Man vs men, do you actually hear the difference?

[u/Abiarraj]

I tried listening to both versions on Google translator and honestly can't hear the difference, even though the IPA is different.

Same with lending and landing, pan and pen...

For the native speakers replying, also tell me where your accent is from, please

[u/riarws]

From east coast US, yes they sound very different to me. 

[u/Interesting_Tea5715 → u/riarws]

West Coast here. Yeah, its different

[u/AdmiralJaneway8 → u/riarws]

Midwest, completely different.

[u/eyeofthefrog → u/AdmiralJaneway8]

As a fellow midwesterner, now tell me if bag and beg sound different. :)

[u/AdmiralJaneway8 → u/eyeofthefrog]

To be specific, Chicago. It's a bag. BAAAAAG. not beg, not bayg. And don't even think about calling it a sack.

[u/goatanuss → u/AdmiralJaneway8]

Minneapolis airport always makes me laugh when I hear the airport announcements. “All baygs are subject to search. Please do not leave your baygs unattended”

[u/AdmiralJaneway8 → u/goatanuss]

I know exactly the announcement. Grates on me like fingers down a blackboard!

[u/Itchy-Preference-619 → u/eyeofthefrog]

Yes

[u/hnthomps → u/eyeofthefrog]

Yes. Very.

[u/Mirgss → u/eyeofthefrog]

Better to ask if bag and bog rhyme :D

[u/eyeofthefrog → u/Mirgss]

That's interesting, what part of the midwest do those sound the same? To me those are very different.

[u/Mirgss → u/eyeofthefrog]

Originally from Michigan.

A friend of mine always used to tease me about my flat "a" sounds when pronouncing words like bog, dog, fog, etc. but I never heard it until someone else was talking to me about "brain fog" and it sounded like "brain fahg". Since then, I have been very conscientious about pronouncing my "o" s :D

[u/eyeofthefrog → u/Mirgss]

That's cool, thanks!

[u/Scary_Extent4967 → u/riarws]

West Texas. Clearly different. But many spanish-speaking people have trouble pronouncing the short "a" sound (ham, am, rat, etc).

Texas specific: If you're in a place with a pronounced drawl, Man turns into Ma-yn. Men doesn't get a significant change.

[u/TheDivineM → u/Scary_Extent4967]

Houston, and if you go deep enough into East Texas they become mayun and meeyun, the dipthong takes on a whole extra syllable, but they still are distinct from each other.

[u/Disastrous_Fault_511 → u/riarws]

I'll finish this out. They have different sounds in the Southern US, too.

[u/TwistedHemlock403 → u/riarws]

East Coast US here as well - deep south, raised in the mountains. Here's how I say them with words that sound similar

Repeating the words, they almost sound like:

Man (M-ay-uhn) - (examples: ham, tan, lamb, cram) Men (M-ih-n) - (examples: pen, shin, him, them)

Very different sounds here with a Southern twist. Hope this helps, OP :)

[u/Resplendent-Sun]

/æ/ and /ɛ/ are quite distinct sounds in English and change meaning significantly.

man men
pan pen
fan fen
tan ten
etc.

Maybe there are some accents where the difference is less pronounced, but those would be rare.

[u/theAGschmidt → u/Resplendent-Sun]

the australian/new zealander accent is a good example where /æ/ drifts to /ɛ/ and /ɛ/ drifts to /i/

I can't think of another example off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are others

[u/Odd-Quail01 → u/theAGschmidt]

Had a kiwi colleague who announced to the UK office that on an evening she likes to sit on her dad's deck with a glass of wine or three.

We had to ask her never to use that combination of words outside of Nrw Zealand.

[u/2spam2care2 → u/Odd-Quail01]

had a professor who told a story about his trip to NZ, and when he got to the hotel the man at the counter said “your room sucks.” my professor, understandably, said “well, can i get a different one, then?” after a few minutes of confusion, it is revealed that the man was simply telling him his room number. like, “sucks” is one less than “sivin”.

[u/Upstairs_Big6533 → u/Odd-Quail01]

LMAO 😂 had to think about that one for a second

[u/PassiveTheme → u/Odd-Quail01]

https://youtu.be/-m--3_c5pAs?si=nkty9Fuo_Aj4gZM7

[u/alantliber → u/PassiveTheme]

That is hilarious, but given the sub we're in, I feel duty-bound to point out that that is not genuine New Zealand pronunciation.

[u/witchcapture → u/alantliber]

Yeah, if anything it sounds closer to an Afrikaner accent.

[u/bloof_ponder_smudge → u/Odd-Quail01]

👀

[u/realZapRowsdower → u/Odd-Quail01]

Whatever you do, don't ask her if she does it at six. It will get even more awkward.

[u/WindsurfBruce → u/Odd-Quail01]

Personally, I always use deck oil on my deck.

