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I have no idea whatsoever about IPA, so I apologise now for any ambiguity or difficult-to-understand-ness in this question.

Me and a friend both disagree on the correct pronunciation of "worried". I pronounce it "worried", he pronounces it "wurried". I shall expand:

  1. My pronunciation: if you will, rhymes with "lorry". Lorry, worry (woh-reed)
  2. His pronunciation: if you will, rhymes with "curry". Curry, worry (wu-reed, wuh-reed)

Once again, I apologise if you think these explanations are awful, but they were the best I could do.

(We speak standard English, at least I think we do). We have no northern, western, midlands etc. accents. We come from the south east, if that's of any help.

I'm also not passing the fact that they could both be correct and that it doesn't matter, but it'd be interesting to know which one is correct.

Mohit
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ODP
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    When I say them, the a in what is identical to the o in wonder, and neither of them is at all similar to the o in worried... – Marthaª May 24 '12 at 21:25
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    That's annoying, hopefully someone else comes across this question who sees where I'm coming from. – ODP May 24 '12 at 21:30
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    Martha's right. And this is another reason why it's useless to try to discuss pronunciation in writing on the web without using IPA. By the way, you and your friend can disagree all you like about pronunciation; it varies a lot. Perhaps you can agree to just be friends. – John Lawler May 24 '12 at 21:32
  • The word 'what' has two pronunciations with respect to the underlying vowel. Which vowel are you referring to when you say you pronounce like "what" in "what"? Pick few monosyllabic words that has the same vowel; and this will help. – RainDoctor May 24 '12 at 23:20
  • @RainDoctor The OED entry for “what” lists only /hwɒt/, but perhaps that can reduce to a schwa in phrasal contexts. Is that what you mean by two possible vowels there? – tchrist May 24 '12 at 23:42
  • @tchrist, yeah. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/what – RainDoctor May 25 '12 at 00:07
  • @RainDoctor: That's not a schwa in Merriam-Webster, but the vowel in cut and wonder (ʌ). Merriam-Webster uses the same symbol for both because some Americans pronounce them the same. You can tell because there's an accent mark on the \ˈwət\ pronunciation. And of course, this is the vowel in worry if you don't have the hurry-furry merger. – Peter Shor May 25 '12 at 00:56
  • @PeterShor I thought English only had schwas in un-stressed syllables, so how can you possibly have /ˈ(h)wət/? Doesn’t that have to be /ˈ(h)wʌt/? That’s what I meant about stress; I think sometimes what becomes unstressed phrasally, like the way the word to can. But then you can’t have the stress mark. That’s why defunct /dəˈfʌnkt/ has two different vowels: the first one is reduced in unstressed position, so is a schwa, but the second one cannot be. – tchrist May 25 '12 at 02:25
  • It's Merriam-Webster's unconventional phonetic notation. Compare what and cut. – Peter Shor May 25 '12 at 02:35
  • @PeterShor I believe you already know what I feel about MW’s unconventional pseudo-phonetic [phoney-etic?] notation, Peter. :) I’m boycotting them until they switch to IPA. – tchrist May 25 '12 at 02:49
  • where can I learn IPA? – ODP May 25 '12 at 08:46
  • I've edited it, perhaps it creates a better understanding – ODP May 25 '12 at 08:51
  • @olly Google should have a few good IPA references. Try to search "IPA linguistics" though, or you'll get the beer. –  May 25 '12 at 09:03
  • @oily: even if you can't read IPA, you can do comparisons. For example, the Cambridge Learner's Dictionary gives worry as /ˈwʌri/ and curry as /ˈkʌri/, so it should be clear that in RP, they rhyme. – Peter Shor May 25 '12 at 18:11
  • There are web dictionary sites that have sound files for pronunciations. Try some of them. Perhaps google "dictionary worried". – GEdgar Nov 23 '23 at 02:31

6 Answers6

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In North America, worry most often rhymes with furry, blurry, and slurry. That’s the same vowel as in fur, blur, and slur ’round these parts. This is also the same vowel as the one in yer, per, purr, her, sir, sure, fir, burr, knur, slur, whirr, and were. In fact our worry sounds pretty much just like “were” with an extra -y tacked on to the end. Now just add a d for worried, and you’re done.

In contrast, the North American worry usually does not rhyme with any of sorry, quarry, lorry, berry, bury, curie, carry, Carrie, dairy, ferry, glory, Rory, story, cherry, Terry, tarry, very, wary, weary, marry, merry, Mary, Harry, or Laurie — nor even with Larry, Moe, or Curly.

Lastly, the North American worry almost certainly does not rhyme with an Indian sari.

Beyond that, your mileage may, can, will, and surely shall vary. And why sure, I could give you the IPA for my version of worry and worried (respectively /ˈwɜɹi/ and /ˈwɜɹid/), but you said you don’t understand IPA symbols. This makes it next to impossible to talk about pronunciations, because you have no symbolic way of specifying pronunciations. That’s probably why you’ve received no answers yet.

However, even if you did know what the IPA symbols actually meant, they might not do you as much good as you might think: many of those words themselves have multiple possible pronunciations, depending on various mergers and regional accents.

The best I can do is give you rhyme-sets, but mine and thine are surely miles, leagues, and even oceans apart, so what good would that do you if I did? So I can’t tell you how you “should” pronounce worry, per your request. Then again, nobody else can do that either, so I don’t feel so bad.

