Huh.

[conuly]

I'm listening to music, and the singer rhymed "ends" with "again". (Well, more or less. Let's pretend that -ds isn't there, why don't we.)

Now, I don't find that rhyme very surprising, because I have the pin-pen merger. (As a reminder, that means I don't make the vowel in "pet" before a nasal (n or m or ng), I automatically make the vowel in "pit" instead. I very clearly remember sitting in speech therapy at age eight or so wondering why it was "not possible" to put the sounds together that way!) So end always sounds like ind would to people who do NOT have the pin-pen merger. (And pin and pen sound alike, hence the name of the merger.)

But it occurs to me that maybe nobody else finds it surprising either. Maybe people without the merger say again with the same vowel as end or pen all the time (look, I can't type IPA without googling, so bear with me here) and I just didn't realize that before.

Soooooo... what vowel do you use in the second syllable of the word again? Help me out, I'm just dying of curiosity!

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Comments

[crystalpyramid]

I definitely say pin and pen differently, but again rhymes with pen for me, not pin.

Not sure how typical I am though -- my idiolect also has /melk/ for 'milk' and 'roof' with the same vowel as 'book'.

[kyrielle]

Again is said like pen, which is distinct from pin, for me. I have in fact never heard again said like anything but ag-en. (Which I write that ridiculous way because otherwise I'd read it as ajen, which no.)

[waterfall8484]

I sometimes use ei (as in face/pain) and mostly e (as in dress/pen) depending on context and emphasis I think. But I'm a non-native speaker who's spoken Irish for the last six years and learned to speak English by mimicking those around me in multi-cultural London, resulting in me speaking a lot of variations but generally received pronunciation (until I went to Ireland). So I'm not sure if that's any help at all. :~D

[zhelana]

again rhymes with ben.

[siderea]

The Hidden Health Dangers of Buried Urban Rivers

A Brook in the City
Robert Frost

The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear
A number in. But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
And impulse, having dipped a finger length
And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed
A flower to try its currents where they crossed.
The meadow grass could be cemented down
From growing under pavements of a town;
The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.
Is water wood to serve a brook the same?
How else dispose of an immortal force
No longer needed? Staunch it at its source
With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
In fetid darkness still to live and run --
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps.
No one would know except for ancient maps
That such a brook ran water. But I wonder
If from its being kept forever under,
The thoughts may not have risen that so keep
This new-built city from both work and sleep.

[siderea]

Maybe people without the merger say again with the same vowel as end or pen all the time (look, I can't type IPA without googling, so bear with me here) and I just didn't realize that before.

I'm a little confused by the question: I've literally never heard "again" pronounced with the short i sound of "pin" or "pit" – "ah-ghin". I've only heard it pronounced "ah-ghen". Historically, and sometimes poetically still, it's "ah-gane". I mean, have some Yates:

And "Mr. Alfred' be again
Upon the lips of common men

Kipling:

The good wife's sons come home again
With little into their hands,
But the lore of men that ha' dealt with men
In the new and naked lands;

Frost:

There's a place called Far-away Meadow
We never shall mow in again,
Or such is the talk at the farmhouse:
The meadow is finished with men.

Browning (E):

Give I back more love again
Than dogs often take of men,

Tennyson:

Till now at noon she slept again,
And seem'd knee-deep in mountain grass,
And heard her native breezes pass,
And runlets babbling down the glen.

Brontë (A):

Thy loss can never be repaired;
I shall not know again
While life remains, the peaceful joy
That filled my spirit then.

Wilde:

For we to death with pipe and dancing go,
Nor would we pass the ivory gate again,
As some sad river wearied of its flow
Through the dull plains, the haunts of common men

Coleridge:

But the very first Evening he saw me again
The last mentioned Ruffian popp'd out of his Den--

So, yeah, folks without the merger pronounce "again" with the same vowel as "pet".

[conuly]

To me, with the merger, I can't really hear it if other people are NOT making the merger, you know? So even though I know that to me pin and pen and again all rhyme, I really have no way of knowing how other people say again. The spelling gives, like, no clue.

[janewilliams20]

Great examples!
I say "again" to rhyme with "pen" and "Ben", too, but not "pin".It had never occurred to me that anyone would think "pin" and "pen" sounded the same. (I've now followed that link, and know more.)

I'm sure I've heard "again" rhymed with "rain", somewhere, but can't remember where.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

As usual, not a native speaker of English. But the way I learned English, the "ain" in "again" is indeed pronounced just like the "en" in "pen" or "ends". However, since there's a "-ds" stuck to "ends", I don't think it rhymes very well with "again". But I'm picky (in any language)!

[redbird]

For me, "again" rhymes with pen and men, not with pin or tin (I don't have that merger). I wouldn't rhyme it with either "ends" or "winds," because of the final consonants in those words.

(Born and raised in Queens.)

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Oh. I thought the pin-pen merger was the same as it is in Illinois, but yours is the other way around. (I don't do it, or if I do I try to notice and not do it because I dislike it, but it boils down to, "Hi, I'm from Ellinois. I drink melk and I sleep on a pellow." Only with pin and pen too.) In any case, 'end' and 'again' have the same short-e sound going on.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

I would usually pronounce 'again' to rhyme with -en, but I feel like sometimes I say it -ain. Though now I do it consciously, it sounds weird so maybe not.

Other words which leap to mind (plain, swain, main, pain, brain, haywain, train) are all pronounced -ain though, so it seems to be a peculiarity of 'again'.