Are pen and pin pronounced the same way?

[muon2]

Absolutely (and I really can't hear it differently even when people say they are distinguishing between the two).  The same goes for me with almost any word with i or e combined with n or m.  The one I can hear the difference is when people use the vowel from get to refer to the Cincinnati Bengals, and it sounds like nails on a chalkboard (I, of course, pronounce it rhyming with Pringles).

Does that mean you do hear a difference when i or e is followed by a letter other than n or m? For instance I take it that I hear would not hear two identical syllables in a row if you said, "My pet pit bull has bit better folk than you for saying pin and pen differently."

[Mr. Smith]

Yes, and if I try to say pen the "right" way, all I can say is pan.

How??

Southerners don't know how to enunciate.

Tell that to the Californians and other Westerners that keep saying "caught" and "cot" are the same.

I admit to doing this one without second thought. The only way I can get them to separate is by faking a Bostonian accent.

I rest my case.

[Senator Sirius]

No? This is a thing? Pen has an "eh" sound, pin has the normal soft "i" sound.
 

[Mr. Smith]

No? This is a thing? Pen has an "eh" sound, pin has the normal soft "i" sound.
 

You live in South Carolina ffs, how do you not know this?

[7,052,770]

Yes, and if I try to say pen the "right" way, all I can say is pan.

How??

Just how we roll in the South. "Ten" and "tin" are homophones too, as are min/men, and the first syllable of Senate is the same as "sin." (It just now occurs to be that my joke about various politicians putting the "sin" in "Senator" may not really work outside the South.)

I think it's just something to do with the short e and the n sound just not working together in a Southern accent?

[Frodo]

Gotta love the English language and all its various dialects and accents that make certain (but completely different) words sound almost identical when spoken.  It's kind of like how the words 'gilt' and 'guilt' are pronounced.  Shakespeare played with this too, though you can only catch it if you know that the English of his day sounded quite different than what we are used to hearing it spoken in London today:

I'd love to go to a Shakespeare play at the Globe Theatre in London spoken in the original pronunciation.  

[Trump Is A Maoist]

Yes, and if I try to say pen the "right" way, all I can say is pan.

How??

Southerners don't know how to enunciate.

Tell that to the Californians and other Westerners that keep saying "caught" and "cot" are the same.

I'm from the Toronto area nowadays and I watch a lot of Holywood movies that Americans speak english in... they're pronounced the same.

[The sturm und drang years]

Of course not.

[Lechasseur]

Yes, and if I try to say pen the "right" way, all I can say is pan.

How??

Southerners don't know how to enunciate.

Tell that to the Californians and other Westerners that keep saying "caught" and "cot" are the same.

Yep.

Pen is pen while pin is pin

And then caught is "cawt" while cot is "caht"

All 4 are pronounced differently

[Lechasseur]

Yes, and if I try to say pen the "right" way, all I can say is pan.

How??

Southerners don't know how to enunciate.

Tell that to the Californians and other Westerners that keep saying "caught" and "cot" are the same.

Yep.

Pen is pen while pin is pin

And then caught is "cawt" while cot is "caht"

All 4 are pronounced differently

That being said, I definitely find the caught/cot merger worse than the pen/pin merger

[You Don’t Mess With The Zohran]

Given I'm not a Southerner or a Kiwi, no.

[kcguy]

To add more fuel to the fire, how do y'all feel about merry/Mary/marry?

I can't tell if I make a distinction between "merry" and "Mary", but the way I pronounce "marry" is unquestionably different from the other two.


Also, for me, "caught" is different from "cot", and "pen" is distinct from "pin".  (I once saw someone online, from Australia or someplace, say that they were confused by the whole "caught"/"cot" thing, because they pronounced "caught" like "court".)

[RI]

To add more fuel to the fire, how do y'all feel about merry/Mary/marry?

I can't tell if I make a distinction between "merry" and "Mary", but the way I pronounce "marry" is unquestionably different from the other two.


Also, for me, "caught" is different from "cot", and "pen" is distinct from "pin".  (I once saw someone online, from Australia or someplace, say that they were confused by the whole "caught"/"cot" thing, because they pronounced "caught" like "court".)

I usually pronounce all three of merry/Mary/marry in the same way, but sometimes I inflect "merry"  a bit different. I at least get the theoretical difference here:

Mary: may-ry
Marry: mah-ry
Merry: meh-ry

These first two pronunciations sound incredibly British to me, so I don't use them that often. Usually, it devolves to Mary = marry = mare-y, stressing the first syllable, while merry has more stress on the latter half.