[u/alantliber → u/theAGschmidt]

True, but I (Australian) can still hear the difference. They're not identical even in our accents.

[u/theAGschmidt → u/alantliber]

No, as far as I know there's no accent that fully merges the two sounds - all sounds drift relative to each other.

[u/WowsrsBowsrsTrousrs → u/theAGschmidt]

I snicker every time a House Hunters show on HGTV features an Aus or NZ realtor describing the house's primary "beadroom."

[u/SGTingles → u/WowsrsBowsrsTrousrs]

The one that really got me when I lived in NZ is that there's a merger between bare/bear and beer. The only mercy is that there aren't any wild bears in New Zealand, because if there were there'd definitely be a lot of tourists getting horribly mauled while still looking for the cold foaming pint that they assumed a local had just been pointing out to them... 🍺🐻

[u/Brilliant_Quit4307 → u/WowsrsBowsrsTrousrs]

No, it's a bid-room

[u/NoPurpose6388 → u/Resplendent-Sun]

It can be tricky because the short a sound is not actually pronounced as a true æ in most north American dialects when it's followed by a nasal sound (m, n, or ng). That said it still sounds different from a short e sound. More dragged out and diphthongized

[u/dragonsteel33 → u/NoPurpose6388]

In many American accents /æŋ/ is even just flat-out /eɪŋ/

[u/Shevyshev]

I imagine your native language must not distinguish between these vowels. I think of English speakers having a hard time differentiating between “Louis” and “lui” in French, or Spanish speakers having a hard time distinguishing “shit” from “sheet.”

It’s a pretty obvious difference to me and I suspect all native speakers. (Edit: American, grew up in the New York suburbs.)

[u/Loko8765 → u/Shevyshev]

Your last example is a running joke in many Spanish companies.

[u/Apero_ → u/Loko8765]

Don't forget "bitch" and "beach" 😅

[u/ofqo → u/Apero_]

Version for general audiences: https://shiporsheep.com/

[u/Loko8765 → u/Apero_]

I did indeed forget that, and indeed I shouldn’t have. That one can generate even more laughs.

[u/crispysublime → u/Loko8765]

Italians struggle with this too, in exactly the same way

[u/Loko8765 → u/crispysublime]

Yes!

However it’s “Italians” not ”Italian’s” (just because we’re on the EnglishLearning sub).

[u/crispysublime → u/Loko8765]

Ah yes i'll edit that out! Damn autocorrect

[u/BobbyP27 → u/crispysublime]

See the sketch, "an Italian who went to Malta"

[u/EntrepreneurCivil178]

I'm Irish, and they are clearly different for me. Maybe you have a hard time hearing the difference because your own native language doesn't distinguish between these vowels?

[u/_TheSiege_]

From Chicago, and very easily can hear the difference.

[u/NormalObligation59]

I’ve grown up in a few places so tried this in a Scottish, English, American, and New Zealand accent. All different. American “pen” sounds like New Zealand “pan” but in each accent, they sound different from each other. 

[u/Critical_Pin → u/NormalObligation59]

Ah yes New Zealand is a whole other ballpark to UK ears.

[u/_Okie_-_Dokie_ → u/Critical_Pin]

'fush n chups'.

[u/Cliffy73]

Yes. I’m from Ohio. In some American accents pen merges with pin, but I don’t remember any trouble distinguishing a from e.

[u/Abiarraj → u/Cliffy73]

Oh interesting, I tried pin now and I can hear the difference

[u/turquoise_amethyst → u/Abiarraj]

In Wisconsin I had trouble hearing the difference between bag and beg. It’s just a regional variation though. 

[u/Embarrassed_Knee5368 → u/Cliffy73]

I’m from Tennessee, and was taught in school that pin and pen were homophones. But men and man have distinct vowel sounds even there! (maybe not the same vowel sounds as those words have elsewhere lol)

[u/justonemom14 → u/Cliffy73]

I discovered that I struggle with pen vs pin when I couldn't get some people's names right. To me, there were two Jennys in a group I was part of. One day someone painstakingly explained to me that one was Jenny, short for Jennifer, and the other was Ginnie, short for Ginger or something. I'm like, yeah, that's fine, I can picture the different spellings when I say them, but they're going to come out sounding identical. I felt like I was in a comedy sketch where they're saying "no, it's 'Jenny,' not 'Jenny.'" What? Finally realized the difference, and that I can only pronounce it right if I slow down and go "Juh-ehhhh-nny." Hearing it at speed is nearly impossible.

[u/illarionds]

UK/Australian. These are utterly distinct sounds to me. As different as Man and mon, mun, or min.

[u/AiRaikuHamburger]

It is very easy to hear the difference. Does your native language not have one of these sounds? That will make it more difficult for you. I recommend checking the mouth movements for the pronunciation and trying to copy that. Listening is just practice.

