American Language Supplement 2 (16 page)

The pronunciation of
a
in this or that situation has changed often within the past two centuries, for, as Parmenter and Treviño say, it is “of all vowels the least stable in quality.”
⁵
Boswell records in his Life how puzzled Samuel Johnson was when Lord Chesterfield advised him that “the word
great
should be pronounced so as to rhyme to
state
” and Sir William Yonge insisted that “it should be pronounced so as to rhyme to
seat
, and that none but an Irishman
would pronounce it
grait
.” “Here,” marvelled the lexicographer, “were two men of the highest rank, the one the best speaker in the House of Lords, the other the best speaker in the House of Commons, differing entirely.”
¹
In Webster’s time, as he records in his “Dissertations on the English Language,”
²
reesin
for
raisin
was in good usage in “two or three principal towns in America,” and in our own time the Hon. Al Smith, LL.D. (Harvard), preferred
raddio
to
raydio
. The question whether
ration
should have the
a
of
passion
or that of
nation
is still being debated, and Kemp Malone has sought to resolve it by showing that the word is really two words, one derived from the Latin and the other from the French, and that both pronunciations are correct.
³
In 1943 a newspaper commentator
⁴
reported that among the eminentissimos of the time, Roosevelt II, Winston Churchill, Elmer Davis, Leon Henderson, James F. Byrnes and Eddie Rickenbacker used
rash-un
, but that Harold L. Ickes and Claude Wickard used
ray-shun
.
⁵

When it comes to
e
the chief battle in the Republic continues to be between the advocates of
ee-ther
and those who prefer
eye-ther
.
In 1936 a lady phonologist named Miss Estelle B. Hunter, educational director of the Better Speech Institute of America, announced from Chicago that
ee-ther
and
nee-ther
were gaining on
eye-ther
and
nye-ther
as part of a movement in favor of General American and against “the sophisticated intonations of stage folk.”
¹
Noah Webster, in his “Dissertations,”
²
called
eye-ther
and
nye-ther
“errors,” and classed them with
desate
for
deceit, consate
for
conceit
and
resate for receipt
, but he had to admit that the
ey
-sound was in general use “by the Eastern people,” though not common in the South and West. At that time (1789), if we are to believe him,
ee-ther
and
nee-ther
were favored in England. The Rev. John Witherspoon, in 1781, denounced Americans for using
either
in reference to more than two objects, but had nothing to say about the pronunciation of the word. John Pickering, in 1816, was likewise silent on the subject. J. Fenimore Cooper, in “The American Democrat” (1838), came out strongly in favor of
eye-ther
and
nye-ther
, which he described as “polite.” “This is a case,” he said, “in which the better usage of the language has respected derivations, for
ei
in German is pronounced as in
height
and
sleight, ie
making the sound of
ee
.” What German usage had to do with American standards he did not pause to explain. Nearly all the American authorities of the Nineteenth Century, including even the violently Anglomaniacal Richard Grant White, were in favor of
ee-ther
,
³
and most of those of the present century have followed them,
⁴
but it is my observation that
eye-ther
is holding out, and perhaps even making some progress. Certainly I have heard it of late in circles where, in my boyhood, it would have been derided.

One of the Briticisms that Americans appear to be most conscious
of is the change of
e
to a broad
a
in
clerk, Derby, Berkeley
, etc. Wyld in his “History of Modern Colloquial English,”
¹
shows that this vowel shift began in the Thirteenth Century, and has left sediments in words that are now spelled with the
a
in both England and America,
e.g., to bark, barley, barn, carve, dark, farther, farm, harvest, heart, hearty, hearken, hearth, marvel, parson, smart, star, starling, start
and
starve
. There was a time when what Webster called “the yeoman of America,”
²
like the contemporary English, used this broad
a
in many other words now showing
e, e.g., mercy, servant, certain, clergy, (e)ternal, concern, learn, serpent, search, service, deserve, term
and
virtue
,
³
and it still survives in the dialect of Appalachia. Along with these words, though with the
a
of
lash
substituted for that of
palm
, are
thrash
and
rassle
. The latter, in fact, is often used by highly refined sports reporters in reporting wrestling-matches. In the general speech the only notable survivor seems to be
sergeant
.
⁴
But let us not forget the proper names
Hartford, Barclay
and
Barney
, the last-named a diminutive for
Bernard
, as in
Barney
Baruch. In England itself the
a
is not used invariably. H. W. Seaman tells me that though the Derby horse-race is the
Darby
“the inhabitants of Derby and Derbyshire pronounce the
er
in the moral or American way, and occasionally write to the papers protesting against the
ar
-sound.” Seaman says
⁵
that
stern
(of a ship) is commonly pronounced
starn
in England, but in the adjective, according to Palmer, Martin and Blandford, the
e
of
persuade
is used. Wyld says that the change from
er
to
ar
started in the dialects of Southeastern England, and soon spread to East Anglia. It was rare in the London dialect before the Fifteenth Century, but became “increasingly fashionable until the last quarter of the Eighteenth,” when it began to recede from all words save those which had come to be spelled with
a, e.g., dark
.
⁶

