Pronouncing ''marry'' and ''Mary'' as /me@ri/ is not silly.
<<The conventional British transcription for "Mary" is [mE@rI]. >>
I think that's the commonest, but some sources (mostly the same ones that use [e] for "merry") use [e@]. Oxford dictionaries, however, now use /E:/ for the phoneme (so they show merry/Mary as a length contrast). I think my own pronunciation uses either [E:] or [{:].
<<<<The conventional British transcription for "Mary" is [mE@rI]. >>
I think that's the commonest, but some sources (mostly the same ones that use [e] for "merry") use [e@]. Oxford dictionaries, however, now use /E:/ for the phoneme (so they show merry/Mary as a length contrast). I think my own pronunciation uses either [E:] or [{:].>>
I think that in England it's most like [mE@rI] or [me@rI], while in Scotland it's more like [merI]. Scottish English generally doesn't have the diphthongs [e@] or [E@] in words like ''Mary'', or at least that's what I've read.
In Australia, the ''merry''/''Mary'' contrast is based on length of the vowel so it's:
merry - /meri/
Mary - /me:ri/
American English usually uses [E] for the vowel phoneme in ''set'' while Australian English uses [e] and RP uses something in between [E] and [e].
Unfortunately I don't have recording equipment at my disposal, but here's how I pronounce those words:
Mary - [mE@ri]
marry - [m{ri]
merry - [mEri]
mirror - [mIr@`]
nearer - [nI@r@`]
horse - [hOrs]
hoarse - [hOrs]
furry - [f3`i]
hurry - [hVri]
cot - [kQt]
caught - [kQt]
father - [fAD@`]
bother - [bQD@`]
forest - [fQrIst]
Erin - [Er@n]
Aaron - [{r@n]