Re: What do you call it

From: "Sarah Marie Parker-Allen" <lloannna@...>

| 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?  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" or
| "be" -- sometimes to make it rhyme (in the new O-Town song, "I Showed
Her,"
| I counted an even number of "the" as "thee" and "the" as "thuh"
instances,
| entirely based on when they needed to rhyme and when they were just in
the
| middle of a sentence).  Other times, I've heard it used as "thee" when
| someone is trying to sound snooty, or whatever.  I've also noticed
that when
| I read a piece of text using "the", sometimes I read it one way and
| sometimes the other -- but when I give my sister the same text, she'll
| choose to say it all the same way I did, even if she wasn't hearing
me.  So,
| anyway, is there a name for this phenomenon, or have I just lost my
mind
| (some more)?

Well I'm not familiar with the O-Town song, but was it /Di:/ before
words beginning with vowels vs. /D@/ beginning with words beginning with
consonants?

There is a name for that, I guess it's "liason", which is one of those
things I remember from mes deux âns au lycée: de "of" becoming d' before
vowels. Hebrew has three forms of the preposition /min/ "from" depending
on what the next word begins with: /me:/, /mi/ with a doubled (dagesh
forte) initial consonant, and /min/ unchanged. Arabic, on the other
hand, just has /min/ in all cases.

But there should be a better term than "liason".

~Danny~

planning a new Fox-TV series: "American Tagline"

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