Mary crease moss and a hoppy new ear!

Since we’re just a few days away from Christmas Eve, I thought I should tell you how to say it without sounding funny (in the negative way). It’s very unlikely that people won’t understand you when you greet them with “Merry Christmas” or “Happy New Year” because they are expecting it right? Let me show you first how you can go wrong:

1-Merry:

Your toughest challenge here is /r/. Don’t make the /r/ a trill, like Italian or Spanish speakers do, they say the [r] like [rrrrr] and then stretch /e/ to make the word sound like [Mary], then it’s Mary Christmas (not Jesus). The French keep their French [r] as it is, they say it from the throat, and stress the second syllable to make it sound like [meRYY]. Japanese and most Asian learners transform [merry] into [meli], luckily a word that doesn’t exist in the English language, which makes the meaning obvious to the listener.

2-Chrismas:

The biggest problem with this word is that it’s bloody packed with consonants [consonants cluster], just look at the IPA /krɪsməs/, see the /kr/ and the /sm/? Most Asian languages don’t have consonants clusters, every consonant is usually followed by a vowel, so let’s take the Japanese for example, [Christmas] becomes [ku-ri-su-ma-su], that’s 5 syllables instead of 2. Now most learners don’t realize that the [a] in [Christmas] is a schwa sound, so they all insist on pronounce it as /a/ or /ɑ/ making it sound like [moss]. To add insult to injury, they also pronounce the [i] as /i/, so now they’re saying [Crease Moss], lovely!

3-Happy:

As a result of many learners’ insisting on pronouncing letter [a] as /a/ or /ɑ/, we get told to have [hoppy] new year, no no no I’m sorry, if it’s a Spanish speaker, it’s most probably going to be a [hoppy new jeer]. For French and some Italians, it’s simply an [appy] new year without the [h].

4-Year:

Since the [y] or /j/ is very difficult to pronounce before vowel /i:/ for most Asian learners, what you get is a [hoppy new ear], I guess we should all be grateful for that, shouldn’t we?

Hopefully you’ve found the article helpful and fun too. Anyway Mary crease moss and a hoppy new ear! 🙂