Dictionary
Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.
pin-pen merger en · NOUN
Pronunciation
Meanings
-
A phonemic merger where the vowels in "pin" and "pen" are pronounced the same before /n/ and /m/, making "pin" and "pen" homophones.
Before we get to those, however, let us consider how we might discover a vowel merger taking place (and most work in this area has been on vowel merger or on conditioned vowel mergers, such as the pin–pen merger in the US south or the pool–pull merger in Utah, discussed below).
2011, Scott F. Kiesling, Linguistic Variation and Change, page 141: