This is part 3 of a three-part poll. Parts 1 and 2 are linked below. Please respond to all parts in order.
Part 1 | Part 2
How did you vote in the previous polls?
TMA fan; merry and marry are the same, Gerard and Jared are the same.
TMA fan; merry and marry are the same, Gerard and Jared are different.
TMA fan; merry and marry are different, Gerard and Jared are the same.
TMA fan; merry and marry are different, Gerard and Jared are different.
Not a TMA fan; merry and marry are the same, Gerard and Jared are the same.
Not a TMA fan; merry and marry are the same, Gerard and Jared are different.
Not a TMA fan; merry and marry are different, Gerard and Jared are the same.
Not a TMA fan; merry and marry are different, Gerard and Jared are different.
Couldnโt listen/audio files wouldn't play.
The reason I am running this poll is that many TMA fans have a hard time telling when Jonny is saying Gerard vs Jared in the podcast. The oft-cited reason for this is that he does not pronounce the second "R" in "Gerard," thus making it hard to distinguish the two names.
This confused me for a long time, as I can tell them apart regardless of the "R," based on the "E" vs "A" sounds. But it occurred to me that the E/A distinction is the same one as exists in the words "merry" and "marry" - two words that many people cannot tell apart. Those particular phonemes get lost in many American accents, meaning that the words are spoken and heard as homonyms despite technically having different pronunciations.
My predictions are that the results of this poll will show that people who hear "Gerard" and "Jared" as the same will also hear "merry" and "marry" as the same, and that this will be the largest group. People who hear one word pair as different, will also hear the difference in the other one, and this will be the second largest group. There will be a small number of people who can hear the difference between one word pair but not the other. I do not know how fandom association will change these results (but I expect most interaction will be from TMA fans anyway).
...All that aside, I'm very curious to see if I'll be proven wrong!
