EITHER = EETHER or EYETHER?

[Your Name]

<<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?>>

There is an interesting moment in the Disney animated movie 101 Dalmatians when
the two lower-class
puppy thieves are discussing their plans to do in the puppies as they drink wine
in decrepit DeVille Manor.  One
of the thieves--the one who thinks he's smart, but is almost always wrong--
corrects the other's pronunciation
to Eye-ther as a way of reinforcing his place as the one with superior
brainpower.  The movie in fact has
a lot of different British accents (how true they are to actual dialects I
couldn't tell you, but they are fun to listen to).

My point is simply that eye-ther is assumed to be an upper-class, "correct"
pronunciation.


Joe