American Language Supplement 2 (12 page)

1
American Speech Preferences,
Speech Monographs, Research Annual
, Vol. IX, 1942, pp. 91–110. I am indebted for this to Miss Elda O. Baumann, of Kalamazoo, Mich. See also the
World
Almanac, 1941, p. 676.

2
Said Thomas A. Knott in the address lately quoted: “If you seize upon a student from … Red Wing, Minn., and return him to Red Wing talking like a native of Cambridge, Mass.,… you probably have done him an irreparable injury.” Knott explained that he had in mind an effort to make this student “regarded as an effective person in his community.”

3
This attitude, unhappily, has been changing since certain imprudent Negro leaders, like certain imprudent Jewish leaders, began objecting to the presentation of their people as humorous characters. Whatever has been gained for dignity by this reform has been more than lost in good will. Such saviors of the downtrodden always forget that people laugh
with
a comedian rather than
at
him, and that the general feeling he leaves behind him is one of friendliness. Potash and Perlmutter probably did far more to allay anti-Semitism in the United States than all the Zionists and Communists.

4
A Standard American Language?,
New Republic
, May 25, 1938, p. 69.

5
Broadcasting and Pronunciation, June, 1930, pp. 420–23.

6
The Radio and Pronunciation, Dec., 1931, pp. 124–29.

1
The Spoken Word,
Billboard
, April 4, 1928.

2
I am indebted here to Mr. Jesse S. Butcher, of the CBS. Vizetelly was born in 1864. He came to America in 1891 as associate editor of the Standard Dictionary, and became its chief editor in 1914, dying in that office in 1938. He wrote many books on speech, and edited many others. He was the editor for years of The Lexicographer’s Easy Chair in the
Literary Digest
. He took to the radio in 1924.

1
So late as April 26, 1931 the Chicago
Radio Weekly
was still denouncing both the CBS and the NBC for attempting to “oust the American language from the American home … and supplant it with English as she is spoken in England, or in the ‘better’ social centers of America, which is practically the same thing,” but this was before Vizetelly really got under way.

2
War Words: Recommended Pronunciations; New York, 1943; World Words: Recommended Pronunciations; New York, 1944. In his introduction to the latter he said: “The recurring question, ‘Which is correct?’ is best met by the doctrine of levels of usage. Ask not only which is correct, but correct for what purpose. To the style appropriate for the pulpit, the Supreme Court, after-dinner speaking, conversation, familiar speech, and so on we must add the style appropriate to radio. Radio is peculiar: though the subject matter may be serious and formal, the radio audience hears it in the familiar surroundings of home. The platform and pulpit styles become incongruous; the listeners wish the broadcaster to be natural and friendly, but well spoken and easily understood.”

3
The announcers of local stations, of course, were not bound to follow his recommendations, and though many of them did so others continued to fill the air with unearthly pronunciations, especially of foreign proper names. On June 25, 1944, a Cambridge reader of the Boston
Herald
reported in horror that he had heard
Cherbourg
pronounced
Chair-boor
.

1
The Announcers Have a Word For It,
Broadcasting
, Oct. 15, 1939, pp. 24 and 62.

2
Under date of May 26, 1931, its acting manager of press relations, Mr. Walter C. Stone, wrote to me: “We have never designated an individual or a group to censor our announcers. They are, however, constantly under the scrutiny of different members of our Program Department, and when one of them makes a bad slip he is quickly called on the carpet and shown his error.”

3
New York, 1943.

1
For example, This Problem of Pronunciation,
Printers Ink
, March 24, 1944, pp. 32–36; Ninety Millions Speak General American, New York
Times Magazine
, Aug. 27, 1944, pp. 17 and 29; If You Were a Radio Announcer, the same, Feb. 25, 1945, p. 23, and How Do You Pronounce It?, the same, July 15, 1945, p. 20.

2
Under date of Nov. 16, 1937 Dr. H. K. Croessmann, of Du Quoin, Ill., wrote to me: “Graham McNamee’s accent, twelve or fifteen years back, was very Eastern and broad. Today I listen as carefully as I can for this and don’t hear it. He might be a native Illinoisan who never left the State.” There is a discussion of the standards of Greet and Bender in Standards in American Speech, by Brobury Pearce Ellis,
Saturday Review of Literature
, June 1, 1946, pp. 5–42.

3
Take My Word For It, Syracuse
Post-Standard
(and other papers), Jan. 16, 1946. Here Colby slipped on
disaster
. It would not be
disahster
but
disahsta
.

4
The Society had to suspend operations on the outbreak of World War I, but resumed after the Armistice in 1918. In its Tract No. 1, issued in Oct., 1919, there is a statement of its objects and a list of its first members.

