Pro-tip in case you're unsure:
- "Mary" is pronounced "Mary".
- "Merry" is pronounced "merry".
- "Marry" is pronounced "marry".
You're welcome.
For the map enthused!
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post relevant content: interesting, informative, and/or pretty maps
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Pro-tip in case you're unsure:
You're welcome.
Maybe this is a whoosh on my part, but for people who pronounce all the Mary’s the same, they tend to pronounce all of those words to rhyme as well.
~~So ferry rhymes with fairy?~~
Edit: Is ferry is pronounced the same as fairy?
Yes?
I meant to ask "Is ferry is pronounced the same as fairy?"
Yeah, I think it's part and parcel with the Mary merry marry merger. It's not just about those 3 words, but those 3 sounds.
In my dialect, yes.
I’m from the green zone but it should be blue honestly. Where even is the blue on this map?
You can't see it because this is a photo from a book that was released back in like 2013 with a ton of various images that more better utilized the colors.
Example:

OP's image must have been stolen and reuploaded again and again and again to get us where we are today.
Not just that, there is a neat quiz that tries to predict where you are from, based on how you pronounce various words!
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html
(I see that it is now behind a paywall... 😞)
Why is blue in the key when there's no blue on the map?
Probably a city that is too hard to make out with so few pixels. I would assume Boston, because it would be Boston.
Or maybe they included it because some areas have marry pronounced differently, but forgot to include one for Mary being pronounced differently.
There's a tiny community in Wisconsin that has the Delco accent. It's there.
Full on youse and wudder?
It's spelled wooder.
It drove me crazy when I first moved out of New Jersey and heard so many people "mispronouncing" vowels like this. See also "pen" pronounced as "pin", "Laura" and "Lara" being pronounced the same, etc. The "e" to "i" vowel shift in particular has become extremely prominent throughout much of the US.
Going to school in NJ, I had a teacher whose first name was "Dawn" and she hated it. I didn't understand, I thought it was a pretty name.
But then I grew up, left the state, and wondered why everyone referred to the morning as "don." That's when it all clicked (or, you could say, it dawned on me.) Other states don't pronounce the "aw" part, making "Dawn" and "Don" sound the same. In New Jersey, they are distinct. Now I see why having that name could be upsetting.
That one, especially, has also driven me crazy. That poor woman.
How the hell do you pronounce pin different from pen
It scares me to learn someone pronounces them the same...
P-ehh-n
Can anyone from Philly or Jersey or Mass. actually explain this with IPA or something?
The rest of us are genuinely baffled as to how ya'll are doing this.
Don't make me post the Pam 'they're the same' meme.
I'm from NJ and these are all different sounds to me. This short shows the difference: https://youtube.com/shorts/S3EaMZUXQYs
Ok so not native speaker but lived in Rhode Island for a long while. Here's what I hear:
ˈmeəɹi, ˈmæɹi, and ˈmɛɹi as in Mary, Marry, and merry. Longish a, short a, short e.
~~Geoff Lindsey on YouTube might have a video on the topic. He's great at explaining phonetics of modern English.~~ Lindsey mentions the merger here, but only very briefly.
TIL that the greatest state in the union knows how to correctly pronounce three distinctly different words...
I think we can all agree that Ohio sucks. Pic unrelated.
His name is...

Mary, Marry, Merry, and Maurry are all pronounced the same when I say them.
It really annoys Maurry. 😈
Can confirm as someone from Massachusetts I pronounce all three differently
Why does one state reject homonyms?