Very weird theory that I found on the Internet

a reply to: Boswell

But you would not have spelled and pronounced it Hermiane, correct?

a reply to: Boswell

I'm not so certain. Stain is a relatively easy word for children to pronounce...

I don't think I personally would have had any problems with the pronunciation if it were Berenstain...

However, I was also thinking about how laziness can affect pronunciation.

For instance, more and more people pronounce "language" as laŋ-wij instead of laŋ-gwij. The same goes for the word "English" (ˈiŋ-lish instead ofˈiŋ-glish)...

In careful speech I'm sure pronunciation would be rather accurate, but in rapid speech or everyday speech, letters and accents can easily be dropped and still retain structure....

Over time, lazy speech could have forced our minds to be more BerenstEIN oriented than BerenstAIN...simply because the relative ease in enunciating it that way...(this is just a theory though...nothing serious)

This example would be kind of similar to what we call syncope
A2D

a reply to: _Del_

if Hermione were a common last/first name and i knew how to properly spell it and pronounce it and a family came along who spelled it, Hermiane or even Hermiene or Hermiyene or whatever, i'd more than likely assume it was a misspelling and pronounce it and spell it Hermione. i'd assume it was pronounced the way Hermione is until that family pronounced it themselves and confirmed it's variation of spelling.

For what it's worth...I used to call 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' 'Funky Fried Chicken.' I had an NDE there when I was 4 years old. The spur bone on a drumstick got hung in my throat. There just happened to be a medic there that snatched me up by the ankle and smacked my ass until it discharged. That could have been the point of the reality transition.

For what it's worth...I used to call 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' 'Funky Fried Chicken.' I had an NDE there when I was 4 years old. The spur bone on a drumstick got hung in my throat. There just happened to be a medic there that snatched me up by the ankle and smacked my ass until it discharged. That could have been the point of the reality transition.

originally posted by: skunkape23
'Funky Fried Chicken.'

I'd like to go to that universe please

a reply to: Agree2Disagree

Stain may be an easy word for children to pronounce, add Beren to the beginning of it and the word becomes a little different. kids could see "Berenstain" and ask, "mom/dad/mr/mrs, how do you say this?" and those people, being familiar with Stein, say "Berenstein."

it's not necessarily lazy speech, just variations on pronunciation and dialect. this was discussed in a class i had years ago. take the word NEWS for example. here's the tricky part, spelling it the way it can be pronounced. KNEE-YOOZ or NOOZ? something i've noticed in my area is the pronunciation of right: RI-GHT to RI-EET.

What I'd be extremely interested in seeing is a family tree of the Berenstains...

I can't seem to dig up ANYTHING related to them....I'm beginning to think that at some point in time their family name actually WAS Berenstein or a variation like Bernstein...

This I think needs to be focused...

"Berenstain" according to our family lore was an attempt by an unknown imigration officer sometime in the late 1800s to reproduce phonetically a highly accented version of the tradtional Jewish name "Bernstein" as pronounced by my Father's grandparents when they came to America from the Ukraine.
In that linguistic region, the name tended to come out sounding something like, "Ber'nsheytn". Since that's how the name was originally documented, it has always been spelled that way by our family

That sentence alone really gets to me...
It's like saying "my family name was Jones and since the immigration officer documented it as Bones, we've been the Bones family ever since"....

....I think there may very well have been some Berensteins in the Berenstain family

A2D

a reply to: Agree2Disagree

that's my understanding of the situation. there were probably Berensteins and after moving they became Berenstains, thanks to the phonetic understanding. looking at the Ber'nsheytn i'm surprised they aren't Bernshayten, though i'd have to hear it pronounced first. depends on how heavy the accent is.

a reply to: NarcolepticBuddha


I have pictures to back me up....so I am definitely not wrong about this...

a reply to: Boswell

Just from reading it...I believe he meant "Ber'nshteyn"...but that's just an assumption on my part...(which would make sense considering the "shtyne" or "shtain"...could be either or really...)

A2D

Apparently you did pronounce stain wrong though...I don't know what being a scholar has to do with it. I have an IQ of 128, 2 bachelors and a masters, does that make my memory more qualified???

a reply to: jacygirl

a reply to: Agree2Disagree

that seems like an appropriate assumption.

originally posted by: caterpillage

originally posted by: LadyGreenEyes

originally posted by: pirhanna

originally posted by: DenyObfuscation
a reply to: thisguy27

Like, what if the people who remember the -stein way are different than those who remember it as -stain

They are different. The ones who remember it as Berenstein are wrong. Berenstain is correct. I always thought that was a weird spelling but that's the way it was.

Did you read the old sourcing documents posted?
There are like 6 of them posted towards the bottom of page 1, old newspapers, and they refer to the books as Berenstein.

How about a better source, like, say, the books themselves? Do a simple Amazon or eBay search, and see the actual covers. They ALL say BerenstAIN. All of them. New, old, all. I have OWNED many, many of these books, some from the 60's, and it's always been "-stain".

Perhaps you have not read through the entire thread??? That is a good thing to do before posting

No, I am not reading over thirty pages of a thread that is based on a faulty premise. I am 100% certain that t he spelling didn't change, on the books. In articles, perhaps, even in ads, but never on the books. I even recall, as a child, thinking the spelling was weird, since it was "-stain", and not "-stein".

I haven't seen a single example of an actual book with the supposed other spelling. And, no, I am not hunting 30+ pages for such a thing. There are hundreds upon hundreds, more like thousands, of examples of the correct spelling, on the books themselves, online.

People have faulty memories on this issue. It happens. Anyone that has studied memories at all knows they are not 100% accurate. They never have been. They can be changed. That's all this is. it's somewhat interesting that so many "remember" the wrong spelling, but that's an issue of memory, not of some weird conspiracy about the spelling of a name. If you want one of those, check Obama. His first name used to be spelled without the "k", virtually everywhere, then it changed, and no real explanation was ever given. Now you can't even find much mention of that online. I had screen shots in a computer that died showing the change.

Good call, avoid a valid question to prop up a fantasy.

a reply to: Rainbowresidue

a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

According to Mike Berenstain....

the "Berenstain" written on the cover of the books would be incorrect....thanks to that unknown immigration officer....

It is completely LOGICAL to believe that if the now Berenstains were once known as the Berensteins, that Berenstein could in fact have been on some books...

This is not an outrageous conspiracy theory...It's VERY PLAUSIBLE that at some point in time there were BerenstEin Bears books...(much more plausible than 95% of the stuff you're going to find on ATS...)

A2D

a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

How do you explain the pictures posted earlier in the thread wherein is depicted the books with both variations of the spelling?

Never say never, eh?

a reply to: CagliostroTheGreat

it was shown that they were photoshopped.

a reply to: Boswell

I see. Definitively? What would be the point in that, I wonder? Forgive me, this thread has moved awfully quick.

Kallisti

a reply to: CagliostroTheGreat

Pretty much definitively.... someone managed to find the source picture...

A2D