Ex tibris C. K. OGDEN Iff M' THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GIFT ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION By ROBERT BRIDGES First published 1910 in Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association collected by A. C. BRADLEY ; now reprinted by permission with Notes and Explanations OXFORD At the Clarendon Tress 1913 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY HUMPHREY MILFORD PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY College Library PE PREFATORY NOTE TO SECOND /)3? EDITION 37^ ON the Phonetics of English one could scarcely hope to write an essay which should be both interesting to the general reader and satisfactory to the expert. The chief difficulty lies in the impossibility of representing sounds in the ordinary English spelling ; because our spellings have no phonetic rule, and our alphabet is consequently ambiguous and scientifically useless. It is therefore necessary to use some sym- bols : but the general reader will not, and owing to the defects of our general education most often cannot easily master the significance of speech- symbols, nor follow any argument which employs them. And though he would admit the desirability of the letters having some fixed correspondence with sounds, yet he likes to think that ours in a manner share the pride of English liberty, and he would consider it almost an impertinence to enquire too narrowly into their behaviour. He has more- over a suspicion of all fine distinctions, and a pre- judice against anything which threatens the comfort of an accustomed convention. He gets on, so he thinks, amazingly well as he is, and does not wish to be disturbed or have new paths opened to him. 1053229 4 PREFATORY NOTE TO I am not therefore ashamed of the friendly in- dulgence with which my essay was received, for it was intended above all things to be as generally readable as the subject allowed. Its attempt to persuade was, it is true, aimed equally at the ex- perts, but they were left to supply the qualifications which my purpose did not allow me to provide. Again, even for my limited scope, I found my editorial limits very inconvenient ; and now that those are removed, I would willingly, out of respect for my readers, have recast my Essay before re- publishing it ; but after due consideration I feared to muddle it, and have thought it best to alter only a few places that needlessly offended, and to amend only where I could do so without impeding the original current of my argument : and I have answered my critics in some notes at the end, re- ferring to those at the foot of the page whereon the controverted matter occurs. The following summary may be of service. SUMMARY THE ARGUMENT OF THE ESSAY The main argument of the Essay is as follows : (a) That the present state of English pronuncia- tion is critical : and that the conversational speech of southern England is fixing a degraded form. That it is probable that for educational SECOND EDITION 5- purposes some form of phonetic spelling will soon be introduced into our primary schools. (c) That these two things taken together consti- tute a serious danger, because there are evident signs that the method of the new Phonetic is to stereotype the degraded conversational forms. The result of that would be a needless and complete artificial break between our modern English and all older literary forms of it : and this no reason- able person can desire. THE OBJECT OF THE ESSAY The object of the Essay was to urge that our phonetic spelling should be more conservative and less conversational than that which our phoneticians actually favour j and to exhibit a system which should demonstrate that it is possible to write all forms of English (from Chaucer to Kipling) phone- tically without disfigurement, and in one scheme, and so that everyone, however he pronounced, would be able to read them all equally well with- out any special knowledge of phonetics ; while, if he studied the system in detail, he might pronounce them all as correctly as any phonetic alphabet that is suitable for common use can indicate. Whereas it is usually held that any form of phonetic writing must be so dissimilar from the literary script as to be illegible without special study of its special symbols, I contend on the other hand that, by choosing the new symbols from A3 6 PREFATORY NOTE among the various forms of the old alphabets, it is possible to construct a phonetic script which can be read by anyone who is acquainted with the ordinary literary scripts of English : and the literary and aesthetic advantages of such a system are pointed out. I assume that a practical system of writing for ordinary use might be founded on such a phonetic ; but I exhibited no scheme for this, and was there- fore suspected of advocating that all books should be printed, and that everyone should write in the full phonetic as shown in my transcriptions, etc. This I am very far from thinking : but I had not gone so far as to work out any scheme, or even to have a decided preference for any one solution. I have, however, now added one or two examples of solutions (see App. H,p. 7y) which may indicate the amount of change which I suppose would be found convenient in common use, and the effect of it to the eye in a cursive writing ; and I have added a note on the subject, which will make my attitude intelligible. DEC. 1912. CONTENTS REPRINT OF ESSAY. Degradation of unaccented vowels p Is there a remedy ? . . . . . 14 Phonetic decay . .... 14 Phonetic spelling . . . . . .16 Scheme for a Literary Phonetic Alphabet . 20 Multiple symbols 22 The Alphabet 24 Its extravagant number of symbols . . .28 Examples 32 APPENDIX. A. Apology to Mr. Daniel Jones . . .37 B. On er 3P C. The Conversational style . . . 4T On er again ff D. ./Esthetic forms 5.9 E. Simplified Spelling and Phonetics . . 63 F. Pronunciation of Latin . . . . 67 G. Elizabethan pronunciation . . .72. H. Illustrations 74 ON THE PRESENT STATE OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION Is English pronunciation at the present time on the road to ruin ? and if so, can anything be done to save it ? The object of this paper is to exhibit and advocate a remedy. As to the preliminary question, whether there is need for such a remedy, the answer is manifest, and I should not have put that question if I were not purposely appealing to many who may never have considered the matter. It is natural that one should be unconcerned so long as one is not alive to the situation : to expose the situation to those who have never considered it, and to awaken their necessary concern I am content to take what I think is the most evident example, that is the degradation of the un- accented vowels ; and will take only the commonest form. DEGRADATION OF UNACCENTED VOWELS A great number of our unaccented vowels, which have been for centuries losing their distinction, are coming now perilously near to being pronounced all alike, i. e. with the sound of the second syllable of the word danger, wherein neither the e nor the r is sounded, but in their place a sort of indeterminate vowel, which may for identification be denoted by a reversed e, thus, a. In Victorian spelling it would be written er. This sound may be long or short. If it is unaccented, as in danger, it is short ; if it is accented it is long, and might be circumflexed, thus : Do not 9, my beloved brethren, 10 ON THE PRESENT STATE OF or it might be -written double, thus : Do not oo, my beloved brethren, and had I been writing a sermon, I might have chosen those words for my text. To show how far this short er is in some unaccented places ousting all the proper vowels, it will suffice to take a book issued by the University Press at Oxford the Phonetic Transcriptions of English Prose, by Daniel Jones and to examine what is there described as the ' Pronuncia- tion used in careful conversation, or in reading aloud in private ', which is ' the pronunciation recommended for the use of foreigners '. On the first three-quarter page of these examples (p. 10 of the book) I find the following pronunciations : N.B. The italicised er in all these spellings is the short er of danger, not the long err of err. 1 MONOSYLLABLES Present pronunciation according As written in English word. to Mr. Jones, expressed in Mr. Jones' Victorian spelling. phonetic. & er 9 of erv ov and mid ond as crs oz from frerm from at eri ot to ter to but bert bot for fer fo must mcrst most than them tSon that iheri Sot the ther So are er o 1 See Appendix B, page 39, etc. ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 11 POLYSYLLABLES 1 Present pronunciation according As written in English word. to Mr. Jones, expressed in Mr. Jones' Victorian spelling. phonetic. suggest sergest safest idea ideer aidia produce prerduce predjurs sublime serblime sa'blaim. terror terrer 'tera common comment 'koman equally equerly 'nkwali pleasure pleaser 'ple$a affection erfecshern a'fekjan arising erising a'raizirj character character 'kaerakta subordinate serbordernate sa'boidamt gradations grerdations gra'deijnz prevalent preverlernt 'prevalent above erbove ebAV supposed serposed sepouzd again ergain 9'gein efforts efferts 'efats The word experience is given thus : iks'piorians, which victorianized to the eye would be something like this : ixpeeerierns. I should not have been surprised if Mr. Roose- velt, when he visited the Clarendon Press the other day, had pointed out to the Delegates that so long as Oxford coun- tenanced the pronouncing of Latin as English, they are bound to uphold a better standard of English pronunciation than this. Certainly the current pronunciations given above fully expose the position of those who defend the English pronunciation of Latin on the theory that every nation should pronounce dead languages according to their native practice . What Latin and 1 The Victorian spellings regard only the erfected syllable. Note again that the er is the short cr of danger. 12 ON THE PRESENT STATE OF Greek will become with us on this principle is its reductio ad absurdum. 1 All the above examples are on one short page of Mr. Jones' book ; the whole text of that page is given on p. 32. Now please observe, most gracious reader, that this is not a dream nor a joke. It shows the actual present condition of things, as formulated by an expert, promulgated by the University of Oxford, and recommended ter foreigners. Foreigners are really being taught that the pronunciation of to (tii), which is hundreds of years old, is now changed to ter (te), and that in our ' careful conversation ' we say ter and inter for to and into. And this is no doubt the common pronunciation in London and a good many counties. Nor is it to be questioned that ter is to illiterate persons a more easily recognized spelling than to : Berkshire villagers use it in their letters. My friend, the late Dr. Gee, going his round of the hospital wards one day, came to the bedside of a newly-admitted patient. After examining him carefully, and finding little the matter with him, he called for the bed-card, and in his deliberate manner prescribed thereon a diet with a placebo to be taken three times a day. The man, frightened by his gravity and silence, feared the worst (he may perhaps have been reading Mr. Stephen Coleridge's letters in the news- papers), and was no sooner left alone than he snatched down the board, and seeing cabalistic signs, and at the foot of them the awful words ter die, and reading them, this learned man, with much the same kind of pronunciation as the Public Orator 2 will use at Oxford, he saw as he thought his death- warrant : so he whipped out of bed, and fled for his life ; to add, no doubt, a new tale to the terrers of the hospital. 1 Here is their ANTONINUS Pros already (Jones, p. 71) sentenaines paios. 2 This is quite impersonal. At the moment of penning the above re- miniscence there was no Public Orator at Oxford. I seized the occasion of a distinguished interregnum. See Appendix B, note on p. 40. ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 13 The only question can be whether Mr. Jones exaggerates the actual prevalence of degradation. Some will acquit him of any exaggeration. Others I know very well will regard him as a half-witted faddist, beneath serious notice, who should be left to perish in his vain imaginings. Any one who thinks this, and believes that his own speech is above reproach, should at once examine it : if he cannot trust his own ear, let him ask a friend to note what sounds he really utters when he talks. I should say that he may congratulate himself if he does not pronounce more than seventy per cent, of his words as Mr. Jones represents them. But, however you may yourself pronounce, if for instance you say pronounce, as I still hope that I sometimes do, and not prernounce, as Mr. Jones would have it, his book should convince you that things are moving, that they are in a pro- cess of actual degradation ; that is that they are steadily getting worse : and in that fact lies the hope of remedy. We are dealing with something that is not irrevocably fixed ; it is shifting. Indeed many of these corrupted vowels are still carefully pronounced in the north of the island. We have only to recognize the superiority of the northern pronunciation and encourage it against London vulgarity, instead of assisting London jargon to overwhelm the older tradition, which is quite as living. If one of the two is to spread at the expense of the other, why not assist the better rather than the worse ? A Londoner will say that a Scotchman talks strangely and ill : the truth is that he himself is in the typical attitude of vulgar ignorance in these matters. He is disposed to look down upon all that he is unaccustomed to, and not knowing the true distinctions he esteems his own degraded custom as correct. I should send foreigners ter Scotland fer their ixpeeerierns. The example that I have given should be absolutely con- vincing. I have taken but one example, may be the com- 14 ON THE PRESENT STATE OF monest of all ; yet there are many other like degradations going on. Nature, for instance, is now always Neycher. Tues- day is generally Cheusdy, and tune will very soon be chiune. And perhaps it is worth observing that I have not chosen my examples for my purpose, but have culled them all from the first few chance lines of a book that is above suspicion. So I am now free to pass on to the main question. Is THERE A REMEDY ? There is one remedy, and one remedy only, and that is that, at least for educational purposes, if for no other, we should spell as we wish to pronounce ; and then our school boards would have the children taught to pronounce words as they are spelt, which is at present impossible. The spelling must of course be fixed at a standard very different from Mr. Jones' ; that is we must fix it as we judge words should be pronounced, and not as we foresee or guess they are coming to be pronounced 1 in the normal process of unimpeded degrada- tion. If we took this step, we should not only prevent further decay, but could actually restore sounds that our phoneticians assume to be irretrievably lost. If, for instance, our recog- nized phonetic spelling spelt pronounce with pro, and affection with a/, then the o and the a would be saved. If left to the phoneticians and the Fates they will soon be gone for ever. PHONETIC DECAY Some persons will not readily believe that such a stealthy natural process as phonetic decay in speech can be stayed by so simple a machinery as correct spelling and primary education can contrive. But this is a doctrinaire notion. 1 A friend tells me that he knows a professor in Germany who is now actively teaching his pupils to pronounce English in the extreme cockney dialect ; because he is convinced that that is the pronunciation of the near future. I can vouch for the truth of this. [Note to 1st ed. I have since received fresh confirmation.] ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 15 The litera scripta has an enormous power ; and compulsory education is a modern engine that is still waiting for its tasks. The reason why our books so little affect our speech is exactly because they are out of relation with it. So long as words are spelt independently of their pronunciation, it is plain that their spelling cannot be appealed to. Indeed the appeal, when it is made, often leads to bogus pronunciations, which are altogether the worst form of mispronunciation ; and this is another danger of our present spelling, and though small in quantity, yet an actual evil of a horrible kind, and not to be disregarded among the arguments for reform. Degradation of speech has no limit but its own actual unintelligibility. Decay is always pushing in, because of the laziness of the speaker, who will take no more trouble than is necessary. Phonetic laws meanwhile only decide the manner of his corruptions. But when his negligence reaches the point where he becomes unintelligible to his hearer, he has to repeat again what he has said ; and the fact that it is more trouble to speak twice than once is what practically fixes the limit of degradation. Only, when a speaker does repeat himself, he will in his repetition probably make some attempt to amend his previous mispronunciation, and there is no knowing what he may then do. Phonetic laws guide him no longer, and his original contributions to the language would be deprecated even by the advocates of natural decay. Tricks and fashions of speech are most infectious, and our language is too precious to be abandoned to the experiments of this kind of free trade. It would seem much simpler to agree beforehand how words should be pronounced, and to make it a part of our primary education to teach that pronunciation. ADVOCACY OF NATURAL DECAY Scientific philologists will often argue that phonetic decay is a natural process, which has always been at work, and has 16 ON THE PRESENT STATE OF actually produced the very forms of speech that we value most highly ; and that it is therefore a squeamish pedantry to quarrel with it at any particular stage, or to wish to inter- fere with it, or even to speak of decay or corruption of lan- guage, for that these very terms beg the question, and are only the particular prejudice of particular persons at a par- ticular time. But this scientific reasoning is aesthetic nonsense. It is absurd to pretend that no results of natural laws should be disapproved of because it is possible to show that they obey the same laws as the processes of which we approve. The filthiest things in nature are as natural as the loveliest : and in art also the worst is as natural as the best : while the good needs not only effort but sympathetic in- telligence to attain and preserve it. It is an aesthetic not a scientific question. It would indeed have been far better to have paid a little conscious attention to it earlier : we enter the field rather late : we can now see plainly that it would have been wiser to have kept much that is irrevocably lost : but that should not teach us to despair of all, but rather to save what can yet be saved. And it is no fancy to see a beauty in human speech, and to prefer one language to another on account of such beauty, and to distinguish the qualities that make the beauty. Learning that forbids such an attitude is contemptible. PHONETIC SPELLING Phonetic spelling is full of horrors, and if it could not be made more agreeable than has hitherto appeared, I would not advocate it, at least I do not think that I could. But there is one argument in favour of adopting at once any- thing rather than nothing which overwhelms me. For, supposing the world to go on existing, it appears to my judgement absolutely certain that, if the English language continues to be spoken, it will come, at least for educa- tional purposes, to be written phonetically : and therefore, since our speech is in a condition of advancing decay, the ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 17 sooner it is phonetized the better. One must remember too that the process of decay is daily removing the pronunciation further and further from the spelling ; so that the utilitarian argument for phonetic writing will get ever stronger and stronger as the years go by. By the time that three-fourths of our unaccented vowels are always pronounced a, even that sign will be unnecessary ; most words will be able to be perfectly written with only the accented vowels and con- sonants. For instance, I suppose accumulate? being pro- nounced erkiumerlert (okiumalat) would be written 'kiunrl't, or perhaps 'qunrH, or even 'qnrl't : and the word having reached this stage would presumably be unable to resist the tendency of our speech to reduce everything to an unpro- nounceable monosyllable. It seems to me a less distressing mouthful than sixths, which Robert Browning went out of his way to introduce into his verse. Indeed one may say qnvl't several times while another is trying to say ' sixths ' ; and if this were the general condition of our words, then obstinate adhesion to the cumbrous Victorian fashion of misrepresenting them by Elizabethan spellings would have no chance. It is difficult to get the living to recognize that their own time is but a passing phase, which, as soon as it is past, has no more significance than any other. Our fond Victorian conventions and fancies will very soon be out of date, and our peculiarities as obsolete as Queen Anne's. The aesthetic objections to phonetic spelling can only be met by showing a good-looking phonetic alphabet : and, though I consider that possible, such an alphabet will need much experiment to adjust it to all the various conveniences and inconveniences of practical use. The practical objections, which are easily raised, are of course serious ; but if phonetic spellers are left to themselves they will get over any diffi- culties in their own detestable manner : and that is a reason for not discouraging the efforts of those who wish to avoid 1 See, again, note to Appendix B, p. 41. 1349 B 18 ON THE PRESENT STATE OF disaster. There is, however, one strange objection to the adoption of even a good phonetic alphabet, which illustrates the situation so strongly that I cannot omit it, the conten- tion namely that the English written language should alto- gether renounce any pretension to conformity with spoken speech, and be content to be a picture-writing, like the Chinese. He was a polyglottal student, and a learned philologist who gave me this opinion, and his reason was that he read English very fast, and did not think that he would be able to read it so fast if it were written in phonetics. It would be annoying, no doubt, to a motorist to have to slow down his machine in order to read the precis of the Sportsman or Daily Mail, as he sped through the towns : but as for students, I do not gather whether my friend thought that it would be impossible to master phonetic spelling as he had mastered all the varieties of the picture- writing, or whether he believed that the coexistence of two entirely different systems would be embarrassing. With the involved literary objections I am, of course, in complete sympathy; but the answer is twofold. First that, willy nilly, the phonetics will come. Secondly, that an aesthetic phonetic would be easily legible ; indeed such a phonetic spelling as I advocate would make even Chaucer compara- tively easy to read, at the same time that it would exhibit his pronunciation. It was, I regret to say, late in my life when I first came to have any perception of these things. I had been brought up, to my great disadvantage, like the rest of us, to pro- nounce Greek and Latin as English ; and by the time that one has got thoroughly hardened to this, it is difficult to open one's eyes. I had, moreover, that strong prejudice against phonetics which ignorance and their horrible de- formation of literature are bound to cause in an artistic mind : but as soon as I began to see, I eagerly amended my ways as well as I could, and making a sort of phonetic writ- ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 19 ing for myself, I quickly came to the opinion that it was possible to write English phonetically on the basis of our old alphabet, both in an aesthetic and legible manner. The in- credulity which this assertion encountered among experts provoked me to justify it by completing and formulating my experiments ; and taking for my basis the best European script, that is the half -uncial of the eighth century, I pro- duced a script that converted many of my friends, and I was persuaded last year to produce a specimen of it in printer's type. Since there is no half -uncial type in existence, it was necessary, if for no other reason, to relinquish the original form of my alphabet (I give, however, one facsimile of it, in the Appendix, described at p. 75), and I chose for my new basis an old Anglo-Saxon fount, which was lying disused at the Clarendon Press. Adopting this alphabet as far as it would carry me, borrowing from other founts, and making a few new letters to match, I got a result which betrays of course its mixed origin ; and the makeshifts give it a very inferior appearance to what it would have if it were all designed for the object in view ; for no matrices have actually been made, nor has the correction and verification of the type been pushed beyond what a very small expenditure allowed : and beside this there are certain difficulties, the best solution of which I do not pretend to have arrived at, and later suggestions and modifications that are not in- corporated ; l as it stands, however, I am willing to offer it as an experiment in a sufficiently advanced stage to be criticized and judged, if due allowance be made ; for the main devices are considered, and give the scheme whatever practical merits it can ever claim. 