"Business takes Vi[z]a"

[Doug_Harris]

I was (and remain) under the impression that parents
are largely responsible, in the beginning, anyway, for
how their kids' names are pronounced. Regardless of
class or other considerations, parents may and do decide
a Lisa should be a Leeza or a Leesa (or is that LIza and
LIsa?), or Andrea, AnDREA-ah or even an AHN-dre-ah. And
I've heard Alicia pronounced as if it were Aleesha --
similar to the Marcia / Marsha pronunciation.
With most such names, the pronouncer has a 50/50 chance
of getting it right. With many other names, namely some
of those that most often are attached to blacks, even
after having _heard_ it pronounced, it's not hard to
imagine the name-giver got an unfortunate assortment of
letters in his or her alphabet soup bowl.
dh

At 12:31 PM -0400 8/17/08, Wilson Gray wrote:
>"Visa" as pronounced by their current voice-over guy. I'd been
>beginning to fear that I would never hear the correct, i.e. the one
>that I use, pronunciation, again. BTW, what's up with these
>mirror-image pronunciations?
>
>My wife and probably millions of other Easterners says Vi[s]a,
>Eli[s]e, Li[s]a, We[z]ley, but Le[s]ley, etc., whereas I say, with
>many millions of non-Easterners, Vi[z]a, Eli[z]e, Li[z]a, We[s]ley,
>but Le[z]ley, etc.
>
>-Wilson

I'm not sure these pattern as a class.  They certainly do for me.
For this Easterner, it is indeed [viz@] (for both the credit card and
the document) but Eli[s]e, [lis@] (or [layz@], a depending on whether
we're talking about "Lisa" or "Liza"), We[z]ley (and We[z]leyan), and
Le[z]ley/Le[z]lie.

LH

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