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HelpRe: Irene
in reply to a message by beethoven
Irene pronounced with three syllables - better still, Eirene pronounced with three syllables - is beautiful and classic and stylish and lyrical and doomed. And Irene pronounced iREEN is dreadful and inevitable.
But if you use it as a mn and know in your secret heart that it's got three syllables, wouldn't you win twice?
As for your pattern-making granny, I taught a Rina once who should according to her family tradition have been Irina, but they bowed to the inevitable I suppose. So that might cheer her up!
But if you use it as a mn and know in your secret heart that it's got three syllables, wouldn't you win twice?
As for your pattern-making granny, I taught a Rina once who should according to her family tradition have been Irina, but they bowed to the inevitable I suppose. So that might cheer her up!
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heh. I like iREEN a lot! It's probably what I would use unless I were living in some German speaking place, and then I'd probably use it only about half the time. Or less.
Apparently i-REEN-ee used to be a pretty standard English pronunciation, which I find interesting.
Apparently i-REEN-ee used to be a pretty standard English pronunciation, which I find interesting.
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Well, Greek used to be taught in UK schools, though of course most of the population never got that far! So it would have been the version that people were familiar with, or at least used to hearing. But as the number of schools teaching Greek started to fade (early 20th century at a guess), so American pop culture started moving in - barbershop quartets singing "Goodnight, iREEN" for instance. So it was probably a natural process from two sides.
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