Difference between revisions of "Zebra"
PeterWilson (Talk | contribs) m |
PeterWilson (Talk | contribs) m |
||
| Line 2: | Line 2: | ||
::Among AWE's more recent informants, an American-born reference librarian at the New York Public Library said that he'd never heard the 'ZEBB-ruh' pronunciation (2014), but drew attention to the entry in [[Merriam-Webster 3rd New International Dictionary|Webster]], which says that the pronunciation is 'ZEE-bra' - but occasionally 'ZEBB ra' in British English. (''[[OED]]'' (1921) gives both pronunciations, allowing 'ZEE-bra' priority.) An older, British-born informant who grew up and was educated in Mytholmroyd (where she had been born in 1923) remembers learning 'ZEBBra' at home from her parents - he being manager of the mill - and then being reprimanded on her arrival at Grammar School (therefore c. 1934) for 'that nasty American pronunciation': ZEEBra was the British way. | ::Among AWE's more recent informants, an American-born reference librarian at the New York Public Library said that he'd never heard the 'ZEBB-ruh' pronunciation (2014), but drew attention to the entry in [[Merriam-Webster 3rd New International Dictionary|Webster]], which says that the pronunciation is 'ZEE-bra' - but occasionally 'ZEBB ra' in British English. (''[[OED]]'' (1921) gives both pronunciations, allowing 'ZEE-bra' priority.) An older, British-born informant who grew up and was educated in Mytholmroyd (where she had been born in 1923) remembers learning 'ZEBBra' at home from her parents - he being manager of the mill - and then being reprimanded on her arrival at Grammar School (therefore c. 1934) for 'that nasty American pronunciation': ZEEBra was the British way. | ||
| − | + | Many older speakers prefer the traditional pronunciation - and academic teachers are often older than their students. | |
[[category:pronunciation]] | [[category:pronunciation]] | ||
[[category:AmE]] | [[category:AmE]] | ||
Latest revision as of 10:40, 4 August 2017
The traditional pronunciation of the name of the horse-like animal with black and white stripes has the first vowel like that of 'sea' (and 'see'): 'ZEE-bruh', IPA: /ˈziː brə (or a)/. An alternative, with a vowel like that of 'get' and the [British] 'zed - 'ZEBB-ruh', /ˈzɛ brə (or a)/ - began to be heard in the twentieth century (AWE has not yet found evidence for its existence before 1921), although it is now the more common pronunciation in the UK. John Wells ('Our changing pronunciation', in Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society xix.42-48) says that "/ˈze brə/ is preferred over /ˈziːbrə/ by 65% [of older speakers] rising to 96% [among younger speakers]." (The statistic is taken from LPD''s 1988 survey.)
- Among AWE's more recent informants, an American-born reference librarian at the New York Public Library said that he'd never heard the 'ZEBB-ruh' pronunciation (2014), but drew attention to the entry in Webster, which says that the pronunciation is 'ZEE-bra' - but occasionally 'ZEBB ra' in British English. (OED (1921) gives both pronunciations, allowing 'ZEE-bra' priority.) An older, British-born informant who grew up and was educated in Mytholmroyd (where she had been born in 1923) remembers learning 'ZEBBra' at home from her parents - he being manager of the mill - and then being reprimanded on her arrival at Grammar School (therefore c. 1934) for 'that nasty American pronunciation': ZEEBra was the British way.
Many older speakers prefer the traditional pronunciation - and academic teachers are often older than their students.
