Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
American Language Supplement 2 (18 page)
2
p. 159.
3
The English Language in America; New York, 1925, Vol. II, pp. 155–64.
4
A History of Modern Colloquial English; London, 1920, pp. 242–44.
5
Modern English Usage, lately cited, pp. 335–36. This discussion was first published in
S.P.E. Tract No. XXII;
Oxford, 1925, pp. 47–48.
1
Vol. II, pp. 163–64.
2
The NED shows that in the Fourteenth Century, when the word was just coming into English, both forms were in use in England.
Luftenand
and
leeftenaunt
are cited from 1375 and 1387 respectively. But
lutenand
also dates from
c
. 1375.
3
Lif, Lef
, or
Loo
, Edinburgh
Evening News
, Sept. 27, 1943.
4
London, 1917; revised in 1924, 1926 and 1937.
5
Transactions of the Albany Institute
, Vol. X.
1
p. 109.
2
Quoted in
Godey’s Lady’s Book
, Jan., 1854, p. 86, with the implication that American actors were doing likewise.
3
The English Language in America, Vol. II, p. 207. An excellent discussion of the history of the sound follows.
4
Dr. L. L. Barrett tells me that he once knew a professor at the University of Virginia who even introduced it into French, as in
regyarder
for
regarder
.
5
Southern English, in Culture in the South, edited by W. T. Couch; Chapel Hill (N.C.), 1934, p. 610. See AL4, p. 364.
6
All of us, of course, insert
y
before the
u
in
union
and the like, but
yarb
for
herb
and
yere
for
here
are definitely rustic and vulgar. Wyld shows that
yere
for
here
and
yearth
for
earth
were used by Bishop Hugh Latimer in the sermons he published in 1549, and that
yearl
for
earl
was in use at the same period. It was probably a fear of such vulgarisms that knocked the
y
off
yeast
. It was pronounced
east
in Maryland in my boyhood, but the
y
has now been restored.
1
See AL4, pp. 345–46.
2
I take this from A Modern English Grammar, by Otto Jespersen; Heidelberg, 1922, Vol. I, pp. 329–30. Isaac Watts, in The Art of Reading and Writing English, 1721, listed
jice
as correct for
joist
, but Robert Nares in Elements of Orthoepy, 1784, denounced
hist
for
hoist
as a “low vulgarism.”
3
Normal English Pronunciation; London, 1937, p. 91.
4
Mr. William R. Bradley, of New York City (private communication, Dec. 1, 1943), sends me a tearsheet from
Science
containing an article entitled Medical Orthoepy, by Dr. B. N. Craver, of the School of Medicine, Wayne University, Detroit, which says in part: “A very common error in the pronunciation of medical terms is to render as diphthongs vowels which should be sounded separately.… Thus,
protein
, correctly a three-syllable word, has been accorded but two; so also with
caffeine, rabies
and others. However, for such words as
oubain, sparteine, codeine, caries, facies
and others correct speech demands the pronunciation of all three syllables.
Syndrome
, analogous to
epitome
, should have all vowels sounded, but it has so long been mispronounced as a two-syllable word that lexicographers remark that pronunciation in medicine.”
5
There was a contrary exchange in the Philippines after the promulgation of civil government on July 1, 1902. Thereafter the refined began speaking of the days before that event as those “of the
empire
,” but the less tutored resident Americans preferred
umpire
. I am indebted here to Mr. Hartford Beaumont.
1
Chaw
must have been accepted in England during the Eighteenth Century, for Walker in 1791 described it as having “grown vulgar,” apparently recently. It was permitted by Nares in 1784.
“In London and some parts of the South [of England],” said R. J. Lloyd in 1894, “the
r
following a vowel at the end of the word or syllable has disappeared, but there is no other part of the English-speaking world except Eastern New England where this is quite the case.”
2
Lloyd might have excepted also the Tidewater South, but everywhere else in the United States, including even the Hudson Valley area, the
r
is usually sounded. The late C. H. Grandgent of Harvard (1862–1939) once estimated that, in the West, it appears before consonants, as in
card, north, part
and
farm
, 81 times out of 100, in the Middle States 64 times, in New England 36 times, and in the South 24 times.
3
Bernard Bloch, one of the collaborators in the Linguistic Atlas of New England, has since shown that it is now conquering even New England. In the Western third of the area he has found it prevailing in more than 75% of the cases, and even within the Boston territory there are speechislands in which it is clearly sounded. The older speakers, he says, still omit it; the young ones insert it. Its eastward extension, he concludes, “reflects not merely the spread of a single feature from Southwestern New England, but a gradual victory of the chief
type of American English over a specifically provincial dialect.”
1
There are, to be sure, some neighborhoods in which a contrary tendency seems to be showing, but Bloch inclines to think that even there the
r
will finally conquer.
Archibald A. Hill has shown that the loss of
r
after vowels and before consonants is frequent in the English dialects,
2
and has produced examples from as long ago as the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,
e.g., hoss
for
horse
(1473–88),
assenycke
for
arsenic
(1530) and
cott
for
court
(1552).
3
Wyld says that it was lost earliest before
s
and
sh
.
4
It is sounded in England when it is followed by a vowel, as in
red, ride
and
rode
, but it is omitted when it stands at the end of a word, as in
car, fair
and
fur
. In the latter case, however, it is commonly restored when the word following begins with a vowel, as in “The
car
is at the door.”
5
But this restoration is not invariable, and there are situations in which many speakers seem to find it difficult to decide whether they should sound the
r
or not. As a result, some of them, eager to be correct, insert it where it has no place, as in “the
idear
is” and “
vanillar
ice-cream.” This confusion is promoted by the fact that many quite dissimilar words,
e.g., law
and
lore
, are pronounced precisely alike in Southern English. People so afflicted, says A. Lloyd James, “will not infrequently talk about the
lore of Moses
when they mean the
law of Moses
.”
