Re: What do you call it

Sarah Marie Parker-Allen wrote:

Subject: What do you call it
> When a single word has two alternate pronunciations, amongst the same
> population (that is, each and every person would say it either way,
freely),
> depending on context or a desire to make it rhyme?
In cases where it truly doesn't matter, and there are no conditioning
factors whatever-- free variation.  The most common ex. is _economic_ and
its derivatives: [E]conomic ~ [i]conomic.  At least in Amer.Engl. there is
no right/wrong-- we may say one, followed by the other a few sentences
later.  Maybe _diesel_ with an /s/ or /z/ is another.  There aren't many.

 >I see this with "the"
> all the time -- when someone says it normally, it *usually* rhymes with
the
> vowel in "sun."  But, quite often, people switch it to rhyming with "see"
...

A little different.  Their occurence is generally conditioned, though, true,
it's often ignored--
"thuh" before consonants (the president, the fool)
"thee" before vowels (the apple, the ichthyologist), including foreign words
pronounced more or less correctly-- the hors d'oeuvres [DiOr'd@rvz] (I did
say "more or less"!!!-- it's the silent h that counts anyway).

The "before vowel" rule can be violated if you insert a glottal stop-- thuh
?eagle, thuh ?elephant.

And the consonant rule can be violated for emphasis:
"A Bentley is _thee_ car nowadays"

In singing, it could be that "thee" predominates because [i] produces a
nicer sound than [@].