English in USA
Douglas Dee
AmateurLinguist at AOL.COM
Thu Nov 16 23:35:49 UTC 2006
Here in New Jersey, I definitely hear the "short i" in the first syllable of
"English."
I seem to recall a similar issue came up on Lingust List a while back.
Paraphrasing liberally from my imperfect memory:
A teacher wrote in to say, "Here's an odd thing, my students have 'short i'
instead of 'ee' in 'English.' Is this some regional dialect feature or what?"
A whole bunch of people replied, saying, "No, YOU'RE the one with the
regional dialect feature. Your students' 'short i' is the normal/general/typical
pronunciation in the US."
Doug
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