Would a “steen” of beer taste as sweet as a “stein” of beer?
*** The CBC and American media have all adopted a pronunciation usage that I find to be illogical, inconsistent, and demeaning. It may stem from the fact that I know some German (probably dangerously little!). There is a consistent rule of pronunciation is German such that the fragment “ein”, as in Einstein, is pronounced as if it were “ine” in English, as in “pine”. For example, Albert’s last name would be pronounced as “ine-st-ine”, not as “een-st-een”. (A real purist might insist that the “st” be pronounced as in “scht”, but that is a separate issue.) On the other hand, “ien” would be pronounced as the “een” in “teenager”. So, in German, Leonard Bernstein’s last name would be pronounced as “Burn-st-ine”. Not so in North America. Here it has become “Burn-st-een”, much to my annoyance! At the moment of writing, I have just heard Leonard Bernstein’s name pronounced correctly, and for the first time on the CBC. However, it was on the French, not English, radio network! Illogically, “Ein