[kcguy]

To add more fuel to the fire, how do y'all feel about merry/Mary/marry?

I can't tell if I make a distinction between "merry" and "Mary", but the way I pronounce "marry" is unquestionably different from the other two.


Also, for me, "caught" is different from "cot", and "pen" is distinct from "pin".  (I once saw someone online, from Australia or someplace, say that they were confused by the whole "caught"/"cot" thing, because they pronounced "caught" like "court".)

I usually pronounce all three of merry/Mary/marry in the same way, but sometimes I inflect "merry"  a bit different. I at least get the theoretical difference here:

Mary: may-ry
Marry: mah-ry
Merry: meh-ry

These first two pronunciations sound incredibly British to me, so I don't use them that often. Usually, it devolves to Mary = marry = mare-y, stressing the first syllable, while merry has more stress on the latter half.

Actually, I pronounce "marry" with the same vowel as "Matt".  (My mom's from Philly.)

[YE]

No? This is a thing?

[falling apart like the ashes of American flags]

yes, I don't like it, I try to deny it*, but I say it the same damned way.

You live in Omaha. That's weird. Omaha has the same accent as Iowa that's seen as a "normal" American one.

[Lechasseur]

To add more fuel to the fire, how do y'all feel about merry/Mary/marry?

I can't tell if I make a distinction between "merry" and "Mary", but the way I pronounce "marry" is unquestionably different from the other two.


Also, for me, "caught" is different from "cot", and "pen" is distinct from "pin".  (I once saw someone online, from Australia or someplace, say that they were confused by the whole "caught"/"cot" thing, because they pronounced "caught" like "court".)

Now I do have the marry/merry/Mary merger, they all sound the same to me

Then frankly I can see where those Australians are coming from. Caught and court sound fairly similar in non-rhotic English accents, but at least in the UK you can still hear the difference between the two.

At any rate a caught/court merger definitely make more sense to me than a caught/cot merger.

[Del Tachi]

We should all at least be able to agree on the meet/meat merger (from the Great Vowel Shift), about 20% of us seem to be on-board with the pin/pen merger (other examples of this are heard in him/hem, kin/ken, etc.)

But, do we have anyone here who speaks with the think/thank merger (common in AAVE and some Southern dialects)?

[7,052,770]

We should all at least be able to agree on the meet/meat merger (from the Great Vowel Shift), about 20% of us seem to be on-board with the pin/pen merger (other examples of this are heard in him/hem, kin/ken, etc.)

But, do we have anyone here who speaks with the think/thank merger (common in AAVE and some Southern dialects)?

Oh god no. I'm normally very supportive of Southern accents (my ear doesn't usually pick them up unless they're really strong), but that's where I draw the line.

[Mr. Smith]

We should all at least be able to agree on the meet/meat merger (from the Great Vowel Shift), about 20% of us seem to be on-board with the pin/pen merger (other examples of this are heard in him/hem, kin/ken, etc.)

But, do we have anyone here who speaks with the think/thank merger (common in AAVE and some Southern dialects)?

Me, occasionally, though it's not a consistent.

[Santander]

We should all at least be able to agree on the meet/meat merger (from the Great Vowel Shift), about 20% of us seem to be on-board with the pin/pen merger (other examples of this are heard in him/hem, kin/ken, etc.)

But, do we have anyone here who speaks with the think/thank merger (common in AAVE and some Southern dialects)?

Me, occasionally, though it's not a consistent.

I only do this when I'm very drunk.

[dead0man]

yes, I don't like it, I try to deny it*, but I say it the same damned way.

You live in Omaha. That's weird. Omaha has the same accent as Iowa that's seen as a "normal" American one.

I learn't how to speak in the St.Louis area though.  With heavy influences like "I warshed the cookin' ole <oil> out'a da pan" from my "grandma" (she wasn't really my grandma, but everybody in my family called her that and I was closer to her than I was either of my biological grandmas).  The St.Louis accent is seen as fairly "normal" too, but there are some southern bits to it.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

My parents were Damn Yankees who moved to South Florida, so my formative years were spent outside the merger zone for the most part. It wasn't until we moved to South Carolina that I was exposed to it, and I never cot that merger.

On cot/caught, I'm semi-merged.  I pronounce caught as [kɒt] but cot as the usual merged sound of [kɑt] instead of the unmerged [kät].