1 I have done nothing to the alphabet since the first edition of this tract. 20 ON THE PRESENT STATE OF SCHEME FOR A LITERARY PHONETIC ALPHABET Before setting out the alphabet in full, I will give a sen- tence of four words, chosen to exhibit the sort of difficulties that have to be encountered, and the method with which my alphabet is designed to meet them. In the little sentence All mankind are slaves, there are four different vowel-sounds denoted by the same symbol a. I write it as follows, A)\ mankjnt) ar slay^: and this shows my solution of the phonetic ambiguities at present occasioned by our use of the first letter of the alphabet. I will take the as in the order in which they occur in the sentence. A). The diphthong au is pronounced variously in the same words in different European languages. In English it is always broad open o (the long of the short o of hot), as in authority. Also aw, as in awful, has the same sound. My symbol A) covers both, and is used in all words in which au or aw are at present used ; also in all words in which this long o is represented by an a, as all, fall, &c. These words will thus keep their a, though to preserve its length I write it A) ( = au) : thus, >ulmjkry ? Jv/ull, w>uk (walk). The reason will be given under in the full alphabet (p. 25 A), where the equivalent o of forth and glory, &c., will be found. a the a of hat, Har. a the a of father, jttcHer. dUhe sound in they and slave. This symbol is the e of oreyj&ed ligatured with the i of hit, or with the vowel y. This sound is properly written in vein and in they, and ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 21 such correct spellings are not interfered with : but both combinations ei and ey may be ligatured, thus giving four forms of the same symbol. (1) 81, as in vein, vein. (2) a (ei ligatured), as in slavery, slavery. (3) ey, as in they, cHey. (4) Of (ey ligatured), as in day, t)^. [These ligatures a and &f are used to give the appear- ance of a and ay. In many words where we now say ey, the old pronunciation was a true a, so that there is not only the convenience of legibility, but an obliga- tion that the literary spelling should be with some form of that vowel. Thus in my phonetic the words ending in ation would have their penultimate in Chaucer with = zh as in pleasure, j: lesilY". These symbols do not forbid z, sh, and zh, which, if they are received spellings, may stand where they are phonetically correct. Also the rs. K. = trilled r as in rot, *or. V = untrilled r as in are, et or t>a, or even by "&SY), whereas on our present system, where the same symbol means one thing in one word and another in another, there is nothing but confusion, nor any means of knowing from the spelling what pronunciation is intended. The sound of i will give a good example : it is written in some twenty ways in English, and almost all are of uncertain in- terpretation : here is a table of them : ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 23 EXISTENT SPELLINGS OF 1 ic as in indictment compare 2 ie 3 y 4 ye 5 i-e <5 ig ,, 7 igh 8 ighe tie fly dye tile sign sigh Tighe 9 eigh height 10 ui 1 1 ui-e 12 uy '13 ais 14 ey 15 eye 16 i 17 ei U8 is 19 oi 20 ai 21 ay guiding guide buy aisle eying eye kind cheiropodist isle choir Isaiah ay (yes) diction field happy ye granite signature Denbigh pigheaded eight fluid, cuirass juice dais they obeyed windy vein dismal choice gain day 1 Aisle and isle are not quite fair examples, but they were in the phone- tician's book whence I took over the greater part of this table into a paper that I wrote some six or seven years ago. I will here transcribe another paragraph from the same article to enforce my general position. ' From this condition of our alphabet it results that it is of no practical use to us in its interpretative capacity. A traveller who wishes to give the names of places in some country of savages where he may be voyaging, or any word in their vocabulary, has in English no means at his disposal : it is impossible for him to do it : for whatever he may write is open to many various interpretations, as we find every day when we bungle at the Oriental names in our foreign news : nor can we in our own language read any unfamiliar word into sound. Bush-ranger is familiar ; but shift the position of the initial consonants of its components, and what is Rush- banger ? ' One practical objection to phonetic spelling in English is that there is a whole class of words that are only known to the eye. They are common in all forms of literature, but so rarely used in conversation that their pronunciation is practically unknown, and if they were represented phonetically they would many of them be unrecognizable. 24 ON THE PRESENT STATE OF Considering that there are seven new or newly defined symbols in that little sentence, I think that it reads very easily. I have never found any one to stumble at it. I will now give the whole alphabet, starring the letters that have been already described, so that the reader may be reminded where to look for their explanation. THE ALPHABET VOWELS. * a = a of man, man. * a = a of father, Jacker. ^ I = a of slavery, slavery and the ay of day, t>ey. e = e of bed, bet). C = the degraded vowel sound of er in danger, spoken of above. This symbol has therefore plenty to do (the untrilled r allows danger to be written fcan^CY"). I dis- tinguish it from the vowel sound in but. Where this sound C, or a sound practically indistinguishable from it, is very small, almost asyllabic, nor more or hardly more than the vocalization of a liquid, I represent it by a dot, as thus, bar I, aby^'m, Hevn (battle, abysm, heaven). This dot does duty also for the impurity which the vocalization of r casts back on a preceding long vowel, as in the words care, ear, ire, ore, our, your, which appear in my script as caT, EET, T, (TY*, OUT, YCOT ; or if followed by a vowel, cax, ETK,, &c. Some- thing better might be devised ; see under I, in, n, below. I = the vowel of the when the next word begins with a vowel, as in the almighty, Em A)lmiKry. It is of course equivalent with the t of hit, and is made as much like an i as possible, and if doubled it is long, thus ff = the long ee of feel, JTtl. ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 25 The above two symbols are plainly makeshifts to show the identity of our ee with the continental and Latin long i. i I = the short i of hit, Kir. = the English long t of bite, &c. See above, p. 21. = long o of omen, omen. This impure o ( = ou or ow) may be followed by a w, as in bowl, bowl. O = the short o of hot, Kor. or = the long of the last, as in. forth, glory, jbYrK, plenty. : A) = the same sound as the last (as in authority ; see p. 20). A = the short of the last, and therefore equivalent with the short o of hot. The need for this extra symbol is that there are a good many words now written with a, where the a is pronounced 6. This is due to a pre- ceding u sound, either in w or qu, as want, squalor. To write these words with o makes confusion (e. g. wander, wonder ; want, wont), and as the a is naturally changed in sound by its position, there is only a warn- ing needed that it is so changed : and this A being part of the broad o sound >U ? it is a consistent and suggestive symbol. It is therefore the vowel of want, quantity, wander, &c., W>mr, Cpnduy, \VMTVOer. U = short u of full, fu\. 00 = long u of fool, Jool. It is a doubled u, made like a doubled o, or omega. U =the impure u of universe, ItmveVS. It is equivalent with yco (you) and with the ligature ttD (q.v.). V = the impure vowel of but, DVU, really a degraded a made by an inverted a simulating u, which might be recovered in some words. V = same as short i, as in happy. These final ys are of indeterminate length, and somewhat uncertain pro- nunciation. It is much more correct to keep the old y than to identify them all (as all modern phonetics do) with the short t of hit. 26 ON THE PRESENT STATE OF V is also used as a consonant as at present. It is often impossible to decide which it should be called ; experts do not agree. CONSONANTS. to These are all unchanged : except that q is ligatured with its complement u. V The following letters, c, f, g, h, j, k, 1, m, n, w, x, y, z, are also unchanged, but need some remarks. C hard, as in fact, Jacr. 9 ' soft c '=s, as in facing, Ja^tr^. J rather than write ov for of, I have used another f, viz. [r] (=v), from the Anglo-Saxon fount, thus O|T. (This is a needless luxury ; I prefer ov.) Q hard, as in begin, begin. 5 ' soft ', as in gin, 5111. J This being the same sound as the last (5) is de trop. Words with this dzh sound make queer-looking objects in common phonetics. Ellis, for instance, writes gentle dzhen'tl, and justice, Dzhust'is (Elizabethan). I think it useful to have the two symbols 5 and J, and would leave their use to be determined by practice. The word judge might still be written JV>5- H same as at present. I keep it in words like night, n^Kr ? because it is useful to distinguish homophonous words as bight and bite, right and rite, &c., and if its presence led to its being recognized in pronunciation that would be a gain. In which it is ligatured, and occurs in other ligatures. See below, p. 28. K same as c. Though a duplicate and theoretically use- less, it is very grateful in such words as king and kind. ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 27 Moreover, I would retain it as a mute initial before n ; it cannot be accused of any offence and distinguishes several homophones. It is also useful to strengthen c in stressed ultimates or monosyllables, as back. I \ These liquids are unchanged, except that n has another TO- (form rjj, = the ng in the ing of present participles, &c., tt thus having, Kavtr^ ; also I, m, n must be recognized t*J ' as semivowels, and capable of making a syllable after another consonant, as in battle, abysm, heaven ; bar'l aby^'rrij KEVH. At the present stage of my type this is indicated by a preceding dot. K- j = the trilled r of rot. n = the untrilled r of are. S\ = the true 8 of sin. $ I = z as in his. S = sh as in sugar. j' = zh, as in azure. W unaltered. [It is used in ligature, (1) as a con- sonant in its w-form with h, and (2) with a preceding vowel to make a diphthong, when it has the form of a doubled u. See the ligatures.] X = ecs of extreme, X = egs of example, ^ unaltered, but has an equivalent symbol in , which is used where s is now written but pronounced z. LIGATURES. ttl) - U, made of I ligatured with doubled u. This symbol is intended to preserve the spelling of words like dew and few, t)m>, JUU '. and I should use it in beautiful, bouufttl. CW = ow of cow, and the cm of round, made of a ligatured with u, so as to resemble the old ou spelling, the sound being truly an au diphthong, thus, COU, 28 ON THE PRESENT STATE OF cy = the diphthong variously sounded in boy, noise, &c., bey, ncy<5. Tt used where t is palatized, as in words ending in ation, usually represented by phoneticians as sh : the sound of the i should be heard ; shn is to be deprecated. This termination in various forms is very common, and is best represented by a symbol which preserves its accidence, and may guard it from threatened extinc- tion. Thus, nation will be naUtVa, and I should write gK^tvs, aver&vn. rK = the unvoiced ih of thin, rniTl. cK = the voiced th of this, CttlS. ck = ch of chin, cHin. <^k j = ' soft ' ch in machine, ma^kttn. skj = sh of shin, ^Htn. wk =the initial sound of why, which, &c. There is a difference of opinion as to the analysis of this sound, and the words are pronounced differently by different speakers. The old spelling is quite reasonable, and is retained. ON THE EXTRAVAGANT NUMBER OF SYMBOLS IN THIS ALPHABET As there are 58 symbols in the above table, exclusive of capitals which are a terrible complication in any phonetic type 1 my alphabet will be rejected at once by the guardians of the ' lower case ', as clumsy and impracticable : but, though the objection is not altogether to be obviated, it can be reduced to moderate dimensions, as I hope to show : and yet in making that defence I would not be thought to be advocating all the details of my system ; I do, however, 1 It is my opinion that capitals may be disregarded. As they are chiefly ornamental, they might retain antique forms, and be interpreted by the reader's knowledge. ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 29 wish it to appear that something on the lines of my experi- ment is practicable. First of all, counting A), a and ^, Cpl and tt as ligatures, there are 15 ligatures. Now in old founts, when the ap- pearance of the text was more consulted than the con- venience of the type-setter, there are often from 15 to 20 ligatures, which had no phonetic significance. Those who have studied the art of printing have concluded that it is impossible to compete with old printing unless a fair number of ligatures be admitted : and, as my experiment respects artistic excellence, the champions of the lower case must not pretend that it has 26 letters to my 58. It has, or should have 40 to 46 against 58 ; and that is a very different ratio. Deducting my 15 ligatures from the total 58, 1 am left with 43 symbols against 26. Now, among these there are 10 pairs of duplicates, viz. : 5=j 9 = 5 = <&, 1 = 1 C = k or = A) O = A $ = Z U = ou = zh so that of the total 43, 10 are literary conveniences, resulting from the principle of maintaining the existing spelling as far as possible : and if for economy's sake one form of each of these pah's were excluded the ligature-forms being pre- ferentially retained then my 43 would be reduced to 33, and, if that number be compared with 26, I shall not be accused of any extravagance except as regards these duplicates. If then the ligatures be allowed, the question is merely this : are the spellings in the fourth column of the following table so preferable to those in the third column as to justify the use of the duplicate letters ? The table can give no in- dication of the number of words affected. This must be guessed at from the sample passages printed later. 30 ON THE PRESENT STATE OF English word. gentle In Jones' script. 'dsentl My script without duplicates. jenrl Same with duplicates. jug decay di'kei 5*3. t>ikei trccey wander 'wonda wonter \\Mnt)e news njuz faces 'feisiz king kiij class kla:s pleasure 'plesa sugar 'Juga lawyer lorjo glory 'glo:ri kin, clas glor)ty nhz felsiz cin^ klas ple^Kur sKuger layer gLinty My preference for the spellings in the fourth column is due not only to their legibility, but to the literary fitness which is the cause of their legibility : and this is a main feature of my scheme. And it is, I hold, a great advantage to have an alphabet which retains historical spellings as much as possible, and which shows a modification of sound by a modified symbol, rather than by an altogether different one. For instance, the word salvation is thus printed hi all our common texts of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Shelley ; and I can write it approximately in the three phonetic values corresponding to those three periods without disfigurement, thus salvo^icon, salvactun, salvartvn, or the U, j know of: svbljm wTiufk i^ nor svm moftificacipn op pour. clnt> ckis bitanclt *Je, a nactutaly a^ cm vcker coo bfcania of pouu, ar fersc vou, sam^ o]: die clas oy: uie^ int)ifettenc ww^ wliufk mey acpaly bilor^ ru pein or cu ple^ur. Bvc in rttaliry, cKi ajfecccvn a^tnj Jttom die it)ta or vasr pau-)t i^ exntamly Rimoc Jitom ckar nouot'l caitacrer. For Jersr, wi mvsu itt- member dtac ckt pta oy: pein, in ks KjKesu t>tg, t^ mWk sotor^ger ckan eke K^Kesc t>tg>ta op ple^ur ; ant) diar ic mt^erv^ eke sam suprfciofciry >ul die svbonrt)inac gK,at)az:LW. Fx)m ken^ ir diar wkar eke Ananqzp fan ncfi'l t>rg)to^ op OR, enjcymenr ax, in eny sonru Hcprl, dit pta op mvsr >ulwey^ bi ptsvalenr, ere. The following transcriptions from Chaucer and Shake- speare will reveal that my alphabet was not adjusted for the purpose, and might easily be improved for general use. Nor have I pretended to judge any of the vexed questions of Elizabethan pronunciation : I wish only to show the kind of thing that might be done if there were agreement ; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that experts may come to agree about the main sounds, and be content to give to the others their more modern interpretations. One of their present contentions (which I yield to in my transcription), that the r was always trilled, appears to me certainly wrong. III. From Chaucer. Wkan ^ef utus ek wick ki^ sware b*edl Insptntet) kaun in eve*y kolr ant) keck 1349 34 ON THE PRESENT STATE OF Oie uentte otope^ ant) die yuruje sunne HarK in die itam kis kalje cats iitunne, Qnt) smale Jooles maken melot)ae, Ukar slapen al eke naHr wick open ae Sor pxickerK kem naribt' in Ukan lor^gen Jblk re gem on Qnt> palmeK fax, ro saken Ue jferne kalwe^ koodt' in sunfcity QnT) spe9ialy J)tom sveity ^krote^ e Oj: Er^gelont) ro Caunreitbjty diey went^e, Uke koiy blisjiil ma)try)t Jot ro sake Ukar ksm kaun kolpen, \^kan ckac dtsy we*,' sake. IV. From Shakespeare. a ant) >ul eke men ant) wimsn mrotly players: rTkey kav ckeut exirs ant) dteiit enntyunge^; clnt) en man in kis rim plays many paitrs, ir i * tl i^\ i His acrs batr^ sev n 0565. etc Jeitsr dit tnjxmr, Mulin^ ant) piikin^ in die niutses aitms. Uken die wkjnin^ skoolbey, widi kis sau^kel, 3/nt) slijninj moR,nin^ Ja^, crtttpin^ Ijk snail Qnwilir^ly ru scool. 3,nt) dien die luveit, Sjkir^ Ijk Jiutnas, widi a wojul balat) Mat) ru kis misotes ^b)tau. Uken a soubieit, Ful op sntain5 euks, ant) beR,t)et) l[k die paitt), Jelus in onuit, sut)ain ant) cfiick in cpiaitel, Sakinj die bubl )tepiira9iun Etvn in die canuns moturK. Consideration of the matters discussed in this paper would, I believe, lead to an overwhelmingly strong feeling in favour ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 35 of some action to secure our speech from further deteriora- tion : and there can be no doubt that if any definite move were made, it would lead to the recovery or restoration of a good deal that in Mr. Jones' book appears to be absolutely lost. 1 It is not yet lost ; it exists alive and undamaged amongst us. Whether there would be any agreement that a phonetic script is the only remedy and security is doubtful ; but the prejudice that the proposal of phonetic spelling always raised twenty years ago is now wonderfully subdued, owing, I suppose, to so many people understanding the situation ; and it is certain that a good phonetic script, if there was one, would be used at once by a good many authors. If such a script be not made, Mr. Jones', or something like his, will soon be in our board-schools. In any case such a pronunciation as Mr. Jones exhibits should be repudiated with all the authority that can be marshalled against it. The great assistance which I looked to come from the reform of Latin pronunciation in our public schools has been sadly lessened by the attitude of the masters, who have in many cases (at least so I am told) taken up the matter so half- heartedly, if not unwillingly, as to render the reform almost nugatory. I wish that I may convert some of them to a different view. If they could be brought to see what they themselves lost by wrong education, they would, I am sure, shrink from the responsibility of inflicting the same dis- tasteful damage on the succeeding troops of youngsters who come to them for the best instruction. There can be little doubt that to teach a careful pronunciation of the un- accented vowels in Latin would lead boys towards doing the same in English, or at least enable them to do it, and to know what was intended when it was recommended to them. But the old habit is so fixed in the teachers that it is 1 I am glad to say that Mr. Jones, at least to some extent, agrees with me as to the possibility and desirability of recovering some of the more literary pronunciations. See Appendix, p. 37. 36 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION difficult to move them. Even those who have gone willingly to work have not wholly understood the matter. I would recommend to them the exhortation of St. James they give the consonants and accented vowels their proper values, but neglect the unaccented vowels. Where they used to say redgwety they now say not regeret, but reg^ret : the er will invade even their accented syllables, and some who get the word die right, will pronounce ter like the hospital patient. FROM APPENDIX A I OWE an apology, or at least an apologetic ex- planation, to Mr. Daniel Jones, who complained that I misrepresented his teaching. I am sorry to have caused this impression, but I was as much sur- prised, because I quoted him as an unimpeachable authority j and I needed such authority badly ; for that English is actually spoken as he represents it, would not have been believed by my readers on my own assertion. I agree with him entirely in this matter, and consider his transcriptions as abso- lutely faithful. But I was writing mainly for those who would not agree with us, nor believe him j and in my appeal to them I took advantage of their prejudices in so far as I could sympathise with them : and this attitude, no doubt exaggerated, and my quarrel with him that I held him some- what guilty of teaching this conversational style as < correct ' and without seeking to improve it, led him to misinterpret me. I am glad to find that in this latter particular I was mistaken. I ought to have pointed out that in his book he distinguishes three styles of pronunciation and teaches them separately (see App. C), and also that I wholly ap- preciate the logical difficulty of a teacher in his position. If you have to teach foreigners to speak 3 8 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION English as the English speak it, then, if the English speak indistinctly, you must teach foreigners to practise indistinctness of speech. Everyone who has tried to teach a Frenchman to talk English must have made this shocking discovery for himself. I have carefully amended the passages that Mr. Daniel Jones thought likely to mislead the reader as to his teaching : and, though my opinion can be of little service to him, I wish for my own credit to say that I consider him such a trustworthy expert that I should be ashamed to appear to disagree with him. I am also glad to be able to state that he concurs with me in my opinion that some of the decaying sounds may be saved, and in my wish that they should be restored : so that there is really no disagreement whatever between us. I recom- mend his book most heartily to all who are inter- ested in this question of English pronunciation : for there the truth can be seen set out very plainly : and if anyone would buy a copy of it, and compare his own way of talking with the transcriptions, he would be in a position to consider my contention that it is desirable to cultivate a better style. For an optimistic historical account of the Eng- lish Language all learners should go to Dr. Henry Bradley's book 'The Making of English' (Mac- millan) . 39 APPENDIX B On er. I WAS accused of having confounded the short unstressed vowel of the second syllable of danger with the long sound in bird. What then is the distinction that I made between them ? I said that one is unaccented and short, and that the other is accented and long : and I contend that this is the true differentiation. I will examine this point by the example of the word sir. There is an amusing passage in Max Miiller's < Science of Language ' l in which he supposes a rediscovery of the English language at some future time among the descendants of the American slaves returned to West Africa. I cannot fathom his hypothesis, but he writes thus : * A missionary might surprise the scholars of Europe by an account of that new African language. He might describe it at first as very imperfect as a language^ for instance so poor that the same word had to be used to express the most heterogeneous ideas. He might point out how the same sound, without any change of accent, meant true, a ceremony, a workman, and was used also as a verb in the sense of literary composition. All these 1 , be might say, are expressed in that strange 1 Vol. I, lect. 6. 