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I use both. If I was planning to visit the veeyah dolorosa I would research it viyah the internet.



That's my hunch. VEE-ah dolorosa. VIE-ah email.

But, as for my other remarks, I cannot be blamed for the fact that the American accent raises my hackles. It's not so much the accent itself as its pervasiveness vie-ah cultural exportation.

Americans themselves used to subdue their grating stress on the letter R; hence the softening of the R into a soft Anglophonic accent in 1950s movies. Although, curiously, it is said Milton pronounced the R like an American would today.

Consider this titbit from The Dictionary of Literary Anecdotes:

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Since Roman times, R has been thought of as the "dog's letter" or the snarling letter because its sound resembles the snarling of a dog--r-r-r-r. Ben Jonson in his English Grammar Made for the Benefit of all Strangers (1636) put it this way:

"R is the dog's letter, and hurreth in the sound; the tongue striking the inner palate, with a trembling about the teeth."

Shakespeare has Juliet's nurse in Romeo and Juliet call R the dog-name, when she tells Romeo that his name and rosemary, an herb associated with weddings, both begin with an R. In parts of the United States, especially the Midwest, R is still pronounced as the dog letter, while in other regions, particularly parts of New England and the South, it is pronounced as "ah".

Milton is probably the most famous example of a literary light who used the dog letter.

"He pronounced the letter r very hard," Aubrey tells us, adding Dryden's comment on the subject "literia canina, the dog letter, a certain sign of satirical wit."

In fact, Milton's tendency to be satirical and sarcastic in conversation was connected by some of his friends with his "peculiarity of voice and pronunciation."




But then look at Eliot. He took a plum in his mouth within a few years of being in England (just listen to the HarperCollins Audio recording of The Waste Land, read by the author).

Last edited by Homo Loquens; 01/15/06 04:53 PM.