4 It is given in Ellis’s Early English Pronunciation, p. 1293 ff., and in Sayce’s The Science of Language, Vol. I, p. 353 ff.
5 It is given on p. xxii of Webster’s New International Dictionary, 1934, but a simpler if less scientific system of indicating pronunciations is used in the body of the work. See The International Phonetic Alphabet, by John S. Kenyon, American Speech, April, 1929, p. 324 ff.
6 Every-Day English; Boston, 1881, p. 29. The difficulty is discussed, with examples, in Standards of Speech, by Elizabeth Avery, American Speech, April, 1926. One phonetic symbol is commonly used to represent the e in met, led and sell, yet the vowel differs in the three words. So with the k in key, kaffir and kumquat. “It is difficult if not impossible,” says W. Cabell Greet in Southern Speech (in Culture in the South, Chapel Hill, N. C., 1934, p. 601) “to obtain an idea of speech from phonetic symbols.”
7 The first experiments were made in New York at the turn of the century. In 1901 the method was adopted by the International Correspondence Schools at Scranton, Pa. The director of their School of Languages, Mr. J. Navas, tells me that it is still in use, and has been a great success.
8 For an account of the early stages of the work of Drs. Ayres and Greet see their article, American Speech Records at Columbia University, American Speech, June, 1930.
9 The method employed is described by C. E. Parmenter and S. N. Treviño in The Length of the Sounds of a Middle Westerner, American Speech, April, 1935. The subject’s voice, picked up by a microphone, causes the oscillograph to vibrate, and the vibrations are photographed on a strip of film moving at the rate of two feet a second. Simultaneously, the vibrations of a 1000-cycle oscillator are recorded on the same film, to serve as a timer. In A Study of Dialect Differences, by H. E. Atherton and Darrell L. Gregg, American Speech, Feb., 1929, there is a comparison between Southern English and the pronunciation of North Carolina by a modification of this method.
10 The method used is described by C. E. Parmenter and C. A. Bevans in Analysis of Speech Radiographs, American Speech, Oct., 1933. See also Speech and Voice, by Dr. Russell; New York, 1931.
11 The Pronunciation of English in America, Atlantic Monthly, March, 1915, p. 366.
12 A Note on Language, in The Contrast; New York, 1924, p. 219. Most of this chapter was printed in Columbia, Oct., 1924, under the title of The American Language.
13 Do Americans Speak English?, New York Nation, April 15, 1925, p. 410. “All speech, even the commonest speech,” said Thomas Carlyle in Heroes and Hero-Worship, “has something of song in it.… Accent is a kind of chanting.” “If somebody asks you a question,” says P. B. Ballard in Thought and Language; London, 1934, p. 70, “and you reply ‘I don’t know’ you do not say the words at a dead level; you give them a tune. Sometimes, indeed, you give the tune without the words; you just hum them. And you are understood just the same.” See Pitch Patterns in English, by Kemp Malone, Studies in Philology, July, 1926: Zur amerikanischen Intonation, by Fritz Karpf, Die neuren Sprachen, Sept., 1926, and English Intonation, by H. E. Palmer; Cambridge, England, 1922.
14 The Standard of American Speech; Boston, 1926, p. 16.
15 George Philip Krapp in The Pronunciation of Standard English in America; New York, 1919, p. 50.
16 James M. Cain in Paradise, American Mercury, March, 1933, p. 269.
17 H. W. Seaman in The Awful English of England, American Mercury, Sept., 1933, p. 75.
18 The Pronunciation of English, above cited p. 60.
19 The Pronunciation of Standard English in America, above cited, p. 50.
20 “The pitch of the British English man’s voice,” he said in Words and Their Uses, new ed., New York, 1876, p. 57, “is higher and more penetrating than the American Englishman’s.” “His inflections are more varied than the other’s,” he added, “because they more fre quently rise.”
21 Lectures on the English Language, 4th ed.; New York, 1870, p. 671. Marsh had been anticipated here, though he probably didn’t know it, by the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, who, in his glossary of Americanisms, printed in 1832, had said: “One striking peculiarity in American elocution is a slow, drawling unemphatic and unimpassioned manner; this, it is probable, is to be attributed, in general, to the heat of their climates, which is such as to paralyze all active exertion, even in speaking.” Boucher did not say directly that this languid style of speech made for clear utterance, but that inference may be fairly drawn from his other remarks on the English spoken in America.
22 Webster’s New International Dictionary, 1934, prefers advértisement, but admits that advertísement is American. Old Noah himself argued for the latter on the analogy of amusement, refinement and so on. See his Dissertations on the English Language; Boston, 1789, p. 138.
23 There is an interesting discussion of such vulgarisms in Our Agile American Accents, by John L. Haney, American Speech, April, 1926.