2 Max Miiller omits one of the most inconvenient ambigui- 40 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION dialect by the sound rait (right, rite, wright, write) * * * * He might then mention an even more extra- ordinary feature, namely, that although this language had no terminations for the masculine and feminine genders of nouns, it employed a masculine and feminine termination after the affirmative particle, according as it was addressed, to a lady or a gentleman. Their affirmative particle being yes, they added a final r to it if addressed to a man, and a final m if addressed to a lady : that is to say, instead of simply saying yes, these descendants of the American slaves said yesr to a man and yesm to a woman? It cannot perhaps be determined exactly in what manner Max Miiller supposed this suffix r to be pronounced : but if it were pronounced as a south- countryman would read it, then this r of yesr (which he also prints yes>r) is the shortest form of the in- determinate vowel 9 or er. And the next shortest form which one can indicate would be a pronuncia- tion which we could write as yesser. Next it is possible to say yesser with the accent equally dis- tributed upon the two syllables, and this might be written yes-sir, the sir still remaining short. 1 But ties, that of using right for dexter, to distinguish one side of the body from the other, viz. from the left, which is also unfortunately another homophone. It is this that makes the sailor's fort and starboard, and the stable-boy's near and off so convenient. 1 The er in this yes-sir might be taken for the value of the ter in my story of Dr. Gee: but my interpolated thrust at the English pronunciation of Latin was objected to on the ground APPENDIX B 41 now suppose that you are addressing a deaf gentle- man who has dropped his copy of the Proceedings that my hypothetical Public Orator would have pronounced the Latin ter long, like the err in c Do not 5, my beloved brethren '. I admit that he would have done so, whereas the hospital patient might have said ta die. Again it was objected that the word die would have been pronounced differently by them. I also grant the Orator this distinction. But my story was true, and, as an illustration of the illiterate spelling of to, quite apposite. So far as the pronunciation of Latin is concerned it may be supple- mented by the following, which is told of the Cowley Fathers. This tale is of a young high-bred novice, who having fled from the luxuries of the world was spending his first night on the straw mattress in his allotted cell. Being awaked at cockcrow by a knock at the door, and a mild voice crying Dominus tecum, he replied, e Thank you, thank you ! will you kindly set it down outside.' With the advent of the classical pronunciation the scene should be transferred to Yorkshire. These stories are jocular ; and I regret the need of having to explain that my Delergertt and Derdederdy were intended for jokes. I have erased them, since they have given almost more annoyance than I intended. I reluctantly confess to knowing that Delegates is really pronounced Dellygits and that there is a refined form Dellygets. But c qnrl-t ' is a defensible exaggera- tion. I purposely avoided considering the short / invasion (seen in Ascended^ p. 47). This, since it is the shortest of sounds, is safe against er : c accumulate ' would have a terminal if. But that does not forbid my c qm-l-t ', since it would be understood that all final unaccented T's were vocalized with short /. Hints for the crushing of polysyllables may, I am told, be gleaned from the practice of the guards on the Metropolitan Tube Railway. Subterranean travellers report the following : Sbongro^ Siuorra, Torrmcrrd, as representing Westbourne Grove, Bayswater, and Tottenham Court Road. I am also informed that there is a porter at Wolvercote who can speak the name of his station as a monosyllable. 42 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION of the English Association in the road, and that you have picked it up, and wish to call his atten- tion that you may restore it to him j and you call out Sir I Sir U Sir ///, increasing the force of your call as you see him moving further and further away. These Sirs are all long accented errs, passing from the less to the most accented, and they might be represented thus, Sirr! Sirrr! Sirrrrl We have now gone through a series of er sounds unbrokenly gradated from the very lightest to the heaviest j and I can find no point at which the vowel suddenly changes in quality : indeed of all the vowels which are held to have a long and a short form there is none in which I detect less qualitative tone-change than in this indeterminate vowel indicated by the topsy-turvy e. If the above account of these sounds is correct, then I made sufficient distinction by differentiating the extremes j and I even indicated by the Greek circumflex accent that in the long err there was, or might be, a wavering of the voice pitch, which almost makes a disyllabic of a monosyllable. In this edition I have inserted a special explanation, and altered the printing, so that there shall be no room for mistake. I did not see that confusion was possible, indeed in the polysyllables (p. n) it is impossible, because all those words are accented on another syllable. But among the monosyllables (p. i o) are words that are sometimes accented. From, for instance, is strongly accented when followed by APPENDIX B 43 an enclitic; but then it always has its O pro- nounced : in such a sentence as And keep the DeVil fr6m us there is no question of er\ every phonetician would write the word with an O. What I object to is that people say, as Mr. Jones also asserts, I came frerm Oxford ter L6ndon, whereas they should be taught to say I came from (3xford tu Ldndon, and teachers will agree that the difficulty of teach- ing them to do this is that, while the average man says ter easily and unconsciously, he will say tu awkwardly and consciously, and the former con- dition is preferable to the latter. But the awkward selfconscious pronunciation of tu only comes from a want of facility in articulation ; it is a clumsiness or sluggishness of the lips, due to imperfect train- ing and carelessness, to a want, that is, which the teacher has to supply : it is his affair to teach c arti- culation ', to educate the lips and tongue, and not to encourage slovenly habits. If children were taught from the first to differentiate the unaccented vowels correctly, they would do that as uncon- sciously as they now slur them. In French schools this is done : and that is the reason why their adults pronounce so well. A Shakespearian enthusiast, a professor of English Literature, and a scholar of the highest attainments and ability, said to me apropos of my essay, < How 44 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION can you think that these unaccented vowels can be observed or restored ? It is impossible, (so he said, and he intended, I think, to be speaking of the stage,) It is impossible to say Tu-bt or not tu-be^ you must say Ter-be or not ter-be? This he said, suppos- ing the example to be irrefutable. < But what does your assertion mean ? (I replied to him). Actually this, that it is impossible to pronounce such an un- accented vowel as the tu in to-be without accenting it. That is, that it is impossible to put your lips into the position for saying #, without accenting and lengthening the //.' ' Now that no one will take the trouble to do so is the actual dangerous con- dition of our slipshod speech. This is what I was protesting against : and there is considerable diffi- culty in formulating one's exhortations when one half of one's audience will not believe that any educated person says ter for to, while the other half will not believe that it is possible to say anything but ter. Those who think that they say tu (or to!) are very much annoyed when the truth is plainly stated, and exposed by a spelling that they can read ; but so long as it is disguised by symbols that are vague to them, and elude their comprehension, 1 This is, of course, sheer nonsense. It asserts that no Englishman can pronounce any foreign language. It really means only this but all this that it is so unusual to pronounce to in any way but ter that, if you should say tu it would not sound right. Can anyone deny that this condition of things calls for attention and reform ? APPENDIX B 45- they do not resent it so much. My friend was, I think, convinced by my answer to him, and saw (at least I think he heard) that it is as possible as it is right to say tu be and not ter be : and it is almost as easy. This c almost ' denotes the little trouble which seems impossible. This discussion raises the question whether I have not confounded two other things, viz. the conver- sational and the literary pronunciations. I will now explain myself on that head. APPENDIX C THE CONVERSATIONAL STYLE MR. DANIEL JONES in his < Transcriptions ' recog- nises three forms or styles of pronunciation, which he thus distinguishes. (A) That used in reciting or reading in public. (B) That used in careful con- versation or reading aloud in private. (C) That used in rapid conversation. I approve of his dis- tinctions ; but in taking my example from the second or middle style in his book, I thought to avoid the complications to which the three distinc- tions gave rise. This was, no doubt, a rough and ready method, and I will now say enough to clear up any uncertainty as to what I intended. 4* ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION I recognise, of course, that there are, and always have been, two main standards of pronunciation, one the literary, the other the conversational : and it is my belief that our present conversational style is not worse than it has been at some other times. I do not know whether I am right, but I am accus- tomed to think that conversational English must have been very badly degraded, perhaps even worse than now, at the time of the Commonwealth, the degradation having begun in Elizabeth's reign, and that it actually invaded literature. Then at the Restoration I suppose there was a conscious amendment and recovery. My chief motive in writing my essay was to arouse some such conscious reform at the present time ; and it may be that my activity is only a sign that such a conscious reform is actually taking place. A friend told me to-day that he remembered learning out of a book which gave Engine and Indian ' [In^vn] in its list of homo- phones : and I do not think that this would be allowed now. Still my protest against the conver- sational style becoming established as 'correct' by the phoneticians, is against a new kind of danger pecu- liar to our day. To indicate the sort of thing that I protest against I will take a very mild and harm- less example. The original termination of a large group of our past participles is ed$ but we almost always 1 ' An Injerrubber idiot on the spree.' Kipling. Why not ijtut ? APPENDIX C 47 pronounce this ed as id: and this id has, I should suppose, probably been the conversational if not the most generally received pronunciation in unbroken use from Chaucer's time, Wyclif and Purvey both write id; and yet we still always sing ed> and if a clergy- man reciting the creed were to say very distinctly 4 Ascendid into heaven ' he would be thought rather cocknified, or at least to have a vulgar way of speaking Now I should protest against id being adopted into our literary spelling : there is no fear of our people saying ed too much, and to print id would destroy the existence of ed which is appar- ently still in the same condition as it was five or six hundred years ago. I wish it to remain as it was and is. The reason why id is said for ed is that it is a slighter sound : it is on account of its lightness that this short i creeps into so many ter- minals (Delligits) and other unaccented syllables : and it is for this invasive quality that it has to be consciously resisted. It is a great advantage to have ed as the recognised correct termination, not only for singing but for all the purposes of Mr. Jones' style A. My attitude towards this example will show suf- ficiently what I mean in most other cases : and my contention here will probably be approved by most readers. I will now give a more important and difficult example. The suffix -ation, which used to be pronounced as three syllables with a long vowel in the last, has 48 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION been most conveniently shortened by use, the t having become palatized, so that our phoneticians justly enough represent it as -shdn or -sh-n. I would contend (see p. 28) that this termination should still be written with an z, and taught to be pro- nounced so that the / is still heard. I