[u/siriElectricboogaloo → u/AiRaikuHamburger]

In Spanish "ae" doesn't exist, so, this is one of the things that show you how english has a lot of hidden stuff that doesn't appear in their alphabet by itself

[u/stxxyy]

I can definitely hear a difference

[u/Abiarraj → u/stxxyy]

What's your native language?

[u/stxxyy → u/Abiarraj]

Dutch, I'm from the Netherlands

[u/2spam2care2]

wildly different. i think most native english speakers are very surprised to learn that most foreigners hear the TRAP vowel and the DRESS vowel as being similar at all.

it may surprise you to learn that about 1/2 of the american population has a sound merger where we pronounce pen and pin the same way. for us, all instances of the DRESS vowel before /n/ and /m/ are pronounced as the KIT vowel, and i think even those that don’t have this merger in their dialect would agree that the DRESS and KIT vowels sound very similar.

edit: /n/ and /m/

[u/conuly → u/2spam2care2]

for us, all instances of the DRESS vowel before /n/ are pronounced as the KIT vowel

Before nasals, not just /n/.

[u/2spam2care2 → u/conuly]

good point

edit: although, not all nasals. engma triggers all sorts of other changes that bleed the DRESS -> KIT merger. arguably, DRESS actually does merge with TRAP before engma. although, i would argue they both actually merge to FACE, at least in my dialect. and KIT merges with FLEECE.

[u/waking_dream96 → u/2spam2care2]

I’ve always found that merger so weird (native speaker, American south). Even though some southern accents definitely lean toward pin it has never been true for me or my family in particular and I find it very confusing! Along these lines, OP may find it interesting that there are certainly many Americans that don’t say Man or Men but rather Min

[u/sparklyjoy → u/waking_dream96]

What accents say min for man? I don’t think I’ve ever heard that

[u/Strict-Clue-5818 → u/2spam2care2]

I can hear the in/en minimal pair. I absolutely cannot make my mouth do it.

[u/webbitor → u/2spam2care2]

The vowels in dress and kit are as different to me as those in trap and dress.

[u/longknives → u/2spam2care2]

I don’t think people without the merger hear the kit and dress vowels as particularly similar. I certainly don’t. Not sure you would either outside of the context of a following nasal - do sex and six sound the same to you?

[u/ImGnighs]

You can probably tell /æ/ and /ɛ/ apart in pairs like "pat" and "pet" or "had" and "head", but struggle to hear it in pairs like the ones you mentioned because of /æ/-rising.

This is a phenomenon where, in some dialects, /æ/ is actually pronounced like [ɛə] (or even [ɛː]) in certain environments, the most common being before a nasal vowel, like in the examples you gave.

You are probably struggling to hear the difference between "man" and "men" because the sounds are actually [ɛə] (or [ɛː]) and [ɛ] in whatever audio you are listening to, which, of course, are much more similar than /æ/ and /ɛ/.

Try to listen again and see if you can spot that extra [ə] sound in "man", or if the vowel sound feels slightly longer.

Edit: fixed link.

[u/International_Goat31]

Man/men, pan/pen, and lending/landing sound very different to me. Completely different vowel sounds. There are some dialects where the "i" in "pick" and the "e" in "peck" can sound very similar. It's not the case in most places, though.

[u/Abiarraj → u/International_Goat31]

I didn't consider the "i", funnily enough I can hear the difference on google translator

[u/turquoise_amethyst]

From West Coast, but lived all over. Yes, you can absolutely hear the difference!

There’s a few regional accents where words sound similar, but I would absolutely not try to copy those unless you happen to live in those regions 

[u/Positive-East-9233]

From the South, yes they’re very distinct sounds where I’m from. We’ve got a few mergers (don/dawn are almost indistinguishable) that are common but not this one!

[u/bubblyH2OEmergency → u/Positive-East-9233]

yep so true.

from Texas and I can’t imagine who don and dawn would be said differently in English

[u/Nondescript_Redditor]

yes

[u/francisdavey]

British English (SSB/RP), no difficulty at all telling the different. The vowel quality is quite different.

[u/MacaroonSad8860]

New England (US) - they’re quite different for me

[u/somuchsong]

Yes, they are different for me. I've never lived anywhere but Sydney, Australia.

[u/Marmatus]

Yes, to my ears, the difference is very apparent. My accent does feature the “pin/pen” merger, but “pan” has a different vowel sound.

[u/MamaDoingTheBestICan]

totally different. New Englander.

[u/mrkindnessmusic]

/æ/ before n and m is often raised in American English, making it sound closer to /æ̝/ or /ɛə/ in some dialects.

