Over the last couple of months I taught a Summer school program for refugee kids (mostly Somali with a few Burmese) in Portland. There was one second grader Somali girl who although you'd absolutely never guess it based on everything else about her (even compared with the other kids) could read almost flawlessly. One day during reading time she picked out a Berenstein Bears book to read to me and she pronounced it Bear-en-stane and in the midst of wondering if I should bother correcting her I discovered the truth.

Isn't stein supposed to be pronounced Stine? I thought you always sounded the second vowel in German looking words

Einstein (stine) Goldstein (steen)

It's a dilemna.

I bet the opposite way, I remember it specifically being -stain. I have books that say -stain, I have a picture of me as a child holding up a book spelled -stain, and I remember it being -stain.

The books say -stain so basically the only way this is real is if a parallel universe exists and somehow the books can changed from stain to stein which is pretty lol (I suppose it's not completely impossible, but the chances are so remote it's not worth bothering with)

Occam's says it's always been -stain, we all read these books as a child and it would be very easy to mistake it for -stein when that's a common end of a name. I'm sure if someone wrote their name as Harvey Weinstain for example most people would just gloss over it and see Weinstein because our brains are trained to do that.

I am firmly all aboard the parallel universe train. I definitively remember Stein.

I remember it as Berenstain, but looking around the Mandela effect website I do have a vivid recollection of the painting of Henry the eighth holding a drumstick. Apparently that painting doesn't exist?

i don't remember

The human memory is very flawed. So is human reasoning, apparently, if people jump on board to believe a ridiculous parallel universe argument rather than accept they can't remember how a child's book was spelled that they read 20+ years ago.

Or maybe human memory is perfect and every time we're wrong it's just cos we've jumped to a parallel universe.

who are you saying is refusing to accept they cant remember, the E or A groups?

The first time I picked up one of their books, I remember thinking to myself, "That's a weird spelling. I would have thought Berenstein would be a much more common / expected spelling." It was the unusual spelling that made it memorable for me. Had it been spelled Berenstein, I never would have thought twice about it. There are a lot of unobservant people in this thread that are willing to believe arcane science fiction theories rather than accept their own cluelessness.

Maybe the first time you picked up one of their books was already after the alternate universe split had occurred.

Or most of us read the books as kids and didn't really give two thoughts about if the spelling was waird or not.

Well, one group has the benefit of the books being spelled with the A. The other is arguing there's a parallel universe, so the proof kind of lies with the more ridiculous explanation.

Why would anyone who never gave two thoughts about something insist, against all evidence, that it's completely impossible for them to have been mistaken?

I thought E for sure. Asked my mom, she said E too.

I’m pretty much with mullen in post #30.

The first few times I saw the word I pronounced it in my head as Berensteen. After I looked at it more closely I thought it should be pronounced Berenstain. So my vote is for “A”.

After reading this thread I’m still not sure how it should be pronounced.

http://woodbetweenworlds.blogspot.co...living-in.html

Blog post advocating Stein/Stain parallel universe theory.

Michael "Berenstain" replies in the comments.

This.

Had a stack of them when I was a kid.

While I'd heard the name in passing, I had to Google them to find out why I'd never read one of their books. The first one came out in 1962 and I was a haughty junior high school kid then, so there you go.

I long for the innocent days of Dick and Jane, we didn't have these issues then.

Rick and Jane you mean right?

So odd, been reading these to my kids for the past few years and couple have sworn it was spelt with an E. They watch the TV show too and it's pronounced 'stein' in the song...

Obviously your parents photoshopped the picture of you as a child holding an A book.

Or you're a witch.

Or the government just installed chips in all the A people

Or those of us E people are free from the matrix

Or the inverse of any of those

Takes a sip of Lone Star beer

I remember it having an "e". But then again, time is a flat circle, all our memories happen within a locked room, so it could have been an "a" when you consider fourth dimension possibilities.

Takes a long draw off a camel light

One with a light, one with a stick, one with a rope, AND ALL WITH THE SHIVERS.