admit that strictly this may be called unscientific, and that it will appear quixotic. I must therefore explain myself? First why is it unscientific ? Roughly speaking one may say that it was the change of the t into sh which got rid of the / : therefore it is unscientific and absurd to propose to pronounce both the sh and the i. 1 I would point out that this question of how -ation should be spelt does not affect any scheme of ' simplified spelling ' : for I find that the more sensible advocates of simplified spelling agree with me that this termination should continue to be spelt as at present, and have its pronunciation explained in the grammars, on the principle given at p. 6-$. I am arguing in the text that the old spelling should to some extent (as given in my script) be retained also in any full phonetic script made for educational purposes. I do not suppose that the pronunciation which I urge in the text would have any chance of being accepted by the phoneticians, because, as I say elsewhere, they take the maximum of degeneration for their general rule : and though they have lately come to admit that there is a good deal to be said for the other more conservative method, yet I doubt if they would yield on this particular point. I do not the less feel it my duty to defend this outpost ; and I wish to show the probable effect of desert- ing it. And I consider my position as logical and irrefutable unless the premisses can be overthrown. APPENDIX C 49 This is the objection that I have to meet : but first I would point out that I do not propose to retain or introduce a full /, but merely a just audi- ble glide, which, though it is a delicacy of speech, offers no difficulty l : and also that it is not essential to my scheme that the glide should be heard equally in all words. What then are my reasons ? Suppose it be agreed that we do not object to the present pronunciation of nation (neysh-n), and that this word cannot be altered, let us look to what this particular kind of contraction is introducing. The common ex- pression Dori*t you is in the same condition as ~ation y and most people say don-tsheu or doncherv ; and thus we have neycher for nature^ Cheusdy and Choosdy for Tuesday, while chiune for tune is a good example of the wedge caught in the act of inserting its thin end. There is no exact place where this process has arrived, or at which it can be said to have stayed : it is still active, and some words are still in the uncertain condition half way between two different pronunciations. For instance in the Ox- ford Dictionary the word pressure has two alternative pronunciations given for it, namely presshiur and 1 The word prescience is an example of the sound which wil 1 be familiar to everyone. The pronunciation of it given in the Oxford Dictionary is preeshience. This last spelling, and others that follow in the text, are sufficient translations into common spelling of the phonetic given in the dictionary, which the reader could not interpret without the key. yo ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION pressher. The word creature is in the same shifting form, and has its two pronunciations recognised in the dictionary, viz. creetiur and creetsher ( - creacher). Again the word issue (like pressure] confirms my contention that sh does not practically forbid z\ for issue is given in two forms of speech, viz. isshiu and issiu. 1 It is plain from these examples that my de- scription of the present activity of the degradation is true, and it appears to me that, unless some con- scious check is applied, pressher and creacher will drive out presshiur and creetiur : and it is a FACT that our phoneticians already assume that prevalence. If this be allowed to go on, we shall soon arrive at vul- garisms that we now think incredible. But pro- nunciations which we now speak would have simi- larly sounded vulgar to our forefathers. In such a sentence as Ton would not let your own children do that, many educated people already say letchyerown : and wherever the interjectionaljofc/bzon? follows an accented t or d we may expect pala tiding : thus It's getting late you know, will be leytcherno^ and bad you know will be badjerno. I should say that the com- mon Til let you know already wavers between letch uno and letcherno? 1 These words prescience, pressure, creature and issue are four test words that I took by chance. I looked up no others than these, so that if the dictionary be consistent it should abound with examples. Fashion is given as fash-n. 2 I do not see that it is ridiculous or extreme to suppose that the vulgar Til beatcker may become ' correct ' for c I'll beat you/. If I argue that on the analogy of to \tu\ becoming ter then you [yu] APPENDIX C yi A professor of English talking to me the other day in St. John's Garden said audjins or orgins for audience j and when I immediately made a pencil note of it, he wondered what I was doing, and when I told him, he denied that he could possibly have said it. And it follows that if our English is to govern our pronunciation of Latin, then Tityre tu patula promises to pass very quickly from the present scholar's Tittsry tiu patiulee to Tittary chew patchouli ! Again, allied to this, all words ending in sia are degrading through shyer to sher. For instance Asia and Persia are always spoken Eysher and Persher^ and though these are examples of words which demand the observance of the / glide, I shall dis- miss them here, because I have another kind of objection to make to them. Now my contention is that we must stop this process of palatizing degradation somewhere : it might eventually discredit itself, and consciously will become yer, the only objection is that you will be saved by its length. But it is not long in such a position. Moreover your is much longer, and is fully pronounced as if circumflexed (your), which you never is j and yet the example in the text shows that your has given way. What with teacher and feacber (feature), and creecher (creature) and beatcher the Superman will have more rimes to Nietzsche than he will really want. 72 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION pull up ; but that would not be until it had attracted general observation, and become jocularly exagge- rated in slang-talk. Why not then observe it and arrest it at a more decent stage ? why not actually renounce some of its latest indecencies ? Certainly we can still recognise that it is better to say actually than aksbuerly or akshuly, which last is perhaps already the commonest form Teusday (sic) than Choosdy (which is most prevalent \Natiur than Nacher, Christian than Chrischin^ and righteous (raiteus) than raichus : and if one is to make any attempt to rescue such half-lost words, it seems to me that the simplest and most practical plan is to preserve and recognise, however slightly, the / in all these -ation words : and although it may sometimes be a fiction, yet always to write it; even though in words like nation there is no professed intention to alter the present pronunciation. In most of the -ation words the glide may well be used : then there are words like Christian which may be wholly saved, and thirdly words which might be amended, of which I would give mission as an example. And unless it be possible to draw a line to distinguish words which may be regarded as 4 lost ' from those which may yet be saved, the only plan is to write them all alike on the better model (as I should write ed for id), and hope that by doing this we should at least check the further advance of the corruption. The chief difficulty lies in the prejudice which everyone feels so strongly against that which is unaccustomed, and consequently appears affected in speech ; and the superiority which learned and well-educated people assume when they patronise vulgar notions. Our slipshod speech has accustomed us to prefer the conversational forms as we hear and speak them every day : only a conscious effort can detach us from this, and that is resisted as a pedantry by those who should know better. And it must be granted that we cannot now arrive at speaking well unconsciously without passing through a selfconscious and therefore somewhat awkward or affected stage. We should be sacri- ficing ourselves somewhat for the benefit of our children : but if everyone who is sufficiently in- structed to consider himself the steward of a price- less inheritance would do his best, he might do something, and console himself with the selfsatis- factions of altruism. My phonetic way of writing ation on p. 30, viz. auw or a9ivn, was not therefore intended to do more than indicate the peculiarity of the sound, leaving the actual pronunciation of it open to competition. I have indicated the evil that has to be guarded against, and suggested my remedy. A better remedy would of course be better : but the essential thing is that it should plainly expose and call attention to the phonetic conditions. My friend Dr. Menardos, our reader in Byzan- r4 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION tine Greek, was lecturing the other day on and he naturally wished to pronounce his name properly, and nothing could have come easier to him : but he had another natural wish, and that was to do at Oxford as the Oxford men do, namely to say Phoshyus or Phosbus, which he managed pretty well. Now what was the use of this inconvenient ugliness ? I now return to Ana and Persia, and wish to say something for them versus Eysher and Persher. The question of the loss of the i is much the same here as in the -ation examples, but they are also pure examples of the er invasion : and on p. 3 2 I stated in a note that I wished and hoped that the a in idea might be pronounced as a Latin A, and not as ei (3), and I gave Auguster and Ameriker as parallel cases. Now keeping the I in Asia and Persia will go hand in hand with restoring the A, which last is aesthetically necessary, and a very good and simple example of cultivated articulation. Why should we degrade all the beautiful names which we have taken over, or even coined in imitation of beautiful speech? names like Arabia, India, Siberia, Mon- golia^ Russia, Australia, fyumania, Bulgaria, Algeria, Nubia, California, Georgia, Tasmania and many more ? And with them other final A's must be observed, China, Java, Africa, Canada, Alaska, Florida, Sumatra, etc. etc. And is it not really rather funny that we should take pleasure in choosing well-sounding APPENDIX C ff names for our children, like Julia or Ce/ta, and be punctilious about their spelling, and yet speak them Julyer and Seelyer like the nursery-maids in c Punch ': and while the house resounds with the vulgarised appellations, resent the slightest insinuation that there is anything wrong : as if the child's name was not the sound by which it was called but the way in which it should be written on envelopes. In some kinds of literature it is not uncommon to distinguish the talk of uneducated people by phonetic spellings even where these have no signifi- cance. Thus if an illiterate man is speaking he may be represented as saying hi^ and i% while if a c gent ' speaks it will be with his and //, though both speakers would pronounce these words in the same way. Julia is in the same box with his, and this queer flattery to the pride of < superior education ' neatly reveals the whole vanity of it. Thus the beautiful name Bel-amy is degraded by us to Bellermy^ and we discard the lovely Himd-la-ya to say Himmerleyer \ I think that my critic who said that I had er on the brain may be right, for I seem to find it every- where. Of course in any language there must be one termination which is commoner than others, and if er were a beautiful sound one might rejoice at its frequency, or even seek to extend it ; but it is not only too common, but also slipshoddy, and is ousting better sounds. I once wrote 34 en in 14 lines of verse, which contained 200 syllables, y5 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION and that is perhaps a record : I did not see how to avoid them except at the sacrifice of the direct speech which was essential to the force of the passage. This er is a frequent termination of many of our commonest nouns, father, mother, brother, sister, summer, winter, river, finger, manner, gender, fever, anger, paper, etc. etc. (which we call etcetterer). The pronoun her, and the prepositions over and under are omnipresent, as are neither, either, other, another, together, and many common adjectives, as clever, tender. Then it is the inflection of all adjectives in the comparative degree, as larger, smaller, better -, and of all agents, as butcher, baker, and candlestick maker-, and here it has a field of unlimited extent, since there is no verb to which it cannot be at- tached to make a noun denoting the agent. In this last department it is recognised by commonsense as a foolish thing, and has therefore been deliberately adopted into slang in order to render speech comic -, and mock roots are extracted from ordinary words and phrases, and made to take the inevitable *ras suffix. Thus with undergraduates Football is Footer, Rugby Football is Rugger, Asso- ciation football is Socker : a Magazine is a Magger : and though this fashion recently had the vogue of novelty, yet any list of these slang terms would contain many old ones among the new, as will be seen in these : Trotter, Masher, Bounder, Topper, fiver, Tanner, Peeler, Growler, Shocker, Macker, Gaffer, APPENDIX C 1-7 Buffer, Josser, I{ipper, Nipper, Banner. 