Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007

In the "stink" thread there was a hijacking on the matter of
pronouncing "either" and "neither."  Rather than follow such a
criminal sidetracking further, and because of the very interesting
pondian influences involved, I'm starting a new thread.  A couple of
postings worth at ADS-L, suggest that the EYE-thur and NY-thur
pronunciations did come from a British monarch, but an earlier one than
Queen Victoria:

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0007C&L=ADS-L&P=R3189&I=-3&m=6673

Date:         Wed, 19 Jul 2000 23:57:43 -0500
From:         Richard Petty Deegan
Subject:      Re: EITHER = EETHER or EYETHER?

Either/EYE/ther entered with Queen Victoria and other Germans, who had
a different (from traditional English) pronunciation for the "ei"
(eye). When the Queen spoke this way, others followed...

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0007D&L=ADS-L&P=R89&I=-3&m=6673

Date:         Sat, 22 Jul 2000 05:10:50 -0500
From:         Mike Salovesh
Subject:      Re: EITHER = EETHER or EYETHER?

...Queen Victoria a German? Huh? At any rate, I'd like to know the
source of .. this particular assertion--it seems unlikely that EYETHER
is a spelling .. pronunciation based on German, or that Victoria's
pronunciation would have .. had much affect in Hoboken. I would not
assert that EYEther had to have come originally from German. I don't
know that. EYEther is the spelling pronunciation I would expect from
someone whose first literacy was in German, however. That could still
make a difference in current distributions of the two pronunciations.
1. With Ron, I was surprised to see "EYEther" attributed to Queen
Victoria because of her alleged Germanness. That's NOT the Victoria of
my schoolbooks. She was English through and through. Her connections to
"Germans" (the modern nation of Germany didn't exist when she came to
the throne) were nonetheless quite widespread. Victoria's descendants
married into just about all the royal families of Europe, too. (Wasn't
Kaiser Wilhelm one of her descendants? The hemophilia of the last
Tsarevitch is said to have come directly from the genetic inheritance
of Queen Victoria herself. Und so weiter.) I seem to recall a more
believable claim that the Royal speaker with the "eyeful" speech was
George III. His pronunciation is supposed to have come from his German
upbringing. EYEther is said to have gained ground against EEther
because of court sycophants adopted the King's pronunciation. There
once was a strong counter-current against EYEther in xenophobic
circles. Col. Robert McCormick, of the Chicago Tribune, was almost
rabidly anti-British. He claimed that "good Americans" should never say
EYEther, because we should remember that our Revolutionary War was
explicitly aimed at ending the influence of George III in America....
-- mike salovesh

[end excerpts]

The theory that it was George III who insinuated the EYE-thur
pronunciation into BrE fits with this portion of Elster's essay:

[excerpt]
..._Webster 2_ (1934) notes that EYE-thur "is more prevalent in
England (esp. in southern England) than in America. In the 17th century
the word was pronounced AY-thur,... Both [EE-thur] and [EYE-thur] were
in general use by 1790."  In his influential _Critical Pronouncing
Dictionary_ (1791), the celebrated English elocutionist John Walker
writes,  "/Either/ and /neither/ are so often pronounced /eye-ther/
and /nigh-ther/ that it is hard to say to which class they belong.
Analogy, however, without hesitation, gives the diphthong sound of the
long open /e/, rather than that of /i/, and rhymes them with
/breather/, one who breathes... We sometimes, indeed, hear the
diphthongs in these words sounded like slender /a/, as if written
/ay-ther/ and /nay-ther/; but this pronunciation must be carefully
avoided.
By the end of the 19th century, the long /i/ in /either/ and /neither/
"came to be predominate in standard British speech, says _Random
House II_ (1987),
[end excerpt]

I'm still looking for the survey results which I remember appearing
in a linguistics periodical, say 2004 or the next year, to the effect
that the long /i/ pronunciation is now majority AmE - I hope to be
able to add that in this thread before long.

Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego