Is there a difference in the way one is supposed to pronounce PEN and PIN?

[raccoon]

I pronounce them the same way, and I have all my life.

I didn't know until fairly recently that SOME PEOPLE apparently believe they are supposed to be pronounced differently. OK, well, riddle me this, what’s the difference?

I’m not the only one who thinks this; google “pen and pin.”

[kick-ass-bob]

1. lol - I do...

but my wife doesn't.

Also: picture and pitcher
Crown and crayon

all sound the same to her. :)

[HopeHoops]

2. I pronounce them differently - "P-ehn" and "P-in"

[Pool Hall Ace]

3. I pronounce them differently.

But I know of a fair number of people who pronounce them the same way -- including a woman whose last name is Penn! :D

I, on the other hand, pronounce marry, merry, and Mary exactly alike.

[seabeyond]

4. one with an e, one with an i. shruggin.... nt

[raccoon]

5. Yeah, that's how they're spelled. Doesn't say how they sound. nt

[Ptah]

6. Yeah, that's how thiy're spillid. Doesn't say how thiy sound

[seabeyond]

9. grinnin

i was teasin. jsut a slight difference, but there.

[Tom_Foolery]

7. I pronounce them the same...

And according to this site, they sound the same to me:

(click on the little speaker)

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pen

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pin+down

[nolabear]

8. I pronounce them differently.

Lit and let. Min and men. Pip and pep. Like that.

[RedCloud]

10. Just when you spell the word "is" right after it.

The pin is red,
The pinis red.
The pen is red.
The penis red.

One of those will make you look like a weiner.

[raccoon]

23. Can't get away from Weiner even in the Lounge! nt

[TZ]

11. Ive never heard them pronounced the same

The differences here are clear and distinct. It must be a regional thing.

[raccoon]

24. Where are you? Never mind, I see where you said Mid Atlantic. nt

[eyepaddle]

12. I'm pretty sure this is a regional thing. I pronounce them very distinctly different

as does pretty much everybody I interact with on a daily basis. I'm not a linguist or an anthopologist, but I suspect you are from the south or maybe mid-atlantic regions?

But everywhere has a few quirks I (MN) say "carmel" and my wife (NYC) says "CARE-uh-mel" and so on.

[TZ]

14. Not the Mid-Atlantic region. I live here. NOONE does this.

[eyepaddle]

17. Fair enough--I was leaning away from that, but I was trying hard to remember

where one guy I worked with was from (and he was one of the first I heard say it.) Ah well, it's been a looooong time since I worked with taht guy. (He was a driller I worked for on a temp job I got right after college.)

[raccoon]

25. South. nt

[Phentex]

13. Yes. I wouldn't say tin and ten the same, would you?

I know southerners who say them the same along with own and on, set and sit, etc. But they are different words and sounds.

[cbdo2007]

15. Do you pronounce the words "Ben" and "bin" the same way?

How about wet and wit?

Or pet and pit?

It is subtle but there is definitely a different sound with the e and the i

[Lucinda]

16. Totally different.

:)

[PassingFair]

18. One has an "i" as in "in" and one has an "e" pronounced "n" as in "en"

This is a regional thing.

My daughter's art teacher, from Arkansas, used to
pronounce "pencil" like "pincil".

It used to crack us up for some reason.

But I guess if you think there's no difference
in pronounciation, it explains why people from
the south always say "ink pen, or ink pin" instead
of just saying "pen" like the rest of us Michiganians do.

[Phentex]

19. yep. I had a friend in south GA who pronounced restaurant in a way...

that I could never duplicate. Closest I could come is rest-rernt. I could never duplicate the way she said oil or boil. More like all and ball.

[Iggo]

22. I had an acquaintance from the south who said 'Kers'...

...(rhymes with "hers") when he was talking about Coors beer, instead of the proper one-and-a-half syllable SoCal pronunciation: Coo-ers.

[struggle4progress]

20. Yall a suthnah?

"pen"
http://cache.lexico.com/dictionary/audio/lunaWAV/P02/P0228800.wav

"pin"
http://cache.lexico.com/dictionary/audio/lunaWAV/P04/P0458900.wav

[Deep13]

21. Yes, one has an "i" and the other an "e." *edit*

I also say "aunt" differently than "ant."