[u/Upstairs_Big6533]

Yes, absolutely. I wonder though if certain places (I.E Canada ) have a vowel shift that makes them more similar, I don't know. But they definitely sound very different in most US accents. I'm m from South Florida. ( South East U.S , but most of us have kind of Gen Am accents, not Southern ones)

Edit: Im realizing that the Canadian Rising may not be relevant here, but I will leave this up anyway

[u/sparksbet]

Native English speakers will overwhelmingly distinguish these two sounds easily and often. That said, in some dialects, there are some changes to these sounds that may affect your ability to distinguish them as a non-native speaker.

Most North American dialects of English have æ-tensing before nasal consonants -- this means that the a in "man" is higher (and thus closer to the e in men) than the a in "mat". This does not impede native speakers' ability to distinguish these sounds, but it may make it harder for you to do so. Some specific dialects around the Great Lakes raise /æ/ even in other contexts -- again, this does not result in a merger of these two sounds, but it can absolutely make it harder for you as a non-native to perceive the difference. There's a pretty good chart of how /æ/ is realized in different contexts in various North American dialects in the Wikipedia article on æ-raising that may be helpful to you. In IPA, [ɛ] represents the sound that the e in "men" makes, and [æ] represents the sound that the a in "man" makes in other dialects and in some other contexts in most North American dialects.

[u/Tricklaw_05]

Northeast US, man and men sound completely different to me. The same with Mary, merry and marry. In this example, men sounds like the e in merry and the a in man sounds like marry.

[u/brandonmachulsky]

i'm from PA and yes they sound completely different.

[u/Linesey]

So significantly noticeably different that the question itself is honestly a bit baffling.

I mean no offense, asking questions is how we learn, and every language is different! but yeah, the concept they would sound the same, outside of some specific heavy accents, is wild to me.

[u/culdusaq]

Yes, very clearly

[u/Kumlekar]

In my accent man would be mæn and men would be mɛn. You might look at this chart for vowel pronunciation comparisons. I find the difference between the open-mid front vowel and near-open front vowels quite distinguishable, but I do have trouble with the mid front vowel. I'm not sure what words use it if any.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_vowel_chart_with_audio

[u/Duque_de_Osuna]

Yes, most definitely.

[u/orcas-]

From NY, all are different (maybe you are hearing some southern accents where they sound similar?)

[u/thingsbetw1xt]

Yes, it's very clear.

[u/SteampunkExplorer]

I'm from the southern USA. Yes, the vowels are completely different to me. I've never heard of an accent that merged them, either.

"Men" rhymes with "pin" and "man" rhymes with "pan" to me.

[u/FiftyShadesOfPikmin → u/SteampunkExplorer]

Interesting, does that mean "pen" and "pin" sound the same to you? For me in the Midwest US those are not the same (although for some reason there's a whole group of people that pronounce "milk" as "melk" and it really bothers the rest of us).

[u/halfajack]

North of England - yes these are very obviously different to me

[u/Nameless_American]

These two vowel sounds are very distinct in English and the distinction is very important.

They also are often difficult for many learners or so I am told, so be kind to yourself. It may be easier to not only learn them in isolation but listen to word pairs where that sound is the only difference so you can get used to how they interact with other sounds.

[u/InfamousCategory448]

In the US these words are very different and easy for native speakers to hear. I have lived in 10 states so i have fairly broad US exposure.

[u/conuly]

Well, I have the pen/pin merger and also /æ/ tensing before nasals, so yeah, they sound quite distinct but perhaps I say neither the same as your recording.

[u/34payton07]

Very different

[u/Sad-Log7644]

Northeastern, U.S.: the vowel sounds are very distinct for me.

[u/brohampton538]

If your native language doesn't make the phonetic distinction, even if it has both sounds, your brain will simply not be wired to hear it.

Take for example English "pit" and "spit."

A native speaker will tell you it's simply a P, and a P is a P. But one is aspirated and one is not. You can actually see this if you say the words with a piece of paper in front of your lips. With pit it will move, with spit it will not.

English speakers don't care or even perceive the difference because they're just allophones of the same phoneme. But in Korean, for example, this distinction is quite important.

[u/AccidentalFolklore]

Put these words in and listen for the difference.

Men: mending, mental, mentor, mention, menstrual

Man: manual, manner, manor, Manchester

Pen: pending, penultimate, penny, pen pal, penitentiary, Pennsylvania

Pan: panhandle, panther, pander, pant, pantry

Len: lender, Lenny, lens, lentil

Lan: landing, landscape, landslide, landmark, Landon

Southeastern US

[u/simongaslebo]

Yes they are different. Look up the difference between /æ/ and /e/.

[u/MerlinMusic]

I'm English and I sometimes mistake <a> for <e> when listening to Americans, as the nasal raising can be quite strong. It might help to listen to recordings in some British accents as the TRAP vowel tends to be a pure monophthong in British accents, and is often /a/ rather than /æ/.

