American Language Supplement 2 (15 page)

The old-time grammar-books were content to inform the young that there were five vowels in English, but this was true, of course, only of the letters used to represent them, not of the sounds. In 1791 John Walker was constrained to distinguish ten vowels and diphthongs,
²
and in 1837 Isaac Pitman, the pioneer of modern English shorthand, went on to six long vowels,
³
six short ones, and four diphthongs. The number has been growing ever since, but no two phoneticians seem to be in agreement as to what it is precisely. Richard Paget, in 1925, was content with “thirteen separate vowels,”
⁴
but Daniel Jones, in the 1937 edition of his “English Pronouncing Dictionary,” went to fifteen vowels and twelve consonants, and Leonard Bloomfield, in 1935, reported seventeen “syllabic phonemes” among “educated speakers in Chicago” alone.
⁵
In 1937 Oscar Browne reported in his “Normal English Pronunciation” that phoneticians distinguish seventy-two “variants of vowel sounds,” but some of these, he added, are not heard in English. All such estimates, of course, are unreliable, for what they classify should be called, not vowels, but vowel-groups, and the differences within each group are too numerous and too minute to be described in words or symbols. “The vowel,” says John W. Black, “is an ever-changing phenomenon during phonation.… Certain factors are constant and others are variable.… Each vowel is a succession of different structures.… Teachers … should not say that this
is the vowel in
top
without adding that this is one of the possible vowels in
top
.”
¹

The sounds of vowels are produced by columns of air going through the two resonator-spaces above and below the tongue, with modifications effected by variations in the position of the tongue itself and the lips. Obviously, no two human mouths are precisely alike, and equally obviously the mechanism of speech thus differs from individual to individual, and in the same individual from time to time. “These positions of the vowels in the mouth,” said Dr. Robert Bridges, “are like the places of the outfielders at cricket, whom the captain shifts about according to the idiosyncrasies of the bowler and batsman: their stations are named and relatively well established, but it cannot be foreseen on any occasion where any one of them will be standing; and in any case the accurate knowledge of the ideal vowel-position is of no more practical use to the speaker than the scientific millimetred analysis of the action of the complicated stops of a clarinet would be to the performer on it.”
²
Nevertheless, Bridges believed that the five vowels of the old grammar-books sufficed “to represent the acme of the main distinctions of quality and timbre,” and that getting any closer to their sounds would be possible only “if all speakers had exactly similar organs.” As things stand, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between
a
and
o
on the one hand and
a
and
e
on the other, or between
a
and the neutral vowel, but on most occasions they remain reasonably distinct, despite the wide range of sounds on both sides of the fence. “There can be considerable variation in the composition of the spoken vowel,” says Leroy T. Laase, “and the character of the vowel still be clearly recognizable.”
³
The quantity,
i.e
., the length, of any vowel is conditioned mainly by the stress put upon it, and to a lesser extent by its position with relation to other sounds. Thus the exclamation
ah
, in isolation, shows a longer
a
than the one in
father
or
palm
, and the quantity thereof is further affected by the
surrounding consonants and the rapidity of speech.
¹
“The pronunciation of a word in isolation,” says R.-M. S. Heffner, “represents an unhampered shot at the goal of an ideal or normal pronunciation, while pronunciation in context represents a more or less disturbed or jostled shot at the same goal.”
²
The most active factor, however, is stress, and Heffner concludes that “strong stress with falling intonation produces a slightly greater duration of the vowel than strong stress with rising intonation.”
³
All such differences in quantity tend to become differences in quality, and in the long run they may produce entirely new vowels, or, at all events, variations so marked that they have to be represented by different symbols.
⁴

That there is a movement in American English toward the shortening of vowels has been noted by various observers.
⁵
The English authorities ordain the long
e
in
evolution
,
⁶
and the long
i
in
isolation
and the words of the
fragile
class,
⁷
but in the United States the short
e
and
i
seem to be dominant in these words. There is also a tendency to substitute the short
a
of
radish
for the long
a
of
made
in
data, vagrant, aviator, Danish
and even
radio;
⁸
the short
e
of
pen
for the long
e
of
scene
in
penalize, economics, detonator, scenic
and
electricity;
the short
i
of
sin
for the long
i
of
idea
in
sinecure;
the short
o
of
fog
for the long
o
of
bone
in
mobilize, soviet, choral
and
voltmeter
, and the short
u
of
sum
for the long
u
of
cube
in
quintuplet
.
¹
In both English and American usage there is a strong movement toward substituting the so-called neutral vowel for clearer vowels in unstressed syllables, especially in colloquial speech. Thus the
a
of
about
, the
e
of
the
, the
i
of
habit
, the
o
of
hillock
and the
u
of
upon
are all reduced to a grunt that has given considerable concern to the phonologists, for it varies somewhat in different situations, and differs in many of them in England and the United States.
²
In this country the schoolma’am, influenced by her veneration for spelling-pronunciations, makes war upon it, and I was myself taught in primary-school to enunciate the
e
of
the
clearly, making it identical with the
ee
of
thee
, but it is far too firmly lodged to be disposed of. The English, says C. H. Grandgent, prefer to omit the mauled vowel altogether, thus producing the collision forms that Americans always notice in their speech.
³

