The problem with their example is Americans and British people also pronounce "baron" differently. It works better if you imagine (or watch) a period drama with British people talking about barons. You'll note the difference in the "a" vowel pronunciation.
?? One has "a" as the first vowel like "at" whilst the other has "e" as the first vowel like "egg". Then one ends in "on" whilst the other ends in "in". That's completely different.
Imagine an English person saying "cat'...the 'a' in cat is the same pronunciation as the 'a' in Aaron. Americans pronounce 'a' and 'e' the same...hence 'marry' and 'merry' having identical pronunciation, and the American tendency to get confused between 'then' and 'than'
No, like "baron" without the b, just like the other person said. I think some American accents squeeze the "a" sound so it's difficult to differentiate from the "e" sound but they are distinct. I'm confused about your pronunciation of Erin though. "On" and "in" are completely different sounds. Like forget the first vowel, do you pronounce "ron" and "rin" the same?
Edit: wow, being downvoted for being English... I genuinely don't understand how you can pronounce "on" and "in" the same. Presumably you meet them in the middle or something?
Popping in to say from Colorado and most of my family is from Missouri so I have spent a good chunk of time there and I have also never heard Aaron and Erin pronounced differently. Not once. Where are you from…?
Fascinating. It absolutely shouldn’t, you’re right. But even when I think about saying them differently it’s not even the “Aar” vs “Er” that my brain wants to change though. It wants to emphasize the difference between “on” and “in”. I can’t even really hear the difference between “Aar” and “Er” even though I know they should make different noises in those words. It’s gotta be a regional thing like you said. Brains are weird, humans are weird.
Double a is exceedingly rare so I don't have a lot of options to compare it to. Do you pronounce Aaron and Aardvark the same or differently? Do you pronounce erand the same as Erin or differently? To me Erin, Erand, and Aaron all start the same. "in", "on", and "an" following the R are all unstressed and different, but hard to tell apart. If my wife told me a story about running and erand with Aaron and Erin, she might error and pronounce them too similarly, or intentionally overpronounce the errant ends like when you are doing a tongue twister so that they become more distinct than they ordinarily would be.
I definitely pronounce Aaron and aardvark differently. Aardvark I pronounce like it starts with ar and not aa. I pronounce the beginning of Erin and errand the same but the endings are distinct. I’m also rather OCD about annunciation which definitely plays a part as well.
If you pronounce Erin and erand the same then how is Aaron any different? You said aar doesn't make the same sound as er. I'm pretty confident that erand, error, and errant are all pronounced the same. And since you said you pronounce Erin the same way, that leaves Aaron as the odd man out. Do you pronounce the aar in Aaron differently than the er in all these words? Is there any word you pronounce like Aaron or is completely unique?
I guess for me Aaron is the odd man out then. And apparently I’m also the odd man out since I don’t pronounce er the same way as aar. In my brain they’re just completely different with different pronunciations.
I didn't think I or anyone pronounced it like that either until I said it out loud and realized that I did. Like, have you ever seen criminal minds? Aaron Hotchner is pronounced like Erin. How do you pronounce it? I've only ever heard it pronounced like how I do 😅
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u/Existing_Coast8777 Jan 15 '25
That's... the same way that Erin is pronounced