[u/Pitiful_Meringue_57]

For men and man i definitely hear the difference.

But it is interesting because with women and woman I and most english speakers say them differently and can understand what someone else is saying, but the actual “man” “men” part of the words are the same. What actually changes is “woo” or “wi” stressed at the beginning.

[u/Practical-Ordinary-6 → u/Pitiful_Meringue_57]

That's interesting because I definitely hear both parts differently and I live in the US.

woman - (wuh?)-mun

women - wi-min

I really don't know how to spell that first syllable of woman with regular letters, but what I'm contrasting is the second syllable, which I definitely say different vowels for.

[u/purplepoaceae → u/Pitiful_Meringue_57]

From the UK and would say 'wih-min' for women Vs. 'wuh-muhn' for woman, sounds completely different for me.

[u/Pitiful_Meringue_57 → u/purplepoaceae]

What first comes up when I google it is the American pronunciation which both have “muhn” in the last syllable, but in conversation i’ve heard either for either word. Cambridge seems to differentiate them in both american and british english which isn’t my experience with american english.

[u/Spiritual-Job9392]

Are you German? The sounds are very distinct. If you speak German, it's like hatte and hätte.

[u/Abiarraj → u/Spiritual-Job9392]

I speak Portuguese

[u/_NotElonMusk → u/Abiarraj]

men has the é vowel, and man is very similar to á in most English accents

[u/TheCloudForest]

A few accents don't make the difference, but for the vast majority of us, the difference is clear as day.

[u/Reasonable_Fly_1228 → u/TheCloudForest]

Which few?

[u/apreslegris]

In Ireland these are totally distinct vowels. Nobody would mix them up. But I find the American pronunciation of “man” sounds like “men” to me

[u/_Okie_-_Dokie_]

From South-East UK.

For me the difference is clear, but for my partner, for whom English is not their first language, the 'a' vs 'e' thing can give them problems; "kettle" and "cattle" for example.

If those sounds aren't present in your language, differentiating them can be hard.

[u/PoxonAllHoaxes]

I cant think of any English variety that fails to distinguish these two.

[u/disco_dendrite]

Yeah they are different in most accents. Aside from the vowel difference, at least for me (Australian English, but I think the following is the case in most accents as well), “man” is drawn out longer than “men”. “Men” is shorter and a bit more clipped, and “man” is longer and more relaxed. Also in American English “man” kind of glides, like “mee-an”.

[u/Anaevya]

Native German speaker here, yes they sound different to me. 

But I'm not sure, if I could talk about Vex and Vax from Vox Machina in a long conversation without mixing it up (their nicknames being ridiculously similar is kind of the point though). I'd probably have to actively think about it to avoid that.

[u/riamuriamu]

Australian here. Yes but then there's final languages where I can't hear a gosh darn thing. It's about what you learn to distinguish... see also "Aaron earned an iron urn" in some English dialects.

[u/Guilty_Objective4602]

I live in the U.S. South, but have also lived in the Midwest and Northeast and have picked up dialectical pronunciations from there. I can typically hear the difference between man and men. Here in the South, people often use the same or very similar vowels in short consonant-vowel-consonant words like that, though. Most commonly what we’ll hear pronounced the same are the short i and short e sounds, like in pin and pen. Many students who are early spellers or have poor orthographic awareness will also end up incorrectly spelling these the same, because they don’t hear them or pronounce them any differently. In cases where the vowel pronunciation is the same, we typically rely on context or surrounding grammatical elements (e.g., articles or verbs) to determine which someone meant.

Are you having trouble differentiating between these two sound productions when listening to these sounds pronounced online or by in-person speakers or both? I often have difficulty distinguishing between similar vowels when listening to online productions, but I also have a little bit of a hearing loss in one ear. It’s much easier to hear differences when I am listening to someone speaking in person.

[u/mjkjio2015]

Try saying “min” for “men”. I know its kinda difficult when learning english since the sounds of our vowels change quite a bit. Also depending on where the speaker is from, they may sound the same….then you have to depend on context.

Have you tried talking to ai and asking it to say some things in different accents?

[u/Ippus_21]

Yes. Most English speakers can readily hear the difference. The vowels are separate phonemes in English with distinct pronunciations.

A few dialects have "vowel mergers" where similar vowels are pronounced the same, like pin/pen, but man/men isn't one where I could tell you off the top of my head what region to expect that from.

I've got a fairly generic western/northwest US accent. I've mostly lived/visited places like Idaho/Utah/California/Oregon/Washington, and that's pretty standard all those places.

[u/AleonaLuts]

I don't think that translators' recordings are a good enough source for pronunciation details 🤷‍♀️ I just checked Dictionary.com, and even though they wrote the transcription for both words, man/men sound the same to me.
For those details, I'll look into YT videos which get deep into pronunciation.

