American Language Supplement 2 (19 page)
Read American Language Supplement 2 Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
It is hard to make out whether the use of
a
or
an
influences the pronunciation in more cases than the pronunciation influences the use of the articles. So far as I know the only study of English and American practise has been one reported by Louis N. Feipel in 1929. He investigated three hundred contemporary books by authors of decent standing on both sides of the water and found that the English used
an
much oftener than the Americans. In the case of
hallucination
, for example, the score ran three to one, in that of
horizon
four to one, and in that of
hysterical
five to one.
An historical
was found in six English writers and four Americans, but
a
was likewise used by six Englishmen and four Americans, which left a sort of stalemate.
An heroic
was used by eight Englishmen and four Americans – including Waldo Frank and Lewis Mumford –, but two Americans used
a heroic
, which all the English avoided. No author of either country used
a hour, a heir
or
a honest
, which seems to indicate that the
h
is dropped in all of them in both countries.
No American used
an hereditary, an hermaphrodite, an hermetically, an hydraulic, an hyena, an herculean, an hypnotic, an hypocrisy
or
an hilarious
, but a few Americans used
an heraldic, an habitual
and
an hiatus. Such an one
was used by twelve Englishmen and seven Americans, and
such a one
by six of the former and four of the latter.
1
Mark Twain was noting these differences in 1879, when he said to an Englishman encountered on a German train:
Your educated classes say
humble
now, and
heroic
, and
historic
, etc., but I judge that they used to drop those
h
’s because your writers still keep up the fashion of putting an
an
before those words, instead of
a
. This is what Mr. Darwin might call a rudimentary sign that
an
was justifiable once, and useful – when your educated classes used to say
umble
, and
eroic
, and
istorical
.
2
“In the American pronunciation,” wrote Noah Webster in 1789, “
h
is silent in the following:
honest, honor, hour, humor, herb, heir
, with their derivatives. To these the English add
hospital, hostler, humble
. But an imitation of these, which some industriously affect, cannot be recommended, as every omission of the aspirate serves to mutilate and weaken the language.”
3
Perhaps the best present-day American practise is set forth in the Style-Book of the
Atlantic Monthly
, as follows:
Before words beginning with
h
use
a
with monosyllables and words accented on the first syllable:
a hat, a habit, a hurricane
. In such cases one bears heavily on the aspirate, so that it is equivalent to a consonant. Before polysyllables accented elsewhere than on the first syllable use
an: an habitual, an historical, an heretical
. In such words the
h
is naturally so slurred in pronunciation that its presence is scarcely apparent, and a distinct effort is required to pronounce it distinctly, as one must if
a
is used before it. With those words beginning with
hu
in which the combination is pronounced almost like
yu, a
should always be used, without regard to the accent:
a humane, a humility
.
4
The leading English authority, F. Howard Collins’s “Authors’ and Printers’ Dictionary,”
5
ordains
a
before
hope, horse, hospital
and
humble
, and also before
honorarium
, which last is somewhat puzzling, for Thomas R. Lounsbury, in 1904, listed
honor
as one of “four words beginning with
h
in which the initial letter is not pronounced by educated men anywhere,” the others being
heir, honest
and
hour
. “This usage,” he said, “extends of course to their derivatives.”
1
“Whether,” he went on,
they will continue to hold out forever against the stream of tendency which is bringing about the resumption in speech of letters once silent must be left to the prophets to announce. In this instance their predictions can be uttered with perfect safety. None of those now living will survive to witness their fulfilment or non-fulfilment. So far no one has ever advocated the pronunciation in them of the initial letter save Walter Savage Landor. He may have been led to take this course by the irritation he felt at having his own usage criticized, for when he came to the employment of the
h
he is reported to have frequently exhibited distinct orthoepic frailty.
2
When it appears in any save the initial position
h
is frequently dropped, even by speakers of General American. No one, for example, sounds it in
exhaust
and
exhort
, and many also omit it in
exhibit
.
