Quote Originally Posted by OC Richard View Post
Offtopic but I've heard Pennsylvanians who pronounced "water" almost like "wurder" and made a sound-distinction between Mary, marry, and merry.

As a general rule medial t's don't exist in spoken English; people imagine that they pronounce medial t's the same as initial t's but it's rare, only in certain words such as, ironically, many people's pronunciation of Wimbledon as "wimbul-Tun". To test it, say the word "tea" and carefully note precisely how you're creating the initial "t" sound; then say "butter" "bottle" etc using precisely the same sound that you used for the "t" of "tea", and note how strange it sounds. It's like you have to put in a pause in the middle of the word to bark out that sharp percussive "t". In the USA these medial t's usually become d's while in many places in Britain there's simply an interruption of the air-flow, or a glottal stop.

So yes in the USA (and in most English-speaking places) "Paddy" and "Patty" are pronounced the same. But they shouldn't be spelled the same!
Around Montgomery county Pennsylvania where I'm from we, for the most part, pronounce our d's and our t's differently. You make a good point though, we do make a distinction between the three Mary, marry, and merry's. I've seen a couple people get a little offended when someone pronounces the name Mary like merry.