Crick
for
creek
is commonly regarded as an Americanism, and it has been traced by the DAE to 1608, when Captain John Smith used
it in his “Newes from Virginia,” but the NED shows that, in the forms of
crike, krike
and
cryke
, it was in English use before the discovery of America. The late William Allen Pusey (1865–1940), sometime president of the American Medical Association, was greatly interested in the distribution of
crick
, and spent a lot of time gathering evidence about it. He found that it was almost unknown in the rural parts of his native State, Kentucky, and that it was rare in the South below North Carolina. He concluded that it was a Northernism.
¹
Incidentally,
crick in the neck
is properly
crick
and not
creek
. The NED traces it to
c
. 1440 and says that it is “probably onomatopoeic, expressing the sudden check which the spasm causes.”
²
Webster, in his “Dissertations,” recommended many pronunciations that have since become vulgar,
e.g., heerd
for
heard
and
deef
for
deaf
. For the former he had the support of Samuel Johnson,
³
and for the latter the “universal practise in the Eastern States” and general usage “in the Middle and Southern.” He recorded that
def
was in use in England, but called it “a corruption,” and cited the rhymes of Chaucer and of Sir William Temple in support of his position. Of
herd
for
heard
he said: “The Americans were strangers to it when they came from England, and the body of the people are so to this day. To most people in this country the English pronunciation appears like an affectation, and is adopted only in the capital towns, which are always the most ready to distinguish themselves by an implicit imitation of foreign customs.” It was “almost unknown in America,” he added, “till the commencement of the late war [of the Revolution], and how long it has been the practise in England I cannot determine.” Webster, in those days, was a fiery linguistic patriot, and refused absolutely to follow English example. “If it is erroneous,” he said, “let it remain so: we have no concern with it. By adhering to our own practise we preserve a superiority over the English in those instances in which ours is guided by rules, and so far ought we to be from conforming to their practise that they ought rather to conform to ours.” But by the time he came to his “American Dictionary” of 1828 he was admitting
hurd
, though
insisting that
deaf
was “more commonly
deef
” than
def
in America. While this dictionary was under way he was visited by Captain Basil Hall, R.N., and they fell into a discussion of the word. “Your way of pronouncing
deaf
,” he said to Hall, “is
def
– ours, as if it were written
deef;
and as this is the correct mode, from which you have departed, I shall adhere to the American way.”
¹
Webster was apparently the first lexicographer to make note of the so-called neutral vowel. Of it he said in the introduction to his 1828 Dictionary:

A hundred and seven years later A. Lloyd James returned to this melancholy vowel in “The Broadcast Word,”
²
as follows:

Difficulties with
i
in the United States occur mainly in relatively recent words of scientific provenance,
e.g., appendicitis, iodine, quinine
, and so on. Bender, in his counsel to radio message-bringers,
³
follows what are probably the prevailing American pronunciations, which are far from consistent. Thus he gives the crucial
i
the diphthongal
ai-
sound in
iodine
, but the
ee
-sound in
chlorine
and
bromine
, and the sound it has in
in
in
ephedrine
. In
appendicitis, bronchitis, tonsillitis, neuritis, gastritis
and the like he ordains the
ai
-sound. Jones, in “An English Pronouncing Dictionary,” gives precisely the same pronunciations for England, but notes that
iodine
is accorded the
ee
-sound by English chemists, and that the
ai
-sound “is rapidly given place to” it. The
ai
-sound, he says, “is an old-fashioned pronunciation used by people who are ignorant of chemistry, but are familiar with the substance as a household commodity.” Kenyon and
Knott note that the
ee
-sound is likewise preferred by chemists in America, and give
iodin
, with the last syllable rhyming with
pin
, as an alternative to
iodeyn
. Bender recommends
kwi’-nin
, with both
i’s
as in
nine
, for
quinine
, and so do Kenyon and Knott. Jones gives the
i
of
pin
to the first syllable and that of
nine
to the second. Vizetelly noted so long ago as 1917
¹
that the highly artificial
kin-ne’en
was already going out. He appended an interesting note upon the orthoëpic adventures of the word in American dictionaries.
²
The synthetic rival of
quinine, atabrine
, has not yet acquired a settled pronunciation. I have heard both
atabreen
and
atabrine
(rhyming with
line
) from equally tony medical men.

“American English,” says Louise Pound,
³
“is losing its short
o
and turning it into a long open
o
, or into
ah
. Should one say
dawg, fawg, bawg
, or
dahg, fahg, bahg?
There is a different usage for different parts of the United States; and there is no consistency observed even for words within the same group,
e.g.
, I say myself
dawg
but
fahg
. Some would-be purists go so far as to insist upon the vowel
a
of
artistic
in words like
Florence, orange, coffee, horrid
, although the real purist should strive for the preservation of the original short open
o
-sound, yet heard in British usage; not for the substitution of a sound which is not an
o
-sound at all.” During the ten years before 1944 Charles K. Thomas, of Cornell, investigated the pronunciation of
horrid, orange, Florida, forest, borrow, foreign, horrible
and a number of other such words by speakers from nineteen States. He found that the territory they came from could be divided into an Eastern-Southern
ah
-section and a Western short-
o
-section, with the two divided by a line running southward from central Vermont, then westward across New York and Pennsylvania, then southward through Maryland and part of Virginia, then generally westward to southern Missouri, and then southward again through Texas. He learned that in some parts of the
ah
-region the preference for it is overwhelming,
e.g
., Massachusetts, lower New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana. Unfortunately, his inquiry, as I have said, covered but nineteen of
the forty-eight States, and no one, so far as I know, has investigated the remainder.
¹
Harold Whitehall has shown
²
that in colonial American
o
sometimes took a
u
-sound, or even an
oo
-sound. It still takes the former in
among, company
, and (at least in parts of the country)
constable
, but in nearly all other situations these aberrations have disappeared.