Youneverknow.

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Tue Aug 9 18:56:07 UTC 2011


When I was in the Army, in 1961, I had a barracks-mate whose
girlfriend was named _Tamara_ [t@'mar^]. He used to annoy the hell out
of us with his punning chant of

"Tamara tomorrow!"

During the MTV teen drama, Awkward, a character announces,

"I'm [t@'mar^]! It's spelled ['tAm at r@]!"

And then she proceeds to make the same, obvious, asinine pun.

I deduce from this that, these days, the general assumption is that,
unless otherwise noted, _Tamara_ is to be pronounced ['tAm at r@] and
that the formerly-standard pronunciation, [t@'mar^], once the only one
known to me  - and to all of my barracks-mates and, indeed, AFAIK, to
tout le monde - is now considered to be cutely exotic.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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