There is no need to add much to the discussion of the individual vowels in AL4, pp. 334
ff
. As we have already seen in the present book, the broad
a
did not begin to flourish in England until the Eighteenth Century, though it was, of course, used before then, especially in dialects. C. Cooper, whose “Grammatica Linguæ Anglicanæ” was published in 1685 and who has been described by Wyld as “by far the most reliable phonetician among the Seventeenth Century writers,” recorded the flat
a
of what is now General American not only in
bath, gasp
and
path
, but also in
car, tar, quality, barge, carp, dart, larch
and
tart
. To this day, in fact, that
a
is retained by the English in a large number of words – perhaps in quite as many as show the broad
a
that Americans think of as so characteristic of England. Examples are
manse, fancy, pants, vassal, pantry, lass, crass, paraffin, pariah, can, mandate, mannequin, pamphlet, ant, ass
(the animal),
parasol, avoirdupois, bas-relief, candle, passenger, mammal, palate, parrot, saddle, latch, handsome, quagmire
and
passive
. “Some English Roman Catholics, mostly converts,” says H. W. Seaman,
⁴
“insist on a long
a
in
mass
,” but when the word is used to
designate a quantity of matter the American
a
is used.
¹
Wyld says
²
that the change from the old (and still American) flat
a
to the broad
a
of the English
past, bath
and
after
was still hanging fire in the early Eighteenth Century, and that it was “difficult for Englishmen at that time.” James
³
ventures the opinion – “but that,” he adds cautiously, “is only an opinion” – that “in the end the short vowel [
i.e
., the American vowel] will prevail.” “In the Sixteenth Century,” he says, “[it] was universal.”
⁴

In the United States the long
a
survives before
r, l, k
and
m
, as in
charm, salt, walk
and
calm
, but it has pretty well disappeared before
s, th, n
and
f
, as in
pass, path, chance
and
laugh
. Writing in the early 70s, William D. Whitney said that “until quite recently it was admitted in the United States in
calf, halve, answer, chance, blanche, pant, can’t, alas, pass, bask, clasp, blaspheme, last, path, lath, laugh, staff, raft, after
and in many other words like them,” but that, save in “local usage (I cannot say how extensive)”
⁵
it was already being replaced by “the
a
of
fat
and
fan
,” or by some “intermediate”
a
.
⁶
According to a writer in
American Speech
,
⁷
the broad Southern
a
is now losing ground even in Tidewater Virginia, but is holding out better among the women than among the men. “This,” he says, “is probably because a man’s friends are more likely to resent what they regard as a speech affectation. I have known several cases in which the mother used the broad
a
and the father didn’t, and the children imitated the mother’s pronunciation. However, when the children grow up there is a tendency for the boys to adopt the
short
a
.” When, at the Republican National Convention of 1944, Governor (later Senator) Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts made a speech in which he “pronounced
pass
as if it were spelled
pahss
” it brought forth what the Boston
Herald
described as a “mass snicker” from the assembled heirs of Lincoln.
¹
So far as I know, the only words in which Americans use the broad
a
and Englishmen the flat one are
mall
, as in the
Mall
, at Washington, and the proper nouns,
Polack, Albany
and
Raleigh
.
²
In the case of
Polack
American usage has perhaps been influenced by German example.

The newspapers often engage in discussions of the “proper” pronunciation of
a
in this or that word,
e.g., tomato, ate, again
and
to stamp
, for it remains an article of American faith that there is a right way and a wrong way in all the situations of speech.
Tomayto
is the common form, and James F. Bender ordains it for radio announcers in the “NBC Handbook of Pronunciation,” but
tomahto
, which is English, is in use in the Boston
Sprachgebeit
and also in the Tidewater South, and seems to be making some progress among the elegant elsewhere. However, when Representative Allen T. Treadway, of Massachusetts, used it at a session of the House Committee on Ways and Means, in February, 1940, he was challenged by Representative Pat Cannon, of Florida, who demanded to know if he meant
tomayto
. “No,” replied Treadway. “I mean
tomahto
.” Cannon thereupon appealed to the Democratic majority in the committee, which decided in his favor. “We have a majority,” he declared triumphantly. “You mean
tomayto
.” Lieut. Col. F. G. Potts, of Mt. Pleasant, S. C., tells me that, south of Virginia,
tomahto
“sounds quite affected.” Occasionally, he adds,
tomatto
is heard.
³
I have also encountered
termayter
and
termatter
, but only among
hoi barbaroi
.

Another debate that frequently engrosses the newspaper penologists has to do with
again
. Should it be pronounced as it is spelled or made
agen?
Palmer, Martin and Blandford say that the former is good English usage and Bender advises American crooners to use
agen
, but there is contrary advice and custom on both sides of the water. The NED shows that the word as we have it is descended from two different early Germanic words, the one represented by the Old High German
gagen
and the other by the OHG
gegin
. The former, prevailing in the South of England, produced
again;
the latter,
agen
. Down to the Nineteenth Century the English poets freely rhymed
again
with
pen
, but this was not true invariably, for Shakespeare, as Frank H. Vizetelly pointed out,
¹
also rhymed it on occasion with
twain, plain
and
slain
. The NED, whose
A
volume was published in 1888, ventured the opinion that
again
was then displacing
agen
in England, and this seems to be confirmed by the later English authorities, including Daniel Jones, but most American authorities,
e.g
., Webster 1934 and Kenyon and Knott, hold out for
agen
. The English authorities sanction
et
for
ate
,
²
but in the United States it is generally regarded as a vulgarism, along with
eat
in the past tense.
³
To stomp
, in the sense of to beat down forcibly, as with the foot, is only provincial in England, but in the United States it is in relatively good usage, though no American would ever speak of a
postage-stomp
or of
stomping
a letter.
⁴