demon

[Timothy Mason]

On Sat, 2003-08-16 at 15:54, Bryllars at concentric.net wrote:

>
> My problem is that I - growing up in suburban Boston and Manhattan
>   do rhyme demon and lemon and always thought this was standard
>   - and nothing of my experience at Harvard or elsewhere ever gave
>   me cause to doubt that pronunciation.
>   Now I find that no one else seems to have the same idea.
>
>
'Daemon' now has a separate meaning within the computer sciences - and
in Philip Pullman's novels, where it refers to a familiar which is a
manifestation of the person's inner self.

The bottom line may well be that you just never became conscious of the
fact that you were pronouncing the word differently. Until the age of
about 17 I firmly believed that there was a race of dogs which were
named 'alastains'. Even quite frequently hearing the word 'Alsation'
('German Shepherd') and seeing it written did not change my conviction,
which I now think may well have been based on a very restricted form of
dyslexia. It may well be that you have been mishearing and
mispronouncing the word 'demon' for years, and that people either did
not notice, or were too polite to point it out.

Best wishes

Timothy Mason