> Robin wrote:
>
> Sodom writes:
> >>Oh, BTW, I pronounce
> >>"meme"
> >>so it rymes with "them". I could be way wrong though.
>
> >You are! It rhymes with "theme"! :-)
>
> Personally, although I know Robin to be historically correct, I have been
> propagating the <meme rhymes with them> meme in speech because I believe it
> has better potental for becoming a more popular form of the <meme> meme in
> American English.
>
> -Prof. Tim
1.) Richard Dawkins made up the word, and he says it's pronounced to rhyme
with "dream". So do other published writers who've taken up his
terminology, including Douglas Hofstadter and Richard Brodie.
2.) In English (American *or* British), a single vowel before a single
consonant followed by an e is normally pronounced in its long form. This
is referred to as the effect of "silent e", and we probably all heard
about it in early grade school. A few examples with 'e' as the vowel in
question: theme, gene, phoneme, mere, allele, cede. If we were talking
about *French*, Tim would have a point.
--Eva