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selenakI meant to ask this some months back when reviewing the John Adams miniseries but forgot and was recently reminded again.
Back in the 90s, when I first stumbled across the songs for the musical 1776, I noticed that in some of them, the word "independence" is pronounced not the way they teach non-native speakers like yours truly to pronounce it but "independenceeeeeeeee". Now, I had assumed in the musical this was simply so it would scan and rhyme in some of the lyrics (as when Abigail Adams rhymes "declare independenc-eeeee" with "hurry home to me"). But in the John Adams miniseries, sans tunes, they pronounce it this way as well now and then. Not always, but occasionally. So, my question is this: was "independence" pronounced "independenceeeeeeee" by the Founding Fathers, and if so, was this because everyone did in the late 1700s or for some complicated British elocution defying gesture I don't understand?
Back in the 90s, when I first stumbled across the songs for the musical 1776, I noticed that in some of them, the word "independence" is pronounced not the way they teach non-native speakers like yours truly to pronounce it but "independenceeeeeeeee". Now, I had assumed in the musical this was simply so it would scan and rhyme in some of the lyrics (as when Abigail Adams rhymes "declare independenc-eeeee" with "hurry home to me"). But in the John Adams miniseries, sans tunes, they pronounce it this way as well now and then. Not always, but occasionally. So, my question is this: was "independence" pronounced "independenceeeeeeee" by the Founding Fathers, and if so, was this because everyone did in the late 1700s or for some complicated British elocution defying gesture I don't understand?
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Date: 2012-03-28 01:19 pm (UTC)I think that the word they're pronouncing when they enunciate the final "eee" sound isn't independence, but independency. It stands to reason that this would be a word just as dependency is.
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Date: 2012-03-28 02:52 pm (UTC)