EITHER = EETHER or EYETHER?

[Richard Petty Deegan]

Either/EYE/ther entered with Queen Victoria and other Germans, who had a
different (from traditional English) pronunciation for the "ei" (eye). When
the Queen spoke this way, others followed.
----- Original Message -----
From: <RonButters at AOL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2000 8:50 PM
Subject: EITHER = EETHER or EYETHER?


> In a message dated 7/19/2000 8:28:57 PM, LanceDM at MISSOURI.EDU writes:
>
> << Is it possible that the /i/ - /ai/ data reflect upward social mobility
as
> much as, or more
> than, region?  Likewise "try and."
> DMLance >>
>
> As I understand it, Coye's students found that the younger the speakers,
the
> more they preferred the "casual" form "try and"--BUT the more they
preferred
> (what I at least think of as) the less pretentious /ay/ pronunciation of
> EITHER. I definitely agree with Don Lance that some kind of social factors
> are probably at work here, but just what they are is very difficult to
tease
> out--and, again, it seems to me that it is too simple to conclude that
> greater frequency among the younger generations of Dale Coye's New Jersey
> informants indicates a real change in preference in America or even in New
> Jersey. I'm finding myself that trying to correlate social features with
> alternate pronunciation pairs like EITHER and ENVELOPE and ECONOMICS is
very
> very complicated.
>
> I don't know of anyone who has attempted to do empirical work on TRY AND
> versus TRY TO except for this classroom exercise that Coye reported on
here.
> The kind of large-scale databank approach that Frank Abate discussed would
be
> very helpful, but I wouldn't want to rule out a large-scale, carefully
> controlled attitudinal survey, either.
>
> If I sounded disrespectful of Coye's report, I certainly didn't mean to.
In
> his first message he referred to increase of TRY AND as if it were an
> established fact, without any reference to why he felt that way. His next
> report indicated that he did indeed have some empirical data to support
the
> claim. I think that his conclusions are premature and need to be seen as
much
> more highly tentative than he first reported, but that does not make him
> wrong.
>
> One further thing to think about with TRY AND and TRY TO: as others have
> noted, this pair has been alternating in the language for generations. It
> would be a little surprising--though of course not impossible--for TRY AND
> only just now to be "increasing" at the expense of TRY TO. At any rate, I
> will need more than a few data collected by college students at one school
in
> New Jersey to convince me that a change is really taking place.
>