Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
American Language Supplement 2 (17 page)
Hilaire Belloc says that to American ears the vowel used by the English in
hot, coffee, soft, cough, lost, off, gone, dog
, etc., sounds “ridiculous.”
3
A. Lloyd James says
4
that it is a quite recent newcomer among English vowels, and that in Victorian days
dawg, crawss, cawf, gawn
and
frawst
were still “current in educated London speech.” He adds that
awff
for
off
survives. The usual English
o
seems to most American ears to be nearly identical with the
u
of
hut
, so that that word and
hot
are hard to distinguish. Sometimes, in the United States, a neutral vowel resembling the one in unaccented
the
is substituted for
o
, as in
demuhcrat
. There is occasional discussion in the newspapers of the
o
-sound in the second syllable of
bureaucracy
, with one faction advocating the
o
of
rock
and another an
oh
-sound that is supposed to be the French
eau
-sound. All the principal authorities, English and American, seem to favor the former, though they ordain the
oh
-sound in
bureau
and
bureaucrat
. It is obviously stress that supports the
ock
-sound. H. W. Fowler, in “Modern English Usage,”
5
denounces
bureaucracy
itself, as “a formation so barbarous that all attempt at self-respect in pronunciation may perhaps as well be abandoned.” “It is better,” he goes on, “to give the whole thing up, and pretend that
-eau-
is the formative -
o
- that ordinarily precedes -
crat
, etc.; all is then plain sailing; it is only to be desired that the spelling could also be changed to
burocrat
, etc.”
6
The vicissitudes of the
u
-sound in early American speech have
been studied by Whitehall.
1
It became, on the one hand,
oo
, on the other hand a diphthong apparently identical with that of
how
, and on the third hand, so to speak, various other sounds. These variations, in the main, have vanished, and one no longer encounters
bull
spelled
bool
, or
blood
rhymed with
load
, or
dew
with
bough
, or
dust
with
host
, but
nooz
for
news
still remains the prevailing pronunciation in the United States, despite the English preference for
nyewz
and the effort of generations of schoolma’ams to import and propagate it. Webster was against it, and in his “Dissertations”
2
dismissed the intrusion of the palatal glide as a peculiarity of Virginia speech, and hence barbaric. In his Dictionary of 1828 he actually ordained
fig-ur, vol-u, vol-um, moot
(for
mute
),
litera-tur
, etc., but he had to admit that it was already “the practise [in the North] to give
u
the sound of
yu
in such words as
nature, feature, rapture
, which are pronounced
nat-yur, feat-yur, rapt-yur
,” and after his death in 1843 his heirs and assigns quietly inserted the
y
in
figure, value
and
volume
. Krapp has shown
3
that old Noah, as on not infrequent other occasions, reported the educated speech of New England somewhat inaccurately, and Wyld has produced evidence that the
yu
-sound was already in wide use in England in the early Seventeenth Century.
4
The whole question is discussed by Krapp at length and with much learning. At the present time the English seem to employ
yu
more often than Americans, but it is nevertheless in constant use in this country. Kenyon and Knott give both
nyu
and
nu
for
new
, with the former first, but Bender prefers the latter. Most Americans use
doo
for
due, toob
for
tube, dooty
for
duty
, and
nood
for
nude
, but I have never encountered a native who used
moosic, booty
(for
beauty
),
poor
(for
pure
), or
aboose. Dew
, like
due
, is commonly
doo
, but
few
is seldom if ever
foo
.
H. W. Fowler ventures the opinion
5
that
yu
is yielding to
oo
in English usage. “It was formerly
de rigueur
,” he says, “to put in the
y
-sound; a
flute
had to be called a
flyoot
, or the speaker was damned
in polite circles.… But for most of us [Southern English] anything but
bloo
[
blue
] and
gloo
[
glue
] is surely now impossible, however refined we like to be where the trials of articulation are less severe.” Fowler adds that
loodicrous, voloominous, loobricate, saloot
and
diloot
also prevail in England, and that
oo
is ousting
yu
from all accented syllables,
e.g
., in
lunatic, lurid, aluminum, salute, lugubrious, lukewarm, fluent
, and from monosyllables. Krapp, in “The English Language in America,” gives the history of the pronunciation of
lieutenant
.
1
It was originally
leftenant
in this country, as it is in England, but Webster, with his fondness for spelling pronunciations, declared for
lootenant
, and
lootenant
it now is.