Of course people here in the Midwest (I grew up in MA) are waging a war on vowels.

I just looked up "pen and pin." Apparently in the South, people pronounce both like "pin." Pen, men, hen, ten, rent, end, lend, pretend all have the same "e" sound. Even if you have never been out of your state--which seems unlikely--you must have heard people in movies or on TV say those words.

[raccoon]

26. Maybe they did say it on movies, tv, or RL--and I'm just not attuned to hear it! nt

[Tom_Foolery]

27. Same here.

[WildEyedLiberal]

53. Like how people in England (or Boston) wage a war on the letter R?

Really, the little condescending aside is very unnecessary. Regional pronunciations will ALWAYS exist, and one is no more "proper" than any other.

[Arugula Latte]

28. It never occurred to me that they wouldn't be pronounced differently.

One rhymes with hen and the other rhymes with win. Completely different vowel sounds. :shrug:

[nolabear]

29. Having grown up in the South I got teased for pronouncing some things in an "un-Southern" way.

My accent comes and goes somewhat but I held onto some "proper" pronounciations.

"Madam, this house is without a flaw."

"Well whatever do y'all walk on?"

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

30. These words are not pronounced the same way at all.

At least, not around here (Minnesota).

Pen rhymes with hen. Pin rhymes with sin.

[kick-ass-bob]

32. And they all sound the same

in my neck of the woods :D

[WolverineDG]

31. I have to make myself say them differently

otherwise, my Texas accent gets the better of me.

dg

[last_texas_dem]

33. I pronounce them the same way, as do most of the people around me.

It is mostly a regional thing, I guess.

I've had people not native to the region I'm from give me a hard time about it. I don't really understand it, as it's not as if people can't figure out the type to which one is referring based upon context.

Besides, I just can't make myself say "pehn" and "tehn" without feeling pretentious...

[Tom_Foolery]

34. I've been trying all day to make myself say "pen" and "pin" differently...

but I cannot do it. Now I can say "peck' and "pick" and "pet" and "pit" differently; but for the life of me, I cannot make "pen/pin" come out differently. When I throw the "n" sound in the mix, I cannot do it.

[RebelOne]

35. Look in the dictionary.

You will see the exact pronunciation.

[raccoon]

47. Gee, now why didn't I think of that? nt

[Brother Buzz]

36. What do you need, a sticking pin or a writing pin?

[RandomThoughts]

37. I can explain that.

It has to do with how you learn to hear sounds when young, for instance different languages have different sounds used, then anything you hear is put into a category for that sound. That is how people with slightly different inflections in pronunciations are all easy for a person to understand, but tough for a computer to do voice recognition.

So if you grew up with them sounding the same as the language set, then they both those sounds go to the same 'defining' section of the brain that tells your thinking mind they sound the same.

You can learn to hear them differently but it is difficult.

I use to practice listening to people speak, and trying to only hear the phonetics, without only hearing the actual words, but also hearing the parts that make up the words, to try and understand the parts of construction of sounds that skip over parts of the mind and automatically form a meaning from combined sounds.

It is the same way with songs and videos, can you find the pieces and parts and how they can be part of the story, or different then the story while in it. It is like worlds within worlds.

Really fascinating stuff, and it is a really great question.

Helps with reading poker tells also.

[woo me with science]

40. Fascinating reply.

I knew that people pronounced them differently based on region (they sound very different to me),

...but it never occurred to me that they would be unable to hear the difference.

[raccoon]

48. Great post! How did you learn that stuff? nt

[murielm99]

38. Mary, merry, marry.

Say those and see if there is any difference in the way you pronounce them. That one is a classic comparison.

I had a friend in college who would try to get us to change our pronunciation of these words. It was so funny.

I am from the Midwest, and I don't think there is much distinction here.

But we do differentiate between "pen" and "pin."

[Demoiselle]

39. Are you from the South, raccoon?

I have friends from North Carolina (well, call them frinds) who pronounce pen and pin the same way. Some even give them two syllables apiece.
(Pay-en and Pi-un.) I like variety .

[raccoon]

49. Yes. SC. nt

[Duer 157099]

41. Pen rhymes with Hen; Pin rhymes with Sin

Very different.