1
Dr. Wyld died in 1945.

2
They are entitled Broadcast English, and numbered. No. I, published under date of June, 1928, contained 322 words. In a second edition, published in 1932, this number was increased to 503, and in a third edition, in 1935, to 779 No. II (1930) was devoted to English place-names, No. III (1932) to Scottish place-names, and No. IV (1934) to Welsh place-names. These will be noticed in Chapter X, Section 3.

1
The Broadcast Word; London, 1935, pp. 21 and 22.

2
His essay was first published in
Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association
, edited by A. C. Bradley. He revised and republished it as A Tract on the Present State of English Pronunciation; Oxford, 1913.

3
He might have added, “as also in all of the United States save the Northeastern seaboard and the South.”

4
Bridges’ italics.

1
Bridges’ use of this term, abhorrent to all Scotsmen, showed that he was not one himself. He was born in Kent, “the England of England,” in 1844, was educated at Eton and Oxford, and spent most of his long life at Oxford.

2
This was the list in Broadcast English No. I, already referred to. His criticism was published in
S.P.E. Tract No. XXXII
.

3
For example, in the London
Times
, Jan. 25, 1934. The substance of his criticism is in AL4, pp. 329 and 330.

4
For example, the Curse of
Refanement
, London
Daily Mail
, Aug. 30, 1926; English as Pronounced by the English and Americans,
Variety
, Oct. 9, 1929 (reprinted from the London
Evening Standard
); Ham Acting, London
Observer
, Feb. 9, 1936; the Oxford Cockneys, the same, Feb. 13, 1936, and Open Your Vowels, the same, March 13, 1938.

1
pp. 46, 48, 328, 329.

2
Private communication, June 17, 1938. Mr. Jones spent two years in the United States. I should add that he finds “certain features of American pronunciation definitely displeasing, at least to a musician’s ear, particularly the flat
a
and the broad
o
.”

3
Gentleman, Gent., Man,
Query
(London), No. 3.

4
Voice That Lost Us the U.S. Market: Effeminate Accents Spoiling British Pictures, London
Daily Telegraph and Morning Post
, March 28, 1938.

5
In the London
Sunday Express
, quoted in Many Mediums Strive to Tell British of U.S., by William W. White, Washington
Post
, July 15, 1942. I am indebted for this to Mr. Don Bloch.

1
Quoted in Oxford Accent Rated Low, by Frank Colby, Rochester (N.Y.)
Times-Union
, June 25, 1946.

2
He explains in a footnote that he means “
public school
in the English sense, not in the American sense.” The difference is explained in Supplement I, pp. 479n and 487n.

3
An English Pronouncing Dictionary; fourth edition, revised and enlarged; London, 1937, p. ix.

4
Jones’s name indicates Welsh descent, but he does not give his birthplace in Who’s Who. He was educated at Radley, University College School and Cambridge. He has written many other books on phonetics, including volumes on the pronunciation of Chinese, Russian, French, Sinhalese and Sechuana.

5
English Pronunciation: A Practical Handbook for the Foreign Learner; Cambridge (England), 1944, p. 1.

6
James was also a Welshman, educated at University College, Cardiff, and at Cambridge. In 1940 he lost his mind, and on January 14, 1941 he killed his wife, a violinist named Elsie Owen. Sent to an asylum, he soon afterward committed suicide. He was the author of many able books and papers on phonetics. His discussion of Southern English is in The Broadcast Word; London, 1935, pp. 153–72.

7
The Sounds of Standard English; Oxford, 1920, pp. 10 and 11.

1
His defense of Oxford English is set forth in
S.P.E. Tract No. XXXVII
, published in 1932.

2
Wyld was educated at Charterhouse, and at Heidelberg, Bonn and Oxford. He taught at Liverpool before being called to Oxford in 1920.

3
A History of Modern Colloquial English; London, 1920, p. 2. This book traces the history of English pronunciation from the Middle English period to modern times, and is extraordinarily learned and valuable. Unhappily, consulting it is made very difficult by the lack of both index and word-list.

4
The Best English: A Claim for the Superiority of Received Standard English,
S.P.E. Tract No. XXXIX;
Oxford, 1934, p. 614.

5
Standards of Speech, by Elizabeth Avery,
American Speech
, April. 1926, p. 367.

6
Predicts Radio Standardizing Spoken English, New York
Herald Tribune
, March 12, 1936.

1
The New York
Herald Tribune
report, just quoted.

2
The Broadcast Word; London, 1935, p. 163.

3
Our Spoken Language; London, 1938, p. 161.

1
Before this it was apparently unheard of. Helge Kökeritz says in Mather Flint on Early Eighteenth-Century English Pronunciation: Uppsala, 1944, p. xlv, that so late as 1685 “a gentleman could apparently speak Scottish or Northern English in London and still be a gentleman.”