2
An American police lieutenant is commonly
Loot
to his men, and the same abbreviation is not unknown in the Army and Navy. Sometimes the English use
liftenant
or
litenant
instead of
leftenant
.
3
Jones says in “An English Pronouncing Dictionary”
4
that
route
is pronounced
rowt
by English soldiers, but
root
by the rest of the population. In the United States
root
seems to be prevailing, helped by the analogy of
routine
. Webster preferred
rowt
, but George R. Howells reported in 1883
5
that “ninety Americans out of a hundred,” at that time, used
root
. Kenyon and Knott apparently prefer
root
, but also give
rowt
. Bender gives
root
without mentioning
rowt
. Larsen and Walker give
root
, and dismiss
rowt
as “dial.” Webster 1934 gives
root
, but adds that
rowt
“prevails in military use, among railroad men, and colloquially, of a delivery
route
.” Krapp says that
rowt
occurs only “in very colloquial English, as in speaking of a milk-
route
or a mailcarrier’s
route
.”
The intrusion of
y
before the broad
a
as in
cyard
and
gyarden
, is still thought of by most Americans as a Southernism, but it actually goes back to Eighteenth Century England, when it was described by Walker (1791) as prevailing “in polite pronunciation.” At the same time there was a fashion in London for inserting it before the diphthong of such words as
kind
and
cow
. Webster was against
this intrusion, and denounced it in his “Dissertations” in 1789. In the case of
ow
he called it characteristic of the “barbarous dialect … of the Eastern country people,” and in the case of
ai
an affectation of “those polite speakers who are so fond of imitating the English stage pronunciation as to embrace every singularity, however disagreeable.”
1
“It is presumed,” he added prissily, “that the bare mention of such barbarisms will be sufficient to restrain their progress, both in New England and on [
sic
] the British theatre.” But so late as 1853
Punch
was still chiding the English actors for using
gyarden
and
kyind
.”
2
After
k
and
g
the
y
-sound, says Krapp,
3
“can still frequently be heard, both in cultivated Virginian speech and in the Negro’s naïve imitation of cultivated speech.”
4
Greet, himself a Southerner, says
5
that there is much variation of usage among Southerners who affect the
y
-sound, and that they are seldom consistent. He tells, for example, of “two gentlewomen” who used
cigya
(for
cigar
),
cyahmly
and
cyahnt
(for
can’t
), but nevertheless failed to insert the
y
in
car
and
garden
. It is not fashionable, he says, in words showing the vowels of
gift, get
and
carry
, but it occurs before the
u
-sound, as in
gyirls
for
girls
. To insert the
y
-sound before the
ow
of
cow
, he says, in “a real
fauxpas
.” In this he agrees with Webster, who carried on, as we have seen, a war against
cyow, cyounty, tyown
and their like, which were common in the New England of his time, and still survive there among the remoter country people. Webster laid down specifications for schoolmasters eager to put down this
y
. “In order to pronounce
cow, power
or
gown
with propriety,” he said, “the pupil should be taught, after placing the organs in the position required by the first consonant, to open his mouth wide before he begins the sound of
ow
. Otherwise, in passing from that position to the aperture necessary to pronounce
ow
, he will inevitably articulate
ee, keow
.”
6
In the dialect speech of the Republic the diphthongs have made heavy weather of it. Either they displace other sounds, as in the
thoid
of the Brooklyn dialect, or they are themselves displaced by other sounds, as in
hist
for
hoist, rile
for
roil, jice
for
joist, pisen
for
poison, snoot
for
snout
, and
thar
for
there
.
1
The use of the diphthong of
wine
in the words in
oi
was quite correct in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Samuel Butler’s rhymes indicate that he heard it in
toil, purloin
and
enjoin
, Dryden’s that it was then current in
toil
and
coin
, and Pope’s that it was admitted in
enjoy
and
join
. But William Kenrick, whose “New Dictionary of the English Language” was published in 1773, indicated that the
oi
-sound was then ousting the
ai
-sound. He declared that it would still “appear affectation” to use the former in
boil
and
join
, but that the retention of
ai
in
oil
and
toil
had become “a vicious custom” tolerated only “in common conversation.”
2
Some English observers detect a movement toward the diphthongization of vowels even in educated American speech. “To an Englishman,” says Oscar Browne,
3
“an impression is given that many Americans have acquired habits of restricting the functions of the nasal sinuses, placing unorthodox values and pitches upon vowels, including a change of simple vowels into diphthongs.”