1 A schoolgirl with a pigtail is now a Flapper, and c viva voce in divinity ' is Vivers in divvers. A professor of the humanissimae of the humaniores told me that in this last expression the ers in vivers was a different vowel from the ers in divvers -, and he thought my ear very defective not to detect this delicacy ; which shows how er can be said with the conviction that you are speaking the Latin a : and people who say Afriker really think that they say Africa, because they visualise the a. There are no doubt different ways of pronouncing this short er of danger, and it should be made the best of. I cannot say that it may not eventually make some approach to the Latin A. If Magger (Magazine) should return to its older form Maga, it might assimilate its pronunciation to Saga. Pro- fessor Wright tells me that if we would only give up our prejudices and heartily accept taib-l for teyb-l (table), we should soon arrive through taeb-l to the old English fahb-lwith the broad Latin A. Lah-idy and gab-it^ are spoken now in London for lady and gates. But as for the unaccented short er (a) I am disposed to defend the er spelling, because if we made a simple vowel of it we should lose the very convenient lurking trilled R which comes out in pronunciation before a vowel : as when we say c the 1 The memory of the bloody bishop and his bone-fires comes thus into a strange association with St. Guy Fawkes. 5-8 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION dangeR of folly '. I should object very strongly to the affected and really mincingly difficult danga 3V folly with which we are threatened : for if this became our spelling (in educational phonetics) it would soon be as vulgar to pronounce the R before a vowel as it used to be to say, VictoriaR our Queen and Governour, which was frequently heard in the Church prayers. People already say faw it and farv us instead of forrit and forms (for it, for us\ and I should myself wish for forrhim and forrher in preference to farv him and faw her. Moreover, I should like to believe that the untrilled r does actually represent the voicing of the lost trill of the full R, and remains as a vestige. If that were so, then the truncated form r, without its curve and tail, pictures it well to the eye. The sound that I mean is exaggerated and heard very plainly in the Gloucestershire way of saying such a word as father^ which one might depict thus fdtherrr. Again in such words as glory there is a sound heard between the o and the R which is very like the remnant of the R in thorn ; and if this were recognised it would distinguish the pronunciation of words like lawn and lorn. But I find that experts do not agree with me here, so that I suppose I must be wrong. These remarks about er are rather intrusive ; but I hope that they may help my contention for pro- APPENDIX C 5-9 nouncing the Latin final A in words where it is proper ; and I also think that the A might help to keep the I in the I A terminations, which are in great danger, if not already lost. APPENDIX D ESTHETIC FORMS IT was objected to my script that it is not prac- ticable, that is, that it is not calculated to provide a good cursive, chiefly because the forms of the letters are too elaborate to write easily. At the invention of printing, when a type had to be designed to suit the mechanical conditions, the forms of the letters were modelled on those of the best Manuscripts, which were so beautiful that the new art despaired of rivalling them. This aesthetic standard was soon lost sight of, and utili- tarianism gradually arrived at our ipth century printing. The relations of handwriting and printing are now reversed ; so that it is common to say in praise of a man who writes a good hand that c it is as good as print '. Though this is intended only of the legibility, and little else is ever thought of, it unconsciously betrays the revolution of our ideals j namely that the degraded printing is now 60 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION held superior to the writing, whereas when printing was more beautiful, the writing was its model. Now when I showed my alphabet in an aesthetic writing on the old model, 1 I was writing as the scribes wrote before printing was invented ; and I knew that any printer's type modelled on such a manuscript would have to be much adapted j nor did I suppose that it was convenient for a flowing cursive hand. And when I took the Anglosaxon type for the printing, it was not that such a fount was exactly what I wanted, but that the more modern types are so degraded that they gave the aesthetic quality of my alphabet no chance of exhibiting itself. This Anglosaxon type was, as I said, merely the best for my purpose that I could find at the Press. And anyone can see what its value was for my purpose j for after reading the passage printed in it on p. 34, when the eye returns to the text of the Essay, the meanness of the common type comes as a surprise. It would seem an ignorant and contemptible objection to an alphabet that its best forms need degradation before they can be adapted to the commonest uses. And the objection to the Anglo- saxon fount, that one could not write it, can very easily be shown to be captious : for you may take the common type of our newspapers and ask, for instance, whether the g is a convenient letter to 1 In a facsimile of Mr. Ed. Johnston's hand. See Plate No. i with description in this edition (p. 75). APPENDIX D 6 1 write. Since it lacks both beauty and economy whether for printing or writing, it is strange that utilitarianism should have produced it : but, elabo- rate as it is, it has a fluent cursive form ; that is, a scribe can make a letter sufficiently like it and easily written in one stroke. The first duty of man in making a new alphabet is to make a good one, and he may leave it for use to modify it. I meet my objectors here by offering some samples of my script written quickly. They are not above criticism ; but they are one step nearer what is asked for, and will at least meet the objec- tion that the differences which distinguish certain letters could not be observed in a cursive hand. The really serious objection to any change in our spelling is, I believe, not sufficiently seen. We now read our handwriting by word-units and not by letters ; and we recognise the units on the basis of the current universal spelling. If once that spell- ing be interfered rvith^ then all our handwriting will become illegible: and we shall have to form our letters carefully, and attend to each letter in read- ing. It is in my opinion impossible to overestimate the immediate practical inconvenience of this ; and so short a statement of it may escape attention. This inconvenience would gradually disappear as we became accustomed to recognise the new spelling, and its new phonetic combinations of letters ; which use and practice would accommodate with scribal 62. ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION forms of ligature recognisable at first glance : but it would take some time to get over the change, at least one generation would find it difficult to read their children's writing, and in the mean- while the only compensation would be that we should all learn to write, that is to form our letters instead of sketching our words. But there is a corol- lary which promises also another compensation ; for if manuscripts should ever again become beautiful, then our new reproductive processes, by which we can multiply any manuscript in facsimile and cheaply, and to almost any number, would give us a new kind of book, much superior to what utilitarian printing has given us : and the works of our best writers might be in a worthy dress, and some of them even autographic. An author's handwriting might come to be reckoned among his other dis- tinctive excellences, inseparable from his style. Manuscript has a hundred subtleties of expression denied to printing, and such resources of formal beauty, that there are ample materials for a new art in European writing. APPENDIX E SIMPLIFIED SPELLING AND PHONETICS A VERY little consideration should convince any- one that any system of writing English phonetically would have to be very much modified before it could be adapted as the basis of a practical sim- plified spelling. That is, a useful simplified spelling must renounce many distinctions in pronunciation which a consistent phonetic spelling is bound to observe. For instance, the article the is pronounced diffe- rently before a vowel and before a consonant : but no one would suggest that, in our ordinary writing or printing, the word should be differently spelt in these positions. The word would be written the same in all cases, and the rule for its pronunciation would be given and explained in the grammars. Again, the sibilant which makes all our plurals and genitives is sometimes pronounced s sometimes ^ : but I should not propose to make a correspond- ing distinction in our literary spelling. It is always spoken correctly just because the varying pronun- ciation follows phonetic laws, which we uncon- sciously observe, and which would be tabulated in the grammars. So again terminations which are common to many words would have their old form and recog- nised pronunciation. tf4 ENGLIISH PRONUNCATION I have come to no decision on the practical ques- tions that such a reform of common spelling raises : except that I believe it would be absolutely neces- sary to have some new symbols. But since it was doubtless in my mind that some of my new symbols would be useful for this purpose, I unconsciously led many of my readers to suppose that I imagined that all English writing and printing should be in the full phonetic of my printed examples. The examples that I now give of a cursive hand using some of my symbols will show the sort of use which I supposed could be made of them for common use. The obstacle to simplified spelling is this : It is necessary to have some new symbols, and there is a real inconvenience in extending the alphabet. An easement of this difficulty appears in the fact that some of our present letters are phonetically useless, and if they were discarded from the lower case to make room for the new symbols, we should not need to increase very greatly the present number of letters for the purposes of simplified spelling. But on the other hand we cannot discard our phonetic duplicates, the scientifically unneces- sary letters, without intolerably disfiguring the spelling of a great many words. It seems to me that most prejudices can be best overcome by gradual steps, and that simplified spelling is a fair field for experiment. If we were really free agents and might spell as we chose for a few years, then APPENDIX E 6? I think we should soon evolve something satis- factory. If all editors and publishers, or even a moderate proportion of them, were to agree to omit the final E in all spellings where it was both useless and misleading, and to print for instance, hav y giv, tiv, infinitiv, lov, instead of the present have, give, live, infinitive, love, everyone would be accustomed to it in a week or ten days, and would regard the old spellings as wrong, and ugly. The success of such a first step would remove the prejudice against all innovation, and would clear the way for other reforms. At the cost of reiteration I will restate mv j position. I disliked the modern phonetic systems of printing English because they were aesthetically ugly, and their symbols often so far removed from our traditional spelling as to be out of relation with it, and unintelligible to persons who could read all the historic forms of our speech. Experts in phonetics told me