There's an added pedagogic feature to this situation - Southerners also
don't hear the difference when Northerners say "ben" or "bin." I've seen
current phonics texts that still use "pin/pen" to illustrate the "short
I / short e" distinction - a practice that will simply confuse Southern
students.
Pin/pen, by the way, is also used in some introductory linguistics texts
to illustrate the "lax I / lax e" distinction (I have trouble with IPA
in email). I still remember one of my undergraduate linguistics
professors, who happened to be a native speaker of French, trying to
figure out why I was getting so confused by the text's discussion of
phonetics. I kept hearing "No, we're not talking about pin, we're
talking about pin instead."
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Veit, Richard
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 1:43 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: pronunciation of "been"
In North Carolina as in much of the South, Ben and bin are pronounced
identically (with the pronunciation Yankees use for "bin").
Dick Veit
________________________________
Richard Veit
Department of English
University of North Carolina Wilmington
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Carol Morrison
Sent: Saturday, February 09, 2008 6:14 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: pronunciation of "been"
I think that "been" should be pronounced "bin," but my husband and
in-laws pronounce it as "ben". I usually say to my husband: "Ben is a
person; you have been to the supermarket." Recently I have heard
newscasters and others on tv pronounce "been" as "ben". Is the
pronunciation changing? The only other way I've heard this word
pronounced is "bean" by British actors.
Carol
"Paul E. Doniger" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
"If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well / It were
done qucikly" (Macbeth 1.7.1-2). The first 'done' clearly means
'finished'. If it's good enough for Shakespeare, ... !
Also, there seems to be no prohibition regarding 'done' in
Fowler's Modern English Usage, which I believe is the usage bible (if
there is such a thing). I've never heard any complaints about this one
before.
Paul D.
----- Original Message ----
From: Karl Hagen <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Saturday, February 9, 2008 2:43:06 PM
Subject: Re: done
We might equally well ask where this word rage against "done" =
"finished" comes from, since it doesn't appear to be based on
any facts
about actual English usage.
"Done" has been used as an adjective in this sense since the
14th
century (originally with "have", and since the 18th century with
"be").
It has been used by any number of canonical authors, including
Dickens
and Twain.
The handful of usage books that claim it's a problem are simply
perverse
and should be ignored. It's unquestionably standard.
Jane Saral wrote:
> I know that this issue has been addressed before, but I was
just at dinner
> with someone who grows livid hearing the word "done" used to
mean
> "finished." I have never found it particularly objectionable,
though I
> probably would not use it in really formal circumstances.
(Still, I
> might...) Anyway, where did the usage come from? and when
did it arise?
> Jane Saral
> Atlanta
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's
web interface at:
> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select
"Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
________________________________
Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo!
Search.
<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=51734/*http:/tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearc
h/category.php?category=shopping> To join or leave this LISTSERV list,
please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave
the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select
"Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
|