4
On the vulgar level many other changes in vowels,
e.g., jedge
for
judge, empire
for
umpire
,
5
ingine
for
engine, chaw
for
chew
,
1
and
shet
for
shut
still flourish more or less, but it is my impression that they are gradually succumbing to the schoolma’am. Whether the current plan to run every American moron through high-school will ever dispose of them altogether remains to be seen.
1
New York, 1924, p. 224.
2
Some Unrecorded Southern Vowels,
American Speech
, Oct., 1934, p. 209. See also Some Phases of American Pronunciation, by William A. Read,
Journal of English and Germanic Philology
, 1923, pp. 237 and 238, and
Haf
and
Haef
, by C. H. Grandgent,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. I, Part VI, 1893, p. 271.
1
Trends in American Pronunciation,
Quarterly Journal of Speech
, Dec., 1942, pp. 452–56.
2
The Phonetic Concepts of John Walker and Daniel Jones, by Benjamin Newman,
Quarterly Journal of Speech
, Oct., 1941, p. 365.
3
To wit,
ah, eh, ee, aw, oh
and
oo
.
4
Paget’s paper was first printed in French in the
Bulletin
of the Institut Général Psychologique in 1925. An English translation, made and revised by the author, is in
S.P.E. Tract No. XXII;
Oxford, 1925. See his p. 31. On p. 24 he apparently increases the number of vowels to fourteen. In The Sounds of Spoken English; Oxford, 1920, p. 31, T. Nicklin said that “there are in modern English nine simple vowels,” but he actually listed eleven, and then added eight diphthongs.
5
The Stressed Vowels of American English,
Language
, June, 1935, p. 97. In the same volume of
Language
, pp. 148–51, some of Bloomfield’s conclusions are criticized by Morris Swadesh in The Vowels of Chicago English.
1
The Quality of a Spoken Vowel,
Archives of Speech
, July, 1937, pp. 15 and 25.
2
Remarks on Paget’s paper, lately cited,
S.P.E. Tract No. XXII
, p. 39.
3
The Effect of Pitch and Intensity on the Quality of Vowels in Speech,
Archives of Speech
, July, 1937, p. 59. “Each vowel,” say C. E. Parmenter and S. N. Treviño,
Quarterly Journal of Speech
, June. 1932, p. 366, “has a typical or characteristic position around which variations may take place.”
1
The Effect of the Consonant on the Vowel, by John W. Black,
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
, Jan., 1939, pp. 203–95. In The Stability of the Vowel,
Quarterly Journal of Speech
, Feb., 1939, Black shows that the vowels of a given speaker may change perceptibly within so short a time as two years, and that such changes, though not great, are “apparently consistent.”
2
Notes on the Length of Vowels, April, 1937, p. 128. Heffner continued the discussion of the subject in
American Speech
for Feb. and Dec., 1940; Oct., 1941, and Feb., 1942, and in
Language
for Jan.-March, 1940. See also Vowel-Length in General American Speech, by Harry A. Rositzke,
Language
, April-June, 1937, and Two Notes on Vowel and Consonant Quantity, by Norman E. Eliason,
American Speech
, Oct., 1942. In both papers there are references to previous studies of the subject.
3
American Speech
, Feb., 1942, p. 48.
4
Outline of English Phonetics, by Daniel Jones; New York, 1932, par. 879, quoted by Heffner.
5
For example, Henry A. Perkins, in Our Changing Vowels, Hartford
Courant
, April 27, 1938.
6
Broadcast English No. I, p. 34; Jones, p. 151.
7
Broadcast English No. I, p. 36; Jones, pp. 173 and 236.
8
In 1937, after attending a meeting of the American Psychological Association, Dr. William J. Griffin, of the State Teachers’ College, St. Cloud, Minn., wrote to me: “Among all the learned doctors there apparently is not one who speaks of
status, data, apparatus
, or
strata
with anything save the
a
of
hat
.”
1
I am indebted for these examples to Perkins, lately cited.
2
A Desk-Book of 25,000 Words Frequently Mispronounced, by Frank H. Vizetelly; New York, 1917, p. xxviii.
3
Old and New; Cambridge (Mass.), 1920, pp. 143 and 144. See also The English Language in America, by George Philip Krapp; New York, 1925, Vol. II, pp. 249
ff
.
4
Private communication, June 27, 1944.
