[HPFGU-OTChatter] Ms. vs. Miss; to Dame or not to Dame (was Re: Titles)

[Jen Faulkner]

On Tue, 15 May 2001 pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no wrote:

> How do you pronounce Ms.?  I have always assumed it is pronounced
> as "Miss", but the way I read the posts on this subject, you can
> apparently hear the difference.

'Ms'. is pronounced "mizz," with a voiced sound at the end, rather than
the unvoiced s of 'miss'.  The vowels are slightly different too, I
think (the 'i' of 'miss' is brighter than the 'i' of 'ms').

> We have no equivalent for Ms. in Norway, perhaps because we are a
> rather informal country.  Students are even on first-name basis with
> their teachers (and many professors in university).

Ms. has come to be pretty much standard in the US since the women's
movement of the 70s.  I remember calling my elementary school teachers
Mrs. (they were all married), but by high school, I always used Ms.,
even when there wasn't any question about marital status.  I generally
use Ms. as the title for women, unless they hold a doctoral degree, of
course, or I know for a fact that calling them Ms. will cause offense
(when addressing letters to older female relatives, for instance).

The woman-giving-her-name-up at marriage thing has bothered me since I
was a kid.  It always seemed *so* unfair and wrong.  It seemed to me to
signify the loss of independent identity that a woman would undergo at
marriage, with no accompanying change for her husband.  Of course, I
probably won't ever have to worry about this naming problem as a
practical matter, as I doubt very much that I'll ever be involved with a
woman who would want me to take her name or her mine...  but still.  It
seems very unfair, unless both are changing their names.

--ms. jen faulkner :)

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