Dynasty: analysis
I've got nothing. Well, almost nothing.
It's been nearly a month since my pronunciation poll on dynasty, with its two variants (as several perceptive commenters noted, they should properly be construed as DIE-nuh-stee and DIN-nuh-stee, with the n syllabified in the second syllable). And every week or so I think to myself, "Gee, I wonder if any new results are in that will revolutionize this issue," and every week, I am disappointed. As far as I can tell, every one of the respondents who answered that they always say DIN-nuh-stee are speakers of non-North American dialects, whereas DIE-nuh-stee is essentially North American. There were of course a small number of respondents who use both versions - mostly Canadians (damn us and our indecisiveness towards British English!) although most Canadians, like almost all Americans, say DIE-nuh-stee. Most good dictionaries list both variants, with the UK/US distinction emphasized (and depending on the nationality of the dictionary-maker, with the local version given as the main variant).
There are of course many differences in pronunciation between British and American English (and more broadly among world Englishes), some of which are consistent across the lexicon, and others that only apply to specific lexical items. Dynasty and its two variants represent one of the latter. There is a class of words that in British English are pronounced with /ɪ/ and in American English with /ai/, such as vitamin and privacy. But these are non-predictable, and even in British English, words like dynamite are regularly pronounced with the first syllable as DIE-. (I really should have added that one to the survey, as the OED lists DIN-nuh-mite as an alternate - but oh well.)
I haven't been able to track down the origins of the divergence. My guess is that DIN-nuh-stee was earliest and that DIE-nuh-stee developed in North America and then became standard there, but the alternative (that the original pronunciation later became DIN-nuh-stee in the UK, then spread through colonial expansion to other parts of the English-speaking world) is also plausible. Because the variation is in the first syllable, rhyme structures in poetry won't help us like they did with err, and there's no variation in stress pattern either, so I can't think of any way to solve the issue conclusively. Some dictionaries (like the Tiscali reference dictionary) note that the UK broadcast of the American soap opera Dynasty would have familiarized British speakers with the American pronunciation in the 1980s, but regardless, it doesn't seem to have affected British (or any other non-North American) speakers. And in any case, the distinction is much older, although the problem of how much older may have to remain insoluble. I'd love to be proven wrong.
Last 10 pronunciation polls | All previous polls | Pronunciation polls with analytical essays | Dialect survey
It's been nearly a month since my pronunciation poll on dynasty, with its two variants (as several perceptive commenters noted, they should properly be construed as DIE-nuh-stee and DIN-nuh-stee, with the n syllabified in the second syllable). And every week or so I think to myself, "Gee, I wonder if any new results are in that will revolutionize this issue," and every week, I am disappointed. As far as I can tell, every one of the respondents who answered that they always say DIN-nuh-stee are speakers of non-North American dialects, whereas DIE-nuh-stee is essentially North American. There were of course a small number of respondents who use both versions - mostly Canadians (damn us and our indecisiveness towards British English!) although most Canadians, like almost all Americans, say DIE-nuh-stee. Most good dictionaries list both variants, with the UK/US distinction emphasized (and depending on the nationality of the dictionary-maker, with the local version given as the main variant).
There are of course many differences in pronunciation between British and American English (and more broadly among world Englishes), some of which are consistent across the lexicon, and others that only apply to specific lexical items. Dynasty and its two variants represent one of the latter. There is a class of words that in British English are pronounced with /ɪ/ and in American English with /ai/, such as vitamin and privacy. But these are non-predictable, and even in British English, words like dynamite are regularly pronounced with the first syllable as DIE-. (I really should have added that one to the survey, as the OED lists DIN-nuh-mite as an alternate - but oh well.)
I haven't been able to track down the origins of the divergence. My guess is that DIN-nuh-stee was earliest and that DIE-nuh-stee developed in North America and then became standard there, but the alternative (that the original pronunciation later became DIN-nuh-stee in the UK, then spread through colonial expansion to other parts of the English-speaking world) is also plausible. Because the variation is in the first syllable, rhyme structures in poetry won't help us like they did with err, and there's no variation in stress pattern either, so I can't think of any way to solve the issue conclusively. Some dictionaries (like the Tiscali reference dictionary) note that the UK broadcast of the American soap opera Dynasty would have familiarized British speakers with the American pronunciation in the 1980s, but regardless, it doesn't seem to have affected British (or any other non-North American) speakers. And in any case, the distinction is much older, although the problem of how much older may have to remain insoluble. I'd love to be proven wrong.
Last 10 pronunciation polls | All previous polls | Pronunciation polls with analytical essays | Dialect survey