IBM ad

[Dale Coye]

Yeah--two-page spread in today's NY Times too--a great shot.   But!   the
most common US pronunciation of halcyon is missing--   /'hael si an/--  All
three-syllable words with first syllable stress from the Greek ending in -on
have changed from
/- at n/ to /-an/ for most Americans (paragon,  Marathon (the small town near
Cortland, NY is still /- at n/ for my father), Pantheon, Babylon, Amazon,
Myrmidon, Xenophon, -- and my research shows that the same thing is now
happening in the UK as well, though they hung onto schwa for longer.   The
interesting thing is that Bible names maintain the schwa-- Solomon, Simeon,
Gideon,  except for Lebanon (though Lebanon, NY in Madison Co. again shows
schwa for older speakers).

Dale Coye
The College of NJ

In a message dated 06/26/2002 5:30:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
nee1 at MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU writes:


> I was going through my Chicago Tribune this morning when I opened up a two
> page spread for an IBM ThinkPad ad. My eyes passed over the text on the
> left and moved to the person sitting just to the right of center, amid
> shelves with lots of books. My first thought was, "Gee, he looks
> familiar!", but assumed I had seen the ad before, or at least the model.
> Then I looked back at the text on the left (since my glimpse of it
> suggested there was a pronunciation and/or a definition embedded in it).
> Imagine my surprise! The quote was from Jesse Sheidlower! This is the first
> time I have ever seen someone in an ad I actually knew!
>
> Barbara Need
> UChicago--Linguistics
>