2
A History of Colloquial English, before cited, pp. 2 and 3.

3
A Dictionary of English Pronunciations With American Variants, by H. E. Palmer, J. Victor Martin and F. G. Blandford; Cambridge (England), 1926, p. xii.

4
Is There an American Language?; Hong Kong, 1938. Many lay testimonies might be adduced. For example, Why Girls are
Refaned
, by Brevier, London
News Chronicle
, June 15, 1936: “Accent is the big barrier between classes in this country. Without the right accent, whether real or assumed, no girl will go far in the office world.” American English, by H. B. Cohen, Boston
Herald
, June 19, 1934: “There is a certain coterie in England which makes pronunciation a test. If you pronounce words its way, you belong; if not, you don’t. You must say
blackin’
and
puddin’;
you must pronounce the
t
in
valet
and the
s
in
Calais
.… It is little things like this that show a man up.”

5
The King’s English, by W. Cabell Greet, Baltimore
Evening Sun
(editorial page), May 13, 1936. After describing it Greet was moved to demand: “If the King of England is strong enough to refuse the Oxford-BBC accents, now in positions of extraordinary prestige, cannot the free-born American teachers of speech be strong enough to resist the temptation of the unholy and really ridiculous American imitations of those accents?”

1
His pronunciation was analyzed at some length in Churchill’s Accent, by Frank Colby, Boston
Globe
, June 13, 1943.

2
There is occasional newspaper discussion of the pronunciation of other American politicians. Examples: Mr. Hoover at the Microphone, Ottawa
Journal
(editorial), Aug. 13, 1932; How Do You Say It?, by James F. Bender, New York
Times Magazine
, Oct. 22, 1944, p. 47 (Roosevelt II and Thomas E. Dewey); Under My Hat, by Hannen Swaffer, London
Daily Herald
, March 3, 1938 (Glenn Frank).

3
pp. xxxvii-xlvii.

4
This vowel is discussed at length in Notes on the Pronunciation of
Hurry
, by C. K. Thomas,
American Speech
, April, 1946, pp. 112–15, Thomas shows that the American
u
prevails west of a line beginning in northern Vermont, running southward through Massachusetts to the Connecticut border, then westward through southern New York and northern Pennsylvania, then southward through Pennsylvania to the Ohio river, then westward along the Ohio to the Mississippi, and then in a southwesterly direction through Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

1
The curious will find other discussions of the differences between English and American pronunciation, with examples, in The English Language in America, by George Philip Krapp, Vol. II; New York, 1925; English English, by Claude de Crespigny,
American Speech
, Nov., 1926, pp. 71–74; British and American Pronunciation, by Anne Currie,
American Speech
, April, 1928, p. 347; British and American Pronunciation, by Louise Pound,
School Review
, June, 1915, pp. 381–83; English – According to American
Skedule
, by St. John Ervine, London
Evening Standard
, Sept. 23, 1929; Beware of Affected Speech: Ten Pronunciations of the Anglophile, by F. Sherman Baker,
Correct English
, Jan., 1938, pp. 5–28; A Comparison of Certain Features of British and American Pronunciation, by C. M. Wise,
Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Phonetic Sciences
, 1936, pp. 285–302; American Pronunciations, by H[ans] Kurath,
S.P.E. Tract No. XXX;
Oxford, 1928; A Desk-Book of 25,000 Words Frequently Mispronounced, by Frank H. Vizetelly; New York, 1917, pp. xiv-xvii; Trends in American Pronunciation, by Arthur J. Bronstein,
Quarterly Journal of Speech
, Dec., 1942, pp. 452–56; Some Observations on American Speech, by J. Howard Wellard,
Nineteenth Century and After
, March, 1935, pp. 374–84; Concerning Briticisms, by Charles Wendell Townsend,
American Speech
, Feb., 1932, pp. 219–22; The Pronunciation of Standard English in America, by George Philip Krapp; New York, 1919, Ch. III; American Pronunciation, by John Samuel Kenyon; 9th edition; Ann Arbor, Mich., 1945, pp. 82–86; Some Phases of American Pronunciation, by William A. Read,
Journal of English and Germanic Philology
, April, 1943, pp. 217–44; Colby Discusses Briticisms and Use of King’s English, by Frank Colby, Providence (R.I.)
Journal
(and other papers), June 20, 1943; English Mispronouncing Section,
Word Study
, March, 1935, p. 3; From Evacuees Abroad, Liverpool
Echo
, April 18, 1941; The Story of Out Language, by Henry Alexander; Toronto, 1940, Ch. XIII.