Learn English – Which dialects pronounce “pen” as “pin”

dialectspronunciation

I recently encounter someone who said pen exactly as I would say pin. I looked in my dictionary only to find these pronunciations:

pen — |pen|

pin — |pin|

No crossover was listed or alternative options presented.

I have heard of people doing this before but I was surprised at how exact it was. It wasn't said similar to "pin"; it was said exactly like "pin".

Is there a specific region or dialect where this is common? Are there other instances of e being replaced by i or is it just this one word?

Best Answer

The Southern USA is one area where the pin-pen merger is common. It's not restricted to "pin" and "pen", but a lot of words that include /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ before nasals:

The pin-pen merger is a conditional merger of /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ before the nasal consonants [m], [n], and [ŋ]. The merged vowel is usually closer to [ɪ] than to [ɛ] (examples include: kin-ken, bin-ben, and him-hem). The merger is widespread in Southern American English, and is also found in many speakers in the Midland region immediately north of the South, as well as in less densely populated inland areas of the Western United States, particularly in Bakersfield, California. It is also a characteristic of African American Vernacular English.

Language Log has also discussed this, and examples where the vowels are pronounced the same and differently in a dialect with the merger may also shed some light on the phenomenon.

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