[rateyes]

42. If you grew up in the south, hen rhymes with sin

[raccoon]

50. Those four words all rhyme--to me. LOL nt

[mzteris]

43. Southerner, aincha?

I did, too growing up "southern" pin and pin...

truth is it is pin (rhymes with in)

and pen (ehn) - short "e" sound like "bed"... (can't think of a Southern word that would rhyme with the correct pronunciation of "pen".

you can "think" what you like, and so can google and all the other southerners - but phonetically speaking - in a correct not colloquial manner - "pen" and "pin" are NOT the same.

[Xithras]

44. There are six recognized dialects of North American English.

Several of these have additional regional variations:

Midland (Midwestern English), Northern (runs from Ill to parts of Penn, and up into a section of Canada), Northeastern (which includes the various regional accents of the New England dialect), Southern American English, Western Dialect (which has two variations itself...Pacific Northwest and Californian), and Canadian English (most of Canada except for the eastern Great Lakes region). There's a bit of debate as to whether African American Vernacular English should qualify as a distinct dialect, so some people may claim a seventh. On one hand, there are distinct and consistent pronounciation differences between AAVE and other NAE dialects. On the other hand, ALL AAVE speakers ALSO reflect the regional dialects from the areas they were raised, so some claim that it's a cultural overlay, and not really a "regional" dialect. In addition, there are dozens of localized dialects used in areas like the Canadian eastern seaboard that are actually combinations of other dialects.

Each of the six core North American English dialects have distinct pronounciation differences. People from New York and Boston have different accents and even sub-dialects, but their basic word pronounciation is the same. The same can't be said for a New Yorker and a Dakotan. The Pin-Pen Merger is actually a well known marker of Southern American English, though it's also found in AAVE and in a regional variation of Western Californian (probably because both of those dialects can trace part of their ancestry to Southern American English).

There are a lot of words that are pronounced identically in some areas, and differently in others, depending on the region and local dialect. Cot-Caught. Pin-Pen. Pet-Pit. Mary-Merry-Marry. Dawn-Don. Language regionalization is a pretty normal thing. Nobody really has it "wrong", but our pronounciation simply identifies the area we were raised in.

[REP]

45. That's fascinating!

I'm from Welsh stock, which is somewhat responsible for the 'high English' non-accent of some of the Midwest (there were a number of planned Welsh communities from Wisconsin to Kansas, plus lots of immigrants in other communities; there's still a Welsh-language newspaper, Y Drych {The Mirror}, still published in St Paul, Minn). I pronounce all of those words differently - except Mary-Merry-Marry ... and no matter how I try, can't pronounce them other than m+airy but yet the others are so obviously different!

[Xithras]

46. It's a hobby.

The Marry-Merry-Mary merger exists in most North American English dialects (in England they are three distinct words), but Marry is still distinct in a couple. The merger of Marry and Mary in "mAIRy" is complete in nearly all of them but there are still some Midwestern and Northern dialects that pronounce Mary almost like "Murray". The Western English dialect also commonly pronounces Merry as m"EH"ry.

Other words that show off dialect differences: Horse-Hoarse. Tire-Tar. Poor-Pour.

A lot of the regional variation in our language is dying, thanks to the General American English used in the movies, and the fact that we now move around a lot more than we used to. I live in the California Central Valley, which used to have a regional variation on Californian that was distinct from the rest of the state. Nowadays, that variation only exists in a small part of the southern Valley around Bakersfield, and in a few small and isolated towns that haven't experienced the hispanic population shift. The same story is repeating itself across the country.

[Glorfindel]

52. Also "pig" and "peg"

But I confess that I pronounce "pin" and "pen" the same almost always. I also say "dawg" for "dog," but never use the "aw" sound with "fog" "hog" "bog" or "frog." "Dahg" just doesn't sound right.

[meow2u3]

51. I pronounce "pen" and "pin" as they are written

I'm from the Northeast, so 'pen' and 'pin' have distinct pronunciation here.

BTW, I used to live in the South and now know why they say "ink pen" and "straight pin." It's the Southern pronunciation that makes these two words sound the same and the apparent redundancy only serves to clarify what the speaker is talking about.