that these unpleasant con- ditions were necessary and unavoidable : I main- tained on the other hand that their awkwardnesses came chiefly from want of artistic feeling and of ingenuity, and that it was possible to invent a phonetic alphabet for English which should be pleasant to the artistic sense, and readable on the lines of our historic spelling, and moreover that such a scheme might preserve the Romance value of the vowels, a matter of first importance and that 66 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION it would also serve to check the progressive deterio- ration of our pronunciation, and even restore some lost distinctions of practical value. My friends derided my contention, and there- upon, to demonstrate it, I made the alphabet given in the Essay. With this task before me it will be plain that, for the purpose of competing with the other c phonetics ', I was bound to exhibit the actual sounds as nearly as my devised symbols would allow. This enabled me also to set my script alongside any other purely phonetic script, so that a reader might compare them and judge how far I had succeeded in my attempt. It was not a matter of simplified spelling. Now the reader may look at a piece of English in the International phonetic script, used by Mr. Daniel Jones, and see what happens to it, and what it looks like. Then he can turn to my version of it, and see what English looks like if written phonetically on my system. I was never foolish enough to suppose that I had at first brush hit off the final solution of so intricate and baffling a problem. But I claim that my system may offer hints for a method by which English could be written legibly and phonetically (as far as phonetics are desirable) without renounc- ing the time-honoured values of the ordinary symbols. In my alphabet the vowels are still APPENDIX E 67 a, e, i, o, u, as in Latin and in all romance languages, instead of ey, i, ai, ow, yu and if this result is accomplished it should be remembered that it was authoritatively pronounced impossible. APPENDIX F PRONUNCIATION OF LATIN I HAVE long thought that if we would amend our English pronunciation, the most hopeful means that we have is to teach a sound pronunciation of Latin in our boys' schools. It would seem that we could not possibly have a simpler method. The Latin vowels are so well-marked and so few, and the result of pronouncing them correctly is so convincing, and the age of the pupils makes their task so easy, that one cannot imagine better conditions. I seriously maintain that an educational system which neglects this opportunity of teaching the true elements of human speech to the young is condemned of utter incapacity. The opponents of classical education would have had no case if Latin had been taught properly. But though the change to what is called the < classical pronunciation ' has been nominally made in many schools, yet, except in the hands of two or three devoted enthusiasts, very little real 6% ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION progress has been made: and it is disheartening to remember how long it is since Milton advised the same cure for the same evil. For their Studies, First they should begin with the chief and necessary rules of some good Grammar, either that now usd, or any better : and while this is doing, their speech is to be fashion'd to a distinct and clear pronuntiation, It is impossible to come to terms with the Anglicised scholastic mind. Another scholar of my generation wrote to the c Times ' on the occasion of the celebration of the foundation of St. Andrews University last year, objecting to the word Quin- centenary. Since he allowed Bicentenary and Ter- centenary, it was assumed by the University that he objected to the c and wished for a g, and they apologized, admitting that Quingentenary would have been better. But what is the state of the case? The Latins having got quin for 5- (quinque, quinquetus, quinctus, quin-tus), said quincentum pronouncing the c hard (quinkentum), but then, finding that in speech quincentum became quingentum (the mid-syllables being pronounced like our Kent and Ghent\ they had the good sense to write what they spoke. But we say Quinsentenary j and why an / should in English be changed into a dj> as these scholars proposed, because k became gh in Latin after an n is unthinkable. Centenary is an English word, and words that have been taken over into English with their consonants and vowels changed APPENDIX F 71 in the process cannot follow laws of Latin speech. A more phonetic spelling of English would dissi- pate these delusions. One can imagine that those who have written maccaroni rhymes may feel injured by having their little game threatened : Swift's bite *em and infinitum is an example: but it is probable that these treasures of our literature would not only hold their own, but might even appear more comic if their absurdity and barbarism were more fully exposed. Latin words on the border-line, that is, not wholly Anglicised but yet in fairly common use, would be in the worst condition: but even they could be left to adjust themselves j and- it would be an advantage to have the principles of adjustment fixed, and to distinguish between English and Latin. The result of an Eton and Oxford education may be illustrated in the attitude of another contemporary of mine, who was a firstrate scholar in modern languages. He was immovable, not only in his conviction of the propriety of speaking Latin as English, but in his preference for the Victorian spelling of English. He would read Chaucer only in modern spelling, and contended that English of all dates should be reduced to a uniform spelling. When I reasoned with him and asked him whether he would make a like rule for French, and whether he would consent to read Le fyman de la fyse, for instance, in modern spelling, he replied that that was quite a different thing. 72 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION APPENDIX G ELIZABETHAN PRONUNCIATION IN the transcription of the passage from Shake- speare on p. 34 I have given a friend's version of the pronunciation. It may be taken as learned and orthodox, but he pleaded that the conditions make any reproduction of the pronunciation in Shakespeare's time very doubtful. On this subject I have myself no special know- ledge, and no right to speak ; nor do I wish to enter into any discussion of it : but I have a scruple in letting even this short transcript pass under my name without recording my conviction that English philological phoneticians much ex- aggerate the differences between our modern and older pronunciations : so that I believe that the common modern way of reading Shakespeare's plays has, in some essentials, more likeness to the actual speech of his time, than most of the learned re- constitutions which our antiquarians offer us. For instance, in my transcript the common word one is given to be pronounced like own. Now in TyndalPs version of the Gospels 15-26 this word is most frequently spelt -won. Thus . . . rather then he shulde offende won off this litle wons. APPENDIX G 73 The spelling one also occurs, but my impression is that won is much the commoner. The positive evidence for a recognised pronunciation won is of course decisive. Again Wace, who wrote, I believe, in the twelfth century, transliterates Thorney (Abbey) and Thorn into Norman French as Zonee and Zow, 1 exactly as a Frenchman would now : and, unless this can be explained away, it seems to me wrong to assert that our untrilled R is very modern. I see no escape from the conclusion that thorn was pronounced in London in the twelfth century very much as it is now: and yet I suppose the experts would put a trilled R into Shakespeare's thorn. Again, in William Stone's < Classical Metres in English Verse' I find that in the discussion between Dr. Gabriel Harvey and Edmund Spenser concerning the rules of a classical prosody, the second syllable of the word carpenter was taken as an example of a word in which ( position ', as shown by spelling, did not lengthen a syllable : that is, Harvey ruled the second syllable in carpenter to be short. Now William Stone found exactly the same trouble: the cause being that the E is not pronounced, the liquid N serving for the vowel: and the natural conclusion from this and the preceding remark is that Shakespeare pronounced 1 I pointed this out in my 'Milton's Prosody* in 1893. No one has thought it worth accounting for. It seems to be regarded as an unfortunate exception to an established law. 74 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION carpenter in such a way as to be undistinguishable from our version of it. If my opinion given on p. \6 (and 1 have seen much evidence for it) is correct, that English pronunciation in Elizabeth's time was very actively degrading j then, it would seem to me, there is a strong case against the versions of Shakespeare's pronunciation which experts give us : and I am disposed to think that the unpopularity of their scholarship is greatly due to a commonsense pre- judice, which I have always shared, against their results. APPENDIX H ILLUSTRATIONS THREE plates follow: the first is in the full phonetic of the alphabet given on p. 24 : the second and third show the alphabet used in simplified spelling. The description of the plates is as follows : PLATE I. This is a specimen of Mr. Edward Johnston's calligraphy, reduced to about one- fourth of its original linear measurements, being 29 to 39. The reduction was necessitated by the size of this volume. It is a transcript of seven lines from my quantitive hexameter paraphrase of Virgil (^n. vi. APPENDIX H 75- 703), together with two epigrams. These were chosen in order to take advantage of the oppor- tunity of exhibiting the classical prosody in phonetics. This plate shows my alphabet in the script in which it was first designed : but since the scribe has inadvertently altered the original tail-curve of the long English i ( = ai), I have shown a correct example of it by insetting the word b right , cut out of an earlier MS. by him. This contains the original form of the letter. PLATE II. This is an example in my own hand of the result of adapting my alphabet to simplified spelling. It is in a careful court-hand, and, though not very well executed, will sufficiently exhibit the effect of such writing to the eye and intelligence. PLATE III. This shows the same passage as the last plate, but written in a flowing quick cursive. This was obtained by making three copies quickly with different pens and cutting out a paragraph from each of them. About the spelling in these Plates II and III, I have not any decided opinion as to what conven- tions are actually desirable in simplified spelling. Some of the problems have several solutions, and the adoption of any one definite solution of any one problem affects and limits the possibilities in the solution of other problems. In these examples I have kept our doubled letters as showing accented short vowels: and the reader will observe other 76 ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION points, as the doubled final s in happiness. I only wish to say that I do not consider my spellings as necessarily the best solutions, though I am inclined to use them ; but I think that, whatever conventions were adopted for convenience, the whole result would be approximately equivalent to my example in the amount of difference from our present way of writing. Oxford : Horace Hart, Printer to the University On die tcv^t bu*m oV diis OKOW, AH* amid ^uiVemn* popi LETHE duality R vfrlmrbi nou flited in v *4 inerty sinner mmy4 pill die Uosnn$,liiRyii\ tu RCfVisitii> die RAVi^ht Ulv-c O V Epitaph diau mi bdi^Ved died 4-' W erd\ly delit i another wdl mi conmad^, and. GOD obl'd out, bin: CKCunVd chi&lv die tAA tRCf u v(lii$i>enh\ x C(^ul s^rrneKy windoh : meny pcrp'l on A flauovy pastfir o, innlimeiu^s ar diey ps & A! die mcdew m opn rty betcr die tall . copied fo' E.Johnston.wy. n eric nun wn& a (wn (fief w&x> /tr nunt ^^* f f I 1 / 4f it, f?J?fUr Ut fJU i&bl Slfcfcefn 4/ ff - J f tS duU nuy mt&l- n*v nuk'd tn sum fa be $0 im&lvizeJJ# c0m-pre t *r OS M* & fir* t&t&r fin* tu fed It A, fh*. 4JJV le*KA k Art ti^l( . /M*r t- Storm *-4 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES COLLEGE LIBRARY This book is due on the last date stamped below. Oct 9 6 * 1 1 1966 Ubrary JAN 15 1975 Book Slip-25m-9,'60(,B2<936s4)4280 UCLA-College Library PE1137B76I L 005 664 438 8 College Library PE 1137 B76t Ir UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 001 147 638 9