6
The best discussion of the American
r
that I am aware of is in a paper by John S. Kenyon.
7
He describes at length the vocal mechanism whereby the various
r
-sounds, ranging downward from the
trilled
r
of German, French and Scots, are produced, and distinguishes between the mere muffling of the sound and its complete extinction. In many cases, in the middle ground, he says,
r
is reduced to a sort of vowel. He observes, like Ring Lardner before him,
1
that the literary custom of representing the vulgar pronunciation of
fellow, window
and their like by
feller, winder
, etc., is misleading, for the final syllable in most cases does not show
r
at all, but is simply the neutral vowel.
2
Why has
r
survived in General American? Kenyon rejects the theory that the schoolma’am, egged on by Webster, preserved it by insisting on spelling-pronunciations, and points out very wisely that there were more of her clan in Eastern New England, where it vanished, than to the westward, where it persisted. He rather inclines to believe that the character of the immigration into the West was mainly responsible. It was largely made up of Scotsmen, of Irishmen and of Englishmen coming from regions outside the influence of London speech, and “they brought their
r
’s with them.” “There is much reason to think,” he concludes, “that the Western treatment of
r
… is parallel to the Western pronunciation of words like
half
, which belongs to an ‘older family’ than Eastern
hahf
.” Even more than the use of the flat
a
, the sounding of
r
is the chief hallmark of General American speech; indeed, Leonard Bloomfield says that this General American, or, as he calls it, “Central-Western type of American Standard English,” may be defined as “the type which preserves old
r
in final position and before consonants.”
3
Its sound, one may admit without cavil, is very far from lovely,
4
but as the late Frank H. Vizetelly was fond of pointing out, it at least makes for intelligibility.
5
– and the desire to convey ideas is the chief purpose of speaking at all.
1
The dropping of the final
g
in words ending in -
ing
seems to be more widespread in England than in America, and is tolerated, if not exactly recommended, by most of the English authorities on speech. Kenyon says
2
that, in the United States, it “appears to be more common among the educated in the South than in the North and East.” “The spelling-pronunciation,” he goes on, “is now so general that it is in excellent usage, but it must not be hastily concluded that the pronunciation -
in
is necessarily a mark of ignorance or lack of cultivation. It is still commoner than most people suppose. It is a good illustration of the muddling through by which forms and usages regularly become established in standard use. Hundreds of people have religiously practised saying
coming
instead of
comin
without ever intelligently considering the facts, or whether the effort was worth while.” Krapp shows
3
that -
in
is to be found plentifully in the early American records, and that it must have been general in the Seventeenth Century. He ascribes the prevalence of -
ing
to the rage for spelling-pronunciations, and notes that, among the innocent, “the analogy of words” has produced such forms as
kitching
and
garding
. Lardner noted that in the common speech the final
g
is commonly dropped in
nothing
and
something
, but retained in
anything
and
everything
.
4
Lieut.-Col. F. G. Potts
5
accounts for this on the plausible ground that “
anything
and
everything
have strong secondary accents on their last syllables, and are
pronounced as if those syllables were separate words.” Americans, like Englishmen, seldom give a clear sound to the
g
in such words as
length
and
strength
. It becomes, at best,
k
, and this sound is recorded without comment by Jones in his “English Pronouncing Dictionary.” Dr. Alfred D. Schoch argues that this substitution is quite rational. “The
g
in these words,” he says, “is only an orthographic expedient; they really have no
g
in them – that is, no
g
sound. What they do have is a velar nasal consonant like the
n
in
ink
, which stands between two other sounds that are articulated forward in the mouth, and so stands to have its articulation shifted forward to the
n
-position. I don’t remember, though, that I have ever heard these words with a plain
n
-sound. What is more likely to occur in ordinary talk is that the
ng
nasal consonant may disappear and leave the nasality of the
e
to take its place.”
1
It is as grievous to an Englishman of tone to be accused of dropping his
h
’s as it is to a white Southerner to be accused of using
you-all
in the singular. Nevertheless, both are guilty to some extent. Daniel Jones, in prescribing the usages of what he calls Received Pronunciation (RP), lists
hospital
with a clear
h
but allows both
hostler
and
ostler
, and when he comes to
hotel
says that “some use the form
otel
always; others use it occasionally, when the word is not initial.”
2
All Americans believe that they sound the
h
invariably, but when they use
an
before
hotel
, which happens sometimes, they actually say
an ’otel
, for sounding
h
after consonants is phonologically unhandy, as the cases of
on his
and
to kiss
(or
neck
, or
shoot
)
her
sufficiently show. They are saved from cockneyism by the fact that, as a practical matter, they seldom use
an
before
hotel
and its allied words, despite the assumed influence on their speech habits of the King James Bible, which gives it before
haven
,
3
hair
,
4
host
,
5
hedge
,
6
helmet
,
7
herb
,
8
hidden
,
9
,
high
,
10
hand
,
11
hole
,
12
holy
,
13
horn
,
1
horse
,
2
house
,
3
householder
,
4
hundred
,
5
hypocrite
, etc.
6
In late years the more popular American prints of Holy Writ have quietly substituted
a
for
an
before all these words, though in a few aberrant cases
an
is retained. In the only instances in which
hen, hind, hot
and
huge
appear in the text with an indefinite article the King James Version itself uses
a
, which is also used before
horrible. Hunt
never appears as a noun and
hurt
never with an indefinite article.
