Email vs. E-mail at Wired

[Lynne Murphy]

>Grant Barrett <gbarrett at MONICKELS.COM> writes:
>
>>>>>>
>2. There is a precedent for some English speakers of using the
>long e sound at the beginning of a word when followed immediately
>by a consonant. The hyphen is not necessary to indicate the
>sound. English, eradicate, Enus, evil, Eyore. (You can give me Eyore.
>It's Eyore. You *have* to accept that one.)
><<<<<

Mark already pointed out the Eeyore misprint here, and I'll assume
that Enus is supposed to be Enos--but proper names are 'allowed' to
break the rules of regular pronunciation anyway.  But is there really
long e sounds in eradicate?  I must protest!  I think "English" is
cheating a bit too, since (a) I think its pronunciation is variable,
and (b) its second sound is not an acceptable beginning sound for an
English word, so you couldn't have e-nglish.

That leaves us with evil.  And it is the human condition that we are
always left with evil...

Lynne
--
M. Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 3AN    UK
phone:  +44(0)1273-678844
fax:    +44(0)1273-671320