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Help[Facts] Re: Deborah
in reply to a message by Sleeping Beauty
Definitely DEB (e) ra in South Africa ... and as far as I know in England nowadays. (Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, who don't use it much, say de-BOOERR-a. The ooer is as close as I can get to it - it sounds like OOH-er, the exclamation, but speeded up. And the R is sounded quite strongly.)
I've got a vague memory of a nineteenth-century novel, possibly Cranford, in which one of the old lady characters was a Deborah and insisted on the de BO ra pronunciation, so its stressed vowel would be like a cry of surprise: Oh! But, because she had to make such a point about it, presumably most British people had already switched to the DEB-ra version by then.
I've got a vague memory of a nineteenth-century novel, possibly Cranford, in which one of the old lady characters was a Deborah and insisted on the de BO ra pronunciation, so its stressed vowel would be like a cry of surprise: Oh! But, because she had to make such a point about it, presumably most British people had already switched to the DEB-ra version by then.
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