At best, I can only tell you how I do so. Which is what I’ve tried to do. I guarantee you that many people reading this won’t pronounce all / many / some / any of these the way I myself do anyway. So please don’t think I expect you to pronounce it like me, of course; I expect you to pronounce it like worry. :)

All joking aside, I don’t know what more you are looking for here. You may wish to update your question a bit so that it can be answered.

tchrist
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Here in NSW there has been a sectarian division in pronunciation of "worry" and similar words where there's a Middle English historie :-) of "minims". For minims in general see Wikipedia's page Minim_(palaeography).

When I studied English at USyd in the 1970s the story was that the Catholic "spelling pronunciation" (rhyming with "lorry") had come from a single nun with a strong opinion on the topic, who had enforced it on all of her students, many of whom became teachers.

I can't find evidence to back that up, but this is interesting: What's the current scholarly opinion on the "minims" explanation for the spelling of "love", "tongue," etc?

Robusto
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Bruce
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  • I'm not sure how you're trying to answer the question. What's your explanation for how to pronounce the word worried? – Heartspring Nov 22 '23 at 22:32
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    [Sorry, I got called away, left half the post.] Short story on minims. Scribes wrote many letters as single strokes, called minims. They were like an italic i without the dot. One minim could be i, e or r; two could be u, v or n, three could be m or a combination of i, e, r, u, v or n. Etc. W (double u as we still call it) was uu. So a word like uuurrie would look like iiiiiiiiii, which was too hard to read. The solution was to "box" the vowel, joining the tops and bottoms of the "u", giving iiii[]iiii which was easier to read in context. The "boxed u" then turned into "o". – Bruce Nov 22 '23 at 22:54
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IPA sounds good, perhaps if you have enough of them you'd both pronounce worried exactly the same. I don't know the International Phonetic Alphabet either, but found it described somewhere as 'wur-eed' or 'wuhr-'. 'Wur-eed' is the way I pronounce worried, but that doesn't preclude other pronunciations.

Alex
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    I’m sorry, but that really doesn’t help at all. – tchrist May 24 '12 at 23:03
  • Unfortunately I am unable to add comment to your offering. However it does not seem to be all that useful as you concentrate upon the word 'worry' rather than 'worried'. I would use 'vary' rather than 'very' in your sentence 'Beyond that, your mileage may, can, will, and surely shall very.' – Alex May 25 '12 at 07:29
  • It does help actually, you pronounce it in the exact same way my friend pronounces it. @Alex, if one pronounces worry in a certain way, I don't see why the pronunciation of that part of worried would change, which is what I'm asking about. – ODP May 25 '12 at 08:54
  • @Olly - I have heard people pronounce worried without sounding the 'i' so that is why I drew attention to the word as a whole. You asked the question, so if you found it useful then that's fine with me. – Alex May 25 '12 at 12:11
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Mari-Lou asked for the reference to OED confirming "Worry" rhymes with "Curry". Here is one reference: Pocket Oxford Dictionary. Fourth Edition. pg 973 "Wo'rry (Wu)" The "u" has a symbol above it indicating it's the vowel sound in "ruck" pg 196 "Cu'rry" The "u" has the same symbol above it indicating it's the vowel sound in "ruck" JudithM

user72314
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  • Please copy and paste the corresponding phonetic symbols that re used in the POD, this phonetic list is by Oxford dictionaries. Merely saying that the letter u "has a symbol above it" is too vague and possibly misleading. http://public.oed.com/how-to-use-the-oed/key-to-pronunciation/ consider also the fact that "worry" is pronounced differently in BrEng and AmEng http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/worry_1 – Mari-Lou A Apr 17 '14 at 04:52
  • Mari-Lou asked for copy and paste of copy of the symbol used in the Pocket Oxford Dictionary. This is not possible; it is not an online book. The symbol is a little curve and the preface says this symbol represents the pronunciation of the "u" in "ruck". However, since the SAME symbol is used to indicate the pronunciation of "Worry" and "Curry", it doesn't matter what the symbol is, the dictionary clearly is stating that the words are pronounced using the SAME vowel sound. – user72314 Feb 27 '15 at 13:12
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Like so much other pronunciation, it depends greatly on regional or national accents. For example, American pronunciation of worry would be very different from an English pronunciation of it. As tchrist mentioned, American pronunciation would rhyme with the words furry and blurry, but with a harsh, stressed R sound.

An English pronunciation would be like your second description

His pronunciation: if you will, rhymes with "curry". Curry, worry (wu-reed, wuh-reed)

with the letter O in worried, rhyming with the letter U in the words bun and hut. That would include how the word worried is usually pronounced in the south east of the UK.

Tristan
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  • While harsh is certainly purely subjective, I have no earthly idea how in the world it could ever be applied to any of the approximants, which by their very nature are anything but harsh. As for stress, there is no sort of word-stress or even aspiration involved here, so this too is an inappropriate word. – tchrist Feb 20 '13 at 15:30
  • It's harsh compared to an English pronunciation of it. – Tristan Feb 21 '13 at 11:56
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Well well well, I have a Finnish student here in Switzerland who drives me crazy with his "worry" rhyming with "curry"! Could it be that the Swedish band doing "don't you worry child" and the reggae guys doing their "don't worry be happy" are responsible for this awful pronunciation? Is this a recent development or have we always been so sloppy in our speech?

Mohit
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aeschkat
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