either

[Barbara Need]

I mostly use EYE-ther and have for most of my life. I recall an
incident in 8th grade. I was hanging in the unused language lab with
other 8th graders who had walked over to the High School for our Latin
2 class (the High School and Jr. High had slightly different schedules
so we had to wait for 2nd period to start) and someone called me on it
(i.e., saying EYE-ther) and asked something like, isn't it EE-ther?
And I said, "You can say it EYE-ther way."

Barbara

Barbara Need

On 11 Mar 2009, at 7:08 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> My experience is that a lot of people use "EYE-ther" instead of
> "EE-ther," regardless of race, creed, color, sexual orientation,
> social status, or level of education. I personally use "EE-ther," but
> a random assortment of friends, relatives, acquaintances, etc., uses
> "EYE-ther.
>
> Among blacks, at least, the use of "EYE-ther" by a speaker indicates
> nothing at all about him, other than that he uses "EYE-ther." Back in
> the day, in Saint Louis, my brother and I used "EE-ther" and our ace
> boon coons,the Brothers Simms, whose parents were from Louisiana,
> which adjoins East Texas, used "EYE-ther."
>
> -Wilson
>
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 5:15 PM, Laurence Horn
> <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>>
>> At 2:30 PM -0500 3/11/09, Jocelyn Limpert wrote:
>>> Oh, my -- I thought that it has disappeared into word "heaven" or
>>> "hell"
>>> years ago, whevever currently "dead" words or pronunciations go
>>> when they
>>> lose their life.
>>>
>>> It always sounded so pretenscious -- sort of like pronouncing
>>> "tomato" with
>>> the "ah" sound, as opposed to the long "a" sound.
>>>
>>> It for some reason reminds me of people trying to use "proper"
>>> speech, which
>>> is more often than not incorrect -- as in saying "between him and
>>> I" for
>>> "between him and me" -- that sort of thing.
>>
>> Maybe it's a regional matter, but growing up in
>> New York I heard "eether" [iD at r] and "eyether"
>> [ayD at r] more or less interchangeably. Â The latter
>> never struck me as particularly pretentious, and
>> I'm sure I use both pronunciations myself.
>> "Tomahto" is quite a different matter--British,
>> pretentious, or both. Â  (In the UK, "tomahto"
>> isn't at all pretentious, incidentally, it's just
>> the way it's pronounced. Â And "potahto" only
>> exists within the song.)
>>
>> It's fine if you think [ayD at r] sounds pretentious
>> to you, but you should bear in mind that speakers
>> of other varieties of the language aren't
>> necessarily using it in order to be pretentious
>> or to use proper speech; it's just the way
>> they/we talk.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/11/09, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> Â Lately I've been hearing the word "either" pronounce EYE-ther
>>>> on TV. Â I
>>>> Â would go for the long e EE-ther and always thought it
>>>> predominated in US. Is
>>>> Â someone teaching media folk a different lingo.

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