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I recently encounter someone who said pen exactly as I would say pin. I looked in my dictionary only to find these pronunciations:

pen — |pen|

pin — |pin|

No crossover was listed or alternative options presented.

I have heard of people doing this before but I was surprised at how exact it was. It wasn't said similar to "pin"; it was said exactly like "pin".

Is there a specific region or dialect where this is common? Are there other instances of e being replaced by i or is it just this one word?

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The Southern USA is one area where the pin-pen merger is common. It's not restricted to "pin" and "pen", but a lot of words that include /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ before nasals:

The pin-pen merger is a conditional merger of /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ before the nasal consonants [m], [n], and [ŋ]. The merged vowel is usually closer to [ɪ] than to [ɛ] (examples include: kin-ken, bin-ben, and him-hem). The merger is widespread in Southern American English, and is also found in many speakers in the Midland region immediately north of the South, as well as in less densely populated inland areas of the Western United States, particularly in Bakersfield, California. It is also a characteristic of African American Vernacular English.

Language Log has also discussed this, and examples where the vowels are pronounced the same and differently in a dialect with the merger may also shed some light on the phenomenon.

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  • I had a friend who changed his name because he couldn't stand the sound of Southern women saying "Ben" (like "Bin" but with a vowel long enough for two syllables).
    – Kit Z. Fox ♦
    Jul 8, 2011 at 3:04
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New Zealand English does this. Australians call it Kiwese.

There is a handy phrase book for Australians, which includes such 'jims' as

McKennock - person who fixes cars

pigs - small devices for pinning washing on clotheslines.

swab the dicks - a task for recalcitrant sailors.

[Sorry @Ham, I have the book (ISBN 1 86330 342 1) in front of me, and it says McKennock]

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  • Attach the socks with a couple of pigs.
    – Thursagen
    Jul 7, 2011 at 22:43
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    From a New Zealander's perspective we DO NOT pronounce "pen" as "pin". Everyone else just pronounces "pin" as "pen" :-)
    – Vincent McNabb
    Jul 8, 2011 at 23:15
  • The American South has your back (er... bic?)
    – lly
    Apr 25, 2016 at 13:51
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Some South Africans (I think those influenced by Afrikaaner accents, but by no means only Afrikaaners), seem to pronounced almost all vowels as "i", or nearly so to the point that they are indistinguishable to my English ears.

No doubt someone here can provide more detail on what is happening with that pronunciation.

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Apart from New Zealanders - some of whom have accents so heavy they need to be translated - people Adelaide in Australia also have a distinctive accent similar to, but not as heavy, as the Kiwi one.

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I'm from eastern Kentucky and we make no difference when pronouncing these two words. Pin and pen are spoken with the same sound. I've never understood the issue with this. "En" and "in" both pronounced the same as "n"? If one adds a "p" in front of each they are both pronounced the same. That's why in eastern Kentucky we sometimes say "ink-pen" instead of just "pen" in order to differentiate between the two words.

All of Appalachia and most of the southern USA pronounce the two words with the same sound. It's the rest of the USA that has it wrong.

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