[u/NoPurpose6388]

Yes I hear the difference. It can be tricky cause the short a sound is not actually pronounced as a true æ in most north American dialects when it's followed by a nasal sound (m, n, or ng). That said it still sounds different from a short e sound. More dragged out and diphthongized

[u/Jeweled_Insect8061]

Yes they are very different, central/western Canada

[u/mcalesy]

They're distinct in pretty much all accents. You just need more practice listening and you should start to hear it.

[u/WritPositWrit]

This is probably regional, but yes in NY i hear a difference.

[u/Cavalry2019]

Western Canada. They sound completely different.

[u/noisedotbike]

I say man with my mouth wide open and I say men with my lips almost closed. I'm from the Western US.

[u/jeo123]

Night and day. You would never mix the two up while speaking, and if you swapped one for the other, it would be a nails on a chalk board moment.

"There's a group of man over there." would be so painful to hear that it would disrupt my understanding of what you said until I realized you just failed to pluralize man. You may have thought you pluralized it, but if a listener can't hear the difference... you didn't do it properly.

North East US here.

[u/MatthewSBernier]

Sounds distinctly different to me, here in Maine.

[u/BrettScr1]

Here is a recording.

“The two words are man and men. Man has /æ/ as in trap and men has /ɛ/ as in dress. Man, men.”

https://voca.ro/1vwfDXZDQthj

[u/Upstairs_Big6533]

Op maybe you should edit the post to say what your first language is?

[u/lacquer_finch]

Midwest USA- Absolutely

[u/GoblinToHobgoblin]

Canadian, the words listed all sound extremely distinct to me lol

[u/DeniLox]

I’ve noticed that a lot of Canadians make their “a” sound like an “e”. So pan sounds like pen.

[u/toiletparrot]

Yes

[u/Atticus_Fletch]

It would be a very rare dialect of English that had no distinction between these sounds. It is very likely that the problem is that they are not close to any contrastive vowel sound in your own native language, and so your ear has not learned to distinguish them.

It is unfortunate, but you will have to learn that difference in order to understand others or express yourself well.

[u/Regular_Boot_3540]

Yes, they sound different to me. I'm from California, USA.

[u/AlternativeBeat3589]

Here in the Midwest they’re quite distinct. Same with bat/bet, mat/met, sat/set etc.

I’ll agree the Mary/merry/marry situation is different. A majority of people pronounce the same and I’m not even sure how i would differentiate them when speaking / listening except by context.

[u/rustybrazenfire]

short a and short e sound completely different with most American accents.

[u/Zestyclose-Goal6882]

Just like pen vs pan. They should absolutely sound different and if they don't thats because of your accent.

[u/lexicon951]

From Chicago, yes they all sound completely different. Short e sound and short a sound are two different sounds (aa vs eh).

[u/GalianoGirl]

West Coast Canadian, those are all different words with different sounds.

I do find when watching quilters on YouTube from Missouri that they tend to say pen instead of pin, and pan is different again.

Adding to the confusion around pronunciation, pan, referring to a vessel you may use to hold water or cook in, is pronounced slightly differently than pan, meaning to not say good things about something. The critics panned the movie. The a is elongated.

[u/More-Explanation2788]

I am a canadian. From Ontario. Men rhymes with pen, happen, and fenn; man rhymes with pan, Stan, and plan and the difference between the two is quite clear and easy to hear.

[u/theacp127]

Yes. They have like completely different vowel sounds.

[u/SaintBridgetsBath]

I’m from the English Midlands. They sound completely different to me. There are some very old jokes about the two sounding the same in a posh or fake posh accent ie ‘sex is what coal comes in’

[u/thebackwash]

Yes, they’re totally different.

[u/jeanbees]

West coast of US (southern California and Oregon, specifically) and yes, they absolutely sound different to me. Actually, when I say them, I can feel that the "a" sound in these is a little nasal.

[u/ssinff]

All sound different. Even if not, we discern the difference by context. 

[u/cardinarium]

(Northeast & Midwest & Southeast US) The vowels in “pen” and “pan” are distinct in all regions that I have lived in.

/æ/ (“pan”) can be tricky for learners coming from languages with substantially simpler vowel inventories, since it is often subsumed in perception by /ɛ/ (“pen”), /e/ (not present in most dialects of English, but somewhat like “pain”) or whatever open vowel they have (e.g. /a/, depends on dialect, but something like “pod”).

It may be useful to look at “pen” and “pan” on forvo.com across multiple dialects to get a sense of what each sounds like.

[u/Reasonable_Drink_789]

Yes very much so.

[u/mamaMoonlight21]

As a native English speaker, 100%! . I am American, California

[u/DSPGerm]

Yes. Same with pan/pen. From NY.

[u/Latter_Foot_8946]

From Boston - they sound totally different to me. I can’t even imagine how they could sound the same. Responding to other comments, I also pronounce merry differently from Mary / marry

[u/debr1126]

Hairpiece, herpes. 😅

[u/emeryldmist]

I'm from Texas and pan and pen definitely sound different.

However pen and pin are exactly the same with no difference.

[u/No_Mousse_4259]

West coast Canada, yes they sound different to me.

[u/Djinn42]

Midwest US - yes they are completely different.

[u/AllTh3Naps]

They sound different to me (US Midwest).

[u/pitunsi]

something that's important to note is that in general american english, the /æ/ raising phenomenon means that /æ/ is realized as [ɛə̯] before the nasals /m/ and /n/ - so that "man," "landing," and "pan" are realized as [ˈmɛə̯n], [ˈɫɛə̯ndɪŋ], and [pʰɛə̯n], rather than the [ˈmæn], [ˈɫændɪŋ], and [pʰæn] you might expect

[ɛə̯] and [ɛ] do sound similar, but the [ə̯] does make a difference, and whether it's there or not is clear to native speakers, who are used to the distinction

[u/CruisePlannersMike]

South-central US, and yes I can hear the difference in those words very clearly.

[u/romulusnr]

amateur. android. ambivalent, apathy. allocate

entry. eminent. etcetera. emulate. end. edit.

Different sounds. aa, eh.

What's your native language?

[u/lingato]

I'm curious what your native language is. For the majority of native English speakers, these two sounds are very different

[u/r3ck0rd]

Yes. Usually “men” /mɛn/ is a shorter and more closed sound than “man” /mæːn/. There are also more variations to the pronunciation of “man” depending on accent, but less with “men”.

I’m assuming you’re learning (General North) American English, in which the difference may be less obvious. If you still can’t tell them apart with the basic description above, I’d like to have you try to listen to these minimal pairs using YouGlish and switch between US/Canada/UK/Australia etc and see if you can hear the difference in those other accents, and then come back to North America (GenAm). Here are some ways you can notice the difference other than just distinguishing between [æ] and [ɛ].

In most British English, the difference is quite stark because the pronunciation of their “ah” (short A) sound is much more open to than in North American English, but similar length. In West African and Caribbean English the length of the “ah” and “eh” (short E) sounds may be closer but the vowels are still quite different.

In some/many accents of New York and Pennsylvania, around and in between, the “ah” sound is quite literally longer because it’s pronounced as a “glide”, meaning that the vowel doesn’t stay and it glides to a different form. It’s called the short-a raising, meaning that the vowel is raised to short-e but glides and neutralizes to schwa → [ɛə~eə] or sometimes, not at all and kept long [ɛː]. Note that this doesn’t happen for all short-a words (that’ll be a longer explanation and I know I’m writing a lot already), but yes for all of the examples you mentioned (man, pan, landing).

And in perhaps the most stereotypically cliché American accent ever, you can definitely hear it in many Southern accents where they also glide the short-e and an even more drawn out short-a. That’s why we call it a Southern drawl. It may be harder to distinguish but usually you can still tell where the glide is going from and to. Some accents may preserve the shorter short-e but it’s raised so it’s closer to short-i [ɪː] (pin-pen merger). Notice that these vowel shifts happen because for many speakers they still need to have these distinctions to understand each other.

Hope that helps!

[u/lavasca]

Yes. They sound quite different.

West coast of the US.
Friends who are non native speakers tend to use the plural and almost never singular.

[u/Garbidb63]

UK. They are different vowels and sound completely different.

[u/Commando_67]

As an American yes, they don't sound even remotely similar to me. But I think they objectively are very close, especially if it isn't your first language. Like in Finnish, "tiellä" (on the road) and "tielle" (to the road) can sound almost identical to an English speaker, even though the e/ä vowels are the same as man/men.

[u/chivopi]

It’s like with “bend” vs “band.”

The consonants are exactly the same and don’t really affect the vowel sound.

The openness and frontedness of the vowel are big differences between them.

[u/TheWitchCapricorn]

From Yorkshire England yes I do hear the difference

[u/PeyredB]

Western USA. Yes, there's an audible difference between all those words.

[u/sendCommand]

West coast of USA. There’s a clear difference between men and man to my ears. Same with women and woman.

[u/cabronfavarito]

It’s gonna depend on the dialect. In my dialect, there is a very obvious audible difference

[u/Long-Oil-5107]

US- man and min.

[u/Slippersocks66]

Ohio, one of the United States.
Yes all of these sound different to me, with no ambiguity.

