Date: Sun, 12 Nov 1995 09:39:42 -0500
From: James C Stalker stalker[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]PILOT.MSU.EDU
Subject: Re: RhetORic
My 18 yr old son consistently pronounces lethargy with the stress on the second
syllable, and appropriate vowel shifts. I, being a dutiful father, pointed out
that in lethargic, the
stress was on the second syllable, but in lethargy it was on the first (ignoring
differential stress). He said that if I wanted to do it that way, OK, but he
was going to make them sound the same because he preferred it that way.
My guess is that he learned lethargic first and applied that pronunciation to
the noun.