ENVELOPE: was EITHER = EETHER or EYETHER?

[Frank Abate]

Picking up from what Mike S re EITHER (and changing the subject), I was
reminded of the variant in my own speech with the word ENVELOPE.  The initial
vowel for me is freely variable (I have heard myself using it each way), and
I cannot tell nor do I know of any marking or coloring related to either
usage.  The vowels are /a/ (rhyming with "khan") and IPA epsilon (rhyming
with "bet").

I do not know the literature on this ENVELOPE variation, but I wonder if the
idiolect variation is widespread or regional, and if others assert that one
or both are somehow marked, and what that marking may signify.

For the record, I was born in Detroit, as were both my parents, though they
each spoke another language in addition to English at home when they were
young (Italian in my father's case, Polish in my mother's).  At the age of 5
(mid-kindergarten for me) we moved to a (primarily white) eastern suburb of
Cleveland, where I lived through grade school and high school, in an
English-speaking middle-class setting.

Frank Abate