When the school bell sounded the end

[Bassim]

Would you please correct the mistakes in my sentence?

When the school bell sounded the end of the day, the doors opened with loud clanks, and hundreds of students rushed outside, their marry voices and shouts bouncing off the tiled walls and ceilings.

 

[teechar]

You mean "merry", I think.

 

[Bassim]

You are right, teechar.
I made a mistake, as I often do when I write "marry" instead of "merry." When I write that word, I try not to miss the two "rr", but instead I make another mistake.

 

[teechar]

I'm just curious, do they ("marry" and "merry") sound the same to you?

 

[Bassim]

Yes, they sound almost the same in my ear, although I know they should sound differently. But I have sometimes similar problems with other words which have the same letters together. In my language, there are never two same letters together, so people never have a problem while spelling like in English.

 

[teechar]

They are similar but still distinctly different.

Click on the speaker icons in the links below and try to train your ear to spot that difference.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/marry
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/merry

 

[GoesStation]

Marry, merry, and Mary all sound the same in my AmE dialect. Most Americans use the same vowels in all three words, the exception being many Northeasterners.

 

[teechar]

Marry, merry, and Mary all sound the same in my AmE dialect.

Imagine then saying "I want to marry merry Mary" in that dialect. :splat:

 

[GoesStation]

Imagine then saying "I want to marry merry Mary" in that dialect.

We rarely if ever use the word "merry" except in the fixed phrase "merry Christmas", so the sentence gets reduced to "I want to marry Mary." I'm afraid it's up to the listeners to figure out what the speaker means.

 

[jutfrank]

I don't know whether to marry Mary, bury Barry or carry Kerry.

 

[GoesStation]

Bury, berry, and Barry are pronounced identically in my dialect, as are carry and the various names Kerry, Cary, Carrie, etc.