CW Harris wrote:
On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 07:32:00AM -0600, John Hasler wrote:I wrote:That a vowel followed by a single consonant followed by a vowel is "long".Okay, you guys suckered me in to this :> It is my recollection that the long/short vowel was determined by the breaking of the sylables. I.E. if a sylable ends on a vowel, the vowel is long. This would explain the differences in Debian, because it is not clear where the sylables should be (without knowing the origin of it: DEBra + IAN). That is it could break as: De-bi-an, in which case the 'e' would be long. Or it could break as Deb-i-an, in which case the 'e' is short. Just my 2 generic denomination units.
I think this thread is great. I think the "usual" pronunciation of de- prefix explains "deebian".I personally am schizophrenic when it come to pronunciation. My mother is from upstate New York, my father a non-native speaker, my uncle has a hearty Boston-Irish accent, and I was raised in DC (where "no one is from here") in an immigrant-rich neighborhood. So I can go either way with de- words probably depending on how much coffee I have had.
My linguist major friend tells me that the spelling of words has nothing to do with how they are pronounced. Written language is not language. But a representation of a relatively fast moving target.
Perhaps the de(h)fault startup sound on de(h)bian should be Ian saying his pronunciation. Maybe Linus's "Leen-nux" too. Who is the authority on GNU? I guess mysterious pronunciations are somewhat of a tradition...
We must stomp out this deebian meme! no? Maybe lambaste deeb'ers with the epithet, "You EEEDIOT!" :) -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.6.0 - Release Date: 3/2/2005