1
For most of the foregoing examples I am indebted to Seaman, to Mr. R. Raven-Hart, to the Palmer-Martin-Blandford Dictionary of English Pronunciation, to Broadcast English No. I, and to The Phonetics of English, by Ida C. Ward; Cambridge (England), 1929, p. 78.
2
A History of Modern Colloquial English, before cited, p. 204.
3
The Broadcast Word, p. 99.
4
So long ago as 1874 A. J. Ellis noted, in Vol. IV of his Early English Pronunciation, p. 1148, the wide variation of usage in England, even among careful speakers. He said that at a performance of King John he had heard Mrs. Charles Kean give
calf
the flat
a
, whereas her
vis-à-vis
, Alfred Wigan, gave it the broad
a
of
palm
.
5
The context shows that he meant the usage of Boston and its colonies. The so-called compromise
a
of this region is not altogether unknown in England. In fact, it is reported by Robert Forby in The Vocabulary of East Anglia; London, 1830, Vol. I, p. 86. He says that “perhaps the nearest approach to its sound “is the bleat of a very young lamb.”
6
Oriental and Linguistic Studies: Second Series; New York, 1874, pp. 206–07.
7
Broad
A
in Virginia, by Chad Walsh, Feb., 1940, p. 38.
1
An
A
for an
R
(editorial), July 3, 1944. On July 5, in the same paper, the Boston
a
was defended with eloquence by a correspondent in Middleton, R. I., signing himself E. O. Lux.
2
I am indebted here to Mr. Hugh Morrison, of Mays Landing, N. J. The English give
Pall Mall
two flat
a
’s.
3
Private communication, Jan. 20, 1945. There was a discussion of the word in the Boston
Traveler
in April, 1944.
1
In
Agane
or
Agen
, a letter to the New York
Herald Tribune
dated Feb. 1, 1938.
2
On Feb. 5, 1937
John o’London’s Weekly
, which specializes in language questions, printed an inquiry from a Scotswoman who wrote: “Can you explain the almost universal pronunciation, by English people, of the word
ate
as
ett?
The spelling of the word gives no justification for this pronunciation, and the sound
ett
is, to my mind, peculiarly ugly. For some obscure reason it suggests to me a wolfish, gobbling action, in contradistinction to the quiet dignity of
ate
.” To this the editor replied: “My correspondent has my sympathy, but is she fastidious enough to complain of
red
and
delt
as the past tense forms of
read
and
deal?
In English ears today
ate
sounds rather falsely ‘fastidious.’ ”
3
British
Eat
and American
Ate
, by Eston Everett Ericson,
American Speech
, Dec., 1937, pp. 322–23.
4
The Big
Stomp
, by J. H. M. C., Hartford
Courant
, Dec. 9, 1937.
5
Vowel Positions as Shown by
X
-Ray, by C. E. Parmenter and S. N. Treviño,
Quarterly Journal of Speech
, June, 1932, p. 354. There is an interesting discussion of the fermentation of
a
in the NED, Vol. I, p. 1.
1
Boswell’s Life, March, 1772.
2
Boston, 1789, p. 116.
3
Ration, American Speech
, April, 1943, pp. 128–30.
4
Rash-un
or
Ray-shun:
Both are Correct for
Ration
, Jamestown (N.Y.),
Post Journal
, Jan. 13.
5
There is a large literature on
a
in English and American, and anyone becoming heated up by the subject will find fuel for his flames in Fashion and the Broad
A
, by C. H. Grandgent,
Nation
, Jan. 7, 1915 (reprinted in Old and New; Cambridge (Mass.), 1920, pp. 25–30); Observations on the Broad
A
, by Miles L. Hanley,
Dialect Notes
, Vol. V, Part VIII, 1925, pp. 347–50; The Pronunciation of Short
A
in American Standard English, by George L. Trager,
American Speech
, June, 1930, pp. 396–400; One Phonemic Entity Becomes Two: The Case of Short
A
, by the same,
American Speech
, Oct., 1940, pp. 255–58; The Vowel in
Rather
in New England, by Herbert Penzl,
Publications of the Modern Language Association
, Dec., 1938, pp. 1186–92; Relics With Broad
A
in New England Speech, by the same,
American Speech
, Feb., 1938, pp. 45–49; The Compromise
A
, by the same,
Anglia
, Band LXIII, 1939, pp. 88–99; The Vowel Phonemes in
Father, Man, Dance
in Dictionaries and New England Speech, by the same,
Journal of English and Germanic Philology
, Jan., 1940, pp. 13–32; Flat
A
and Broad
A
, by J. S. K[enyon],
American Speech
, April, 1930, pp. 323–26;
Watch, Water, Wash
, by Sarah T. Barrows,
American Speech
, April, 1929, pp. 301–02; The
A
of
Father, Rather
, by Kemp Malone,
Modern Philology
, Vol. XVI, 1918, pp. 11–22; Umlaut in Middle English, by George Bond; Dallas (Tex.), 1937, pp. 86
ff;
The English Language in America, by George Philip Krapp; New York, 1925, Vol. II, pp. 36
ff; Vays, Vayz
or
Vahz
, by Janet R. Aiken,
North American Review
, Dec., 1929, pp. 716–21; and Mather Flint on Early Eighteenth Century Pronunciation, by Helge Kökeritz; Uppsala (Sweden), 1944, pp. 81–92.
