You say "either"

[Nancy Elliott]

In 20th century America, the [ay]ther pronunciation pops up a bit more in
Eastern New England than elsewhere, and this pronunciation goes hand-in-hand
with r-lessness as features of the prestige variety that actors & actresses
were coached to imitate in films before the 1960s.

The r-lessly high-status Fred Astaire ([ay]ther) and the r-fully
down-to-earth Ginger Rogers ([iy]ther) exploited this difference in their
famous song on the subject (and in the dialogue preceding it) in the 1937
film "Shall We Dance?"


Nancy Elliott
Southern Oregon University

> From: Rudolph C Troike <rtroike at U.ARIZONA.EDU>
> Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 02:15:48 -0700
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Either and try to/and
>
> I was surprised to hear Ron Butters call the /ay/ pronunciation of EITHER
> "unpretentious", since that has always seemed to me to be either genuine
> British or an affectation (ditto for /an/VELOPE instead of /en/VELOPE --
> this latter a school-influenced pseudo-French pronunciation).
>
> My unscientific impression is that "try AND" is increasing, since I seem
> to hear it more and more on NPR interviews and from colleagues, but
> perhaps that is in part because I don't notice the occurrences of "try
> TO", just as people did not notice when Kennedy pronounced "Cuba" without
> an /r/. I still recall being startled to hear LBJ use "try AND" in a
> formal commencement address at Texas, since it seemed more typical for
> informal use.
> Rudy
>
>