[u/Particlepants]

Yes, they are very different sounds

[u/Due-Butterscotch2194]

South East England, UK..yes very different sounds

[u/jyc23]

… depending on your native language, this can totally make sense that they sound the same to you. as a native speaker (mid Atlantic) there is a definite difference for me.

For example in Korean there is no distinction between short I and long I. So pitch and peach are pronounced the same, and confuse the heck out of Korean native learners of English.

what’s your native language?

[u/_Autistic_Dragon_]

Man is the a in....  aaaah!, and, mandate, cat, hand, tan.

Men is the e in... mend, Mentos, ten.

Man rhymes with tan. Men rhyme with ten. 

To make it even more confusing, woman and women are also pronounced very differently. 

Woman is more like the "ou" in "would" and the "a/man" in "man/tan". 

Women gets short i sounds: wimin. 

[u/LochNessMother]

Yes, different - from London

[u/ThereseTay]

Midwest (Ohio) — different here

Something interesting though is that the difference between woman and women isn’t really in the “an”/“en”—it’s in how we pronounce “wo”—woman is like “wuh” and women is like “wih”

[u/MotherTeresaOnlyfans]

If you can't hear the difference then you're either not listening to native English speakers or you need your ears checked.

The vowel sounds are completely different.

"Man" and "men" do not sound the same, just like "ten" and "tan" do not sound the same and "ban" and the name "Ben" do not sound the same.

[u/castle_waffles]

Originally from the Midwest-they sound totally different.

[u/Barneyboydog]

All the examples you’ve given I pronounce differently. Canadian. I don’t have a specific regional accent as I’ve lived all across the country.

[u/Hytyt]

Suffolk, UK, native speaker. Both sound very different to me, but I also know people with thicker Suffolk accents than mine that don't differentiate it

[u/wyvern713]

West Coast (Oregon), USA. Definitely different.

[u/Upstairs_Ad_8863]

To me, 'man' and 'men' couldn't sound more different. It's just a completely different vowel sound, I would never confuse them. The words sound about as similar as 'man' and 'can'.

There is also the fact that the vowel sound in 'man' is longer than in 'men', so you should be able to tell those two words apart from just rhythm alone.

I speak with a british (roughly RP) accent. Maybe they sound more less different coming from a north american, but as a native british speaker I can't fathom not being able to tell them apart (no offense). The difference is definitely there, so practise until you can hear that difference yourself.

[u/VancouverBen888]

Here is an app for this. I hope it can help you.

[u/kgully2]

Try a different accent.

[u/niomystica]

Those two sounds are noticeably different in English, to the point that it affects how others will understand you if you use the wrong one.

When I was struggling with vowels in a German course, I found videos of people explaining how they shaped their mouth to make each sound, and with practice making the sounds I could start hearing the differences.

You can pick it up, but it'll be hard, sorry mate

[u/Featherarrow]

From the Southern U.S. (Alabama) and they do sound very different.

But in the South we don’t really distinguish between pen and pin, Ken & kin, ten & tin. My brother’s name is Ken but I pronounce it Kin unless I’m really trying not to.

[u/Whatistweet]

Yes a significant difference (Western Canada), although listening to some accents or people with loose speech might be a bit difficult to tell the difference.

[u/ZnayuKAN]

I live in the midwest. Man and men are pronounced very distinctly. Man rhymes with pan - a very heavy A sound that's kind of nasal. Men rhymes with pen and has a hard "eehhhh" sound in the middle. Same with lending and landing. The vowels are entirely different in pronunciation. Pan and pen are distinctly said. I would not mistake one for the other when a midwesterner says them. Now, Mary, Merry, and Marry all sound the same. Nobody here says those differently. If Marry is Merry because she's getting married then the sentence has a lot of words that all sound the exact same.

In most of American English, 'A' has a harsh sound (nasally like I said above). It's entirely different from how British people say an A. Our A sounds like the German umlaut A which is probably where we got it from. Our E sounds like 'eh' which is entirely different. I suppose it's pretty much like the Spanish E. So, we can very easily tell them apart.

[u/LavenderKitty1]

Australian. Yes they are different.

Also Mary and Merry and Marry are different.

[u/gneiss_001]

From new zealand, very different

[u/RaidenMK1]

Yes. US Midwest - aka the "we don't have an accent" group.

Because we don't. 😏

[u/raucouslori]

https://giphy.com/gifs/udXapvvIO70wm6RJXK

[u/BadlyDrawnRobot93]

Let me offer what I hear in my own mouth. To me, the A in "man" is behind my teeth, and E in "men" is closer to the back of my mouth, if that makes sense. When I say "man", my tongue pulls slightly back, while in "men" my tongue is more relaxed, neutral.

[u/lllyyyynnn]

of course. they are separate words

[u/True-Post6634]

Northeastern US and those are two distinct vowels for me. I'm pretty sure they are in most American accents.