1
Eether
Now Heads
Eyether
, Associated Press dispatch from Chicago,
Christian Science Monitor
, March 13, 1936.
2
p. 114.
3
So was James Russell Lowell, who wrote in his famous essay On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners, 1869: “We said
eether
and not
eyther
, following therein the fashion of our ancestors, who unhappily could bring over no English better than Shakespeare’s.”
4
For example, Kenyon and Knott, Louise Pound. Krapp and Bender. Krapp says (The Pronunciation of Standard English in America; New York, 1919, p. 77) that
eye-ther
“is popular and general nowhere in America,” but admits that it is “heard often as a conscious refined pronunciation.” Raven I. McDavid, Jr., in Dialect Geography and Social Science Problems,
Social Forces
, Dec., 1946, says that it is supported by “the snob-appeal of not using the same pronunciation as the uneducated or rustic people of one’s own community.” See AL4, pp. 341–43.
1
pp. 212–22.
2
Dissertations, p. 105.
3
There are many examples in The Beginnings of American English, by M. M. Mathews; Chicago, 1931.
4
American
Sargeant
et al, by Robert Withington,
American Speech
, Oct., 1934, p. 234. See also Early American Pronunciation and Syntax, by Henry Alexander,
American Speech
, Dec., 1924, p. 145.
5
Private communication, May 16, 1944.
6
Wyld presents many examples. There are others in English Pronunciation from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century, by Constance Davies; London, 1934.
1
Private communications, Aug. 23 and 27, Sept. 8 and Nov. 14, 1937.
2
The difference in meaning between
creek
in England and
creek
in America is discussed in Supplement I, p. 221.
3
Boswell reported under date of Sept. 23, 1777: “[Johnson] said his reason was that if
heard
were pronounced
herd
there would be a single exception from the English pronunciation of the syllable
ear
, and he thought it better not to have any exception.”
1
Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828, by Hall; Philadelphia, 1829; Vol. I, p. 321.
2
London, 1935, p. 180.
3
NBC Handbook of Pronunciation; New York, 1943; third printing.
1
A Desk-Book of 25,000 Words Frequently Mispronounced, p. 713.
2
The Linguistic Adas of New England, Map 516, shows that
iodine
and
iodeen
are both in use throughout the territory covered, with what appears to be
iodane
occasionally encountered in the western part.
Kwinine
seems to be almost universal (Map 517).
3
Pronunciation in the Schools,
American Speech
, Oct., 1922, p. 476.
1
The Dialectal Significance of the Non-Phonemic Low-Back Vowel Variants Before
R
, in Studies in Speech and Drama in Honor of Alexander M. Drummond; Ithaca (N.Y.), 1944, pp. 244–254. A bibliography is appended. See also Short
O
Vowels in American Speech; Massachusetts, by C. W. Dow,
Speech Monographs
, 1945, pp. 74–76.
2
An Elusive Development of Short
O
in Early American Speech,
American Speech
, Oct., 1941, pp. 192–203.
3
The Contrast; New York, 1924, p. 226.
4
The Broadcast Word; London, 1935, pp. 100 and 105.
5
Oxford, 1926, p. 59.
6
The
Rock
in
Bureaucracy
, by Alexander Kadison, New York
Times
(editorial page), Feb. 21, 1938.
1
Middle English ū and Related Sounds: Their Development in Early American Speech,
Supplement to Language
, Oct.-Dec., 1939. Some objections to his conclusion are stated in Development of Middle English
u
, by Eilert Ekwall,
American Speech
, Oct., 1940, pp. 306–10.