3
The English long ago dropped it from
forehead
, which is
forrid
or
forred
in their speech. There was a time when they also dropped it in
blockhead, hothouse, hedgehog, greenhouse, abhor
and
adhere
.
4
The compensatory insertion of
h
in situations where it does not belong is purely dialectical in English and does not occur
in Standard Southern English. In American it is quite unknown, save only in such vulgar forms as
hit
for
it
and
overhalls
.
1
But Americans sometimes retain the
h
where English usage does not sound it, especially in proper names,
e.g., Northampton
.
2
The elision of other sounds from vulgar American speech is discussed in AL4, pp. 352–54. Such forms as
bound’ry, comf’table
, and
prob’ly
are fit matches for the English
secret’ry
and
extr’odn’ry
. The sound most often dropped is that of medial
r
, and the late George Hempl (1859–1921), professor of Germanic philology at Stanford University, long ago published a formidable list of examples,
e.g., pa’tridge, su’prise, qua’ter, co’ner, the’mometer, pe’formance, lib’ary, yeste’dy
,
3
sa’sparilla, pu’sy
(for
pursy
, usually encountered in
pussy-gut
),
pa’lor
and
Feb’uary
.
4
Some of these are to be found also in English usage. Other sounds that are likewise dropped on occasion are those of
k
, as in
e’cept;
5
n
, as in
kill
for
kiln;
6
th
, as in
scythe;
7
l
, as in
a’ready
and
cert’n’y;
8
v
as in
fi
’
cents;
9
d
, as in
We’nesday, kin’ness
and
tole; t
, as in
of’n
,
10
apos’le
and
Chris’mas
,
and
s
as in some of the almost innumerable deteriorated forms of
yes
.
1
Sometimes, in careless speech, one consonant is substituted for another, as in
grampa
and
robm
(
robin
), or two for two, as in
sebm
(
seven
);
2
sometimes a cluster of consonants is omitted, as in
gra’ma;
and sometimes there is elision of a combination of consonant and vowel, as in
pro’bition, guv’ment
and
o’n’ry
.
3
Hilaire Belloc, in 1924, alleged that
th
, in American speech, was becoming
d
, “even in carefully pronounced words, traditional and in the mouth of a highly-educated man.”
4
“
The
,” he went on, “has not yet become
de
, but it is on the way.” This change, so far as I know, has never been acknowledged by any American phonologist, but many of them have studied the parallel change of
t
to a kind of
d
that they call the voiced
t
, as in
water, butter, battle, twenty
, etc. An Englishman commonly pronounces the
t
in
pity
clearly, but in colloquial American speech the word often comes close to
piddy
. This voiced
t
, according to Kenyon,
5
“occurs most commonly between vowels, sometimes between a vowel and certain of the voiced consonants when it is at the end of an accented syllable before an unaccented one (
twenty
), or sometimes when it is at the beginning of an unaccented one where there is some doubt which syllable the
t
is pronounced with (
want to go
).” It also occurs between two unaccented syllables, as in
join us at eleven
. It does not occur at “the beginning of syllables initial in the phrase, whether accented or unaccented (
table, today
), nor at the end of syllables final in the
phrase, whether accented or unaccented (
repeat, rivet
), nor at the beginning of accented medial (
Miltonic
) or final syllables (
retain
).” In 1942 Dr. Victor A. Oswald, Jr., of Columbia, made an attempt to discover the extent to which this
d
-like sound was substituted for
t
in ordinary literate speech, using students of the Hazleton, Pa., Senior High School as laboratory animals. He found that in
bitter, betting, plotting
, and
sorted
the overwhelming majority of them sounded a clear
t
, but that in
bleating, waiting, hearty, hurting
and
writing
most of them used a consonant that sounded like
d
.
1
An ingenious correspondent
2
tells me that he hears this sound even in
street:
“most Americans say
sdreet
.”
