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To corroborate what Ian Crookston has posted: the speech is of course that of Christopher Robin. However, I think Milne's point is that the English is unusual only in the (non)explanatory use of a(n otherwise acceptable?) stressed realisation of 'the' with reference to Mr Edward Bear's sex and his female personal name, not in terms of its realisation per se. That seems to have been sufficiently common, if only in child speech of the time, to merit a simple orthographic representation. Mark Dept. of Linguistics University of Cambridge _________________________________________________________________ Use MSN Messenger to send music and pics to your friends http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger