conuly | Happy New Year!

AFAIK I pronounce the first word with the syllables exaggerated, then extend the vowels equally in both the second and third words:
"Hap-py Neeeew Yeeeeaaaaar!"

(I'm fairly sure my way is also how people do it where I live, too, but I could be wrong.)

I can't work out where I stick the emphasis. But logically new makes sense, just as you say happy BIRTHday not happy birthDAY.

But birthday is one word. New Year is two words. Saying it as one word emphasizes the holiday, not the fact that you want the entire year to be happy.

But I want the new year to be happy. Not the New Year. I'm talking of the entire year, not just the holiday, and have never thought of the greeting as being for the holiday.

Of course, saying happy new year over and over I'm wondering if maybe my emphasis is slightly on the year. So perhaps that's why.

I'm wondering if maybe when I say that we should emphasize year, I mean that the two words should have equal emphasis.

Hm... I always said Happy New YEAR. But as I'm no native speaker, that probably doesn't count. After all, I'm influenced by German, where the stress in the equivalent phrase ("Frohes neues Jahr"> lies on the 'Jahr' (meaning year)...
Then again, there's also 'Neujahr', i.e. 'new' and 'year' pulled together to form one word. In that case, the stress is on 'Neu'... but then it's one word, so that's alright.
Hm.

On the subject...

All right is two words, never one.

(sorry, that's my pedantic pet peeve)

Eh, I wouldn't say never. I read that "alright" has already been in use for a century, and though there are a lot of people who don't consider it correct, there are also a lot who do. Some also argue that "all right" and "alright" have two different meanings.

You can find some interesting comments on the subject here, even though the conversation went off topic quickly.

I like "alright". (So does Livejournal's spell check, by the way. Heh.)

My dictionary says that it's either 'all right' or 'alright', so I presumed using 'alright' was all right...
;)

I say 'Happy New YEAR' too. And 'Prosit NEUjahr'. And 'Gelukkig NieuwJAAR'.

I say "Happy New YEAR!" so there. I think the other is an Americanism.

You don't count. Cuz, y'know, you only speak that faky kind of English. *ducks and runs*

Happy New YEAR, definitely.

(from my viewpoint, GenAm does a few funny things wrt stress patterns -- compare ROBINhood (second syllable reduced to a schwa at best but frequently to a syllabic n altogether) to RP Robin Hood (no lax vowel reduction, the two lexemes remain quite distinct)

Hm. Interesting. Hadn't thought of that at all (though, of course you're being silly, you're the ones who are weird :P)

I hope for your sake you're saying this in jest.

That's what the :P is for.

:P is for poking your tongue out. It doesn't spell "I'm being frivolous" or whatever -- to me, it means you're taking the mickey out of the person whose opinion you're replying to.

Really? Most people I know seem to use it to mean they're being silly... y'know, I'll just make another poll later.

this just might have something to do with autism, or whatever.

It never reads that way to me. That's what I use ;) for, and :P carries more the connotation of "nyah nyah".