3
He also hears
g
for
k
in
score
and
b
for
p
in
sponge
. The use of
s
for
sh
before
r
, noted in many English dialects, seems to be common in the South. It was denounced by a Baltimore orthoepist, so long ago as 1856, as “the affected pronunciation of over-refined school-girls who cannot bring themselves to utter the homely English sound of
sh
when combined with an
r
, for fear apparently of distorting their faces,”
4
but it survives below the Potomac in speakers of all ages, though it is far from universal. Sir Richard Paget believes that both
s
and
sh
, along with
f
and the sound of
th
in
both
, should be “thrown out of our language” and replaced by their voiced equivalents, to wit,
z, zh
(as in
pleasure
),
v
and the
th
of
thy
. “These unvoiced or whispered sounds,” he says, “are in every way inferior to the voiced sounds – as inferior, in fact, as whispered speech is to voiced speech. Their carrying power is one-tenth to one-twentieth of that of the voiced sounds; they are incapable of being sung or of carrying vocal inflection – they are the prime cause of all
verbal misunderstanding. On the telephone they are practically inaudible.”
1
The displacement of consonants by metathesis, as in
prespiration, hunderd, modren, childern, calvary, neuraliga, govrenment, apurn
and
interduce
, is not pathognomonic of vulgar American but is ancient in English and has produced a number of everyday words,
e.g., third
, which started out in life in the Ninth Century as
thrid
. Equally widespread is the intercalation of redundant vowels, though many familiar examples are probably of American origin,
e.g., athaletic, reality
(
realty
),
fillum
,
2
Cubéan, mountainious, golluf, cruality, mayorality
3
and
municipial
. It was apparently commoner in the earlier days than it is today. Henry Alexander, in a study of the spellings in a pamphlet by an ill-educated New England farmer, written in 1798, finds
tremendious, conterary
(
contrary
),
constitutiants
(
constituents
),
docterin
(
doctrine
),
vagarant
(
vagrant
), and
cuntery
(
country
), all of them indicative of the author’s customary speech.
4
This farmer also added a
g
to words ending with
n
, and in
brethering
he both intruded a vowel and added a
g
. The addition of
g
to the
n
of unstressed syllables has been traced by Wyld
5
to the Fifteenth Century. Some of his later examples are
chicking
, 1653;
lining
(
linen
), 1657;
chapling
, 1662;
fashing
, 1664;
childering
, 1692, and
slouinglie
(
slovenly
), 1549. In the American common speech
such forms are still frequent,
e.g., kitching, capting, leming
(
lemon
), Sometimes a
t
is added, as in
varmint
(
vermin
), which is traced by Wyld to 1539 and is now reduced to dialect.
1
Often the
t
follows an
s
-sound, as in the familiar
wunst, twict, acrost
and
sinct
.
2
Wentworth traces
grievious
and
bretheren
to 1837,
hunderd
(I hear it as
hundert
) and
childern
to 1840,
3
and
modren
to 1905. The last is undoubtedly much older.
Bron-ix
seems to have arisen among the Jews of that borough, and
fil-lum
probably comes from Hollywood. There is a story about an author who, after a year or two in the movie Zion, quit in disgust. As his train pulled out of Los Angeles he apostrophized his place of exile thus: “What a people! They know only one word of more than one syllable, and that is
fil-lum.”
4
Mountainious
, used quite seriously, is in
Harper’s Magazine
for 1860,
5
and
Patapsico
is common in Maryland. I have heard
heightht
many times, and
lengtht, elevingtht
and
strengtht
more than once. According to a writer in
American Speech
6
“intrusive
n
remains a recurrent phenomenon in oral and written speech,’
e.g., menance, prowness
and
grimance
. Other familiar forms are
chimbly
, traced by Wentworth to 1818;
conflab;
7
lozenger
, traced to 1850;
bronichal, asthema, blasphemious, mischievious, drownded, attackted, somewheres, portry
and
holler
.
8
Such changes as those which converted
licorice
into
likerish
,
9
recipe
into
receipt
,
10
jaundice
into
janders, picture
into
pitcher
and
larceny
into
larsensy
have been noted in AL4.
11
A lovely example of double metamorphosis is offered by
savage corpse
for
salvage corps
.
12