24 In a letter to the New York Times, Dec. 20, 1931, Charlton Andrews complained that the New York radio announcers were accenting rebound, detour, cigarette, curator, narrator, acclimated, decoy, promulgate, recluse, respiratory, insane, inclement, entire and tribunal on the first syllable. The Concise Oxford accents the second syllable of all save promulgate and respiratory.
25 See American Pronunciation, by J. S. Kenyon; Ann Arbor, Mich., 1932, p. 159 ff, for a long list of words pronounced differently in England and the United States.
26 See his discussion of the matter in The English Language in America; New York, 1925, Vol. II, p. 14.
27 A History of Modern Colloquial English; London, 1920, p. 18 ff.
28 American Pronunciation, above cited, p. iv. But Dr. Kenyon, of course, makes no claim that this Western American is better than any other kind. See his very wise discussion of the point in Correct Pronunciation, American Speech, Dec., 1928, p. 150. In Practical Phonetics of the American Language, by Ralph S. Boggs; San Juan, P. R., 1927, a text prepared for students at the University of Porto Rico, “the pronunciation of the well-educated people of the Middle West in normal conversation” is accepted as “the standard of American pronunciation.”
29 The Pronunciation of English, above cited, p. 1.
30 A History of Modern Colloquial English; London, 1920, p. 3.
31 The Superiority of Received Standard English, S.P.E. Tracts, No. XXXIX, 1934.
32 London, 1929.
33 The Awful English of England, by H. W. Seaman, American Mercury, Sept., 1933, p. 73. Perhaps the testimony of a Briton of Welsh name should be added, to complete the circle. “English as spoken in America,” said Wyndham Lewis, in The Dumb Ox, Life and Letters, April, 1934, p. 41, “is more vigorous and expressive than Oxford English, I think. It is easy to mistake a native from the wilds of Dorsetshire for an American, I have found: and were ‘educated’ English used upon a strong reverberant Devonshire basis, for instance, it would be all to the good, it is my opinion. Raleigh, Drake, and the rest of them, must have talked rather like that.”
34 Broadcast English. I. Recommendations to Announcers Regarding Certain Words of Doubtful Pronunciation, with an introduction by A. Lloyd James, professor of phonetics, School of Oriental Studies, London; London, 1935.
35 English, Spoken and Written, Paris Herald, April 9, 1925.
36 “By a Travelling Bachelor,” but later acknowledged by Cooper. It was published in London, in two volumes. The quotations are from Vol. II, Letter VII.
37 Many similar exultations might be quoted. Captain Frederick Marryat, in his Diary in America; Philadelphia, 1839, thus summed it up: “The Americans boldly assert that they speak English better than we do.” He dissented, of course. “It is remarkable,” he said piously, “how very debased the language has become in a short period in America.”
38 God’s Patience and the King’s English, New York Herald Tribune, Sept. 8, 1929.
39 In a letter dated May 26, 1931.
40 Letter from Jesse S. Butcher, director of public relations, May 22, 1931.
41 In Broadcasti
ng and Pronunciation, American Speech, June, 1930, and again in The Radio and Pronunciation, the same, Dec, 1931.
42 Pronunciation in the Schools, English Journal’, Oct., 1922. See also Dr. Pound’s British and American Pronunciation, School Review, June, 1915, and The Pronunciation of English in America, by Robert J. Menner, Atlantic Monthly, March, 1915.
43 Cambridge (England), 1926; 2nd ed., 1935. Palmer is linguistic adviser to the Japanese Ministry of Education and a leading phonologist.
44 Other studies of interest and value are Early American Pronunciation and Syntax, by Henry Alexander, American Speech, Dec, 1925, which ante-dated the Krapp book, and Early New England Pronunciation, by Anders Orbeck; Ann Arbor, Mich., 1927, which Krapp saw in MS. A bibliography of American and English pronunciation to the end of 1922 will be found in Arthur G. Kennedy’s Bibliography of Writings on the English Language; Cambridge, Mass., 1927. For the period since 1922 the bibliographies published in each issue of American Speech and annually in Publications of the Modern Language Association may be consulted. Alexander J. Ellis’s On Early English Pronunciation, 4 vols.; London, 1869–89, is still invaluable, though in parts it has begun to date. Other useful works on the changes in spoken English are A History of English Sounds, by Henry Sweet; London, 1876; The Sounds of English, by the same; Oxford, 1908; The English Pronunciation at Shakespeare’s Time, by R. E. Zachrisson; Upsala, Sweden, 1927; Pronunciation of English Vowels, 1400–1700, by the same; Göteborg, Sweden, 1913; Select Studies in Colloquial English of the Late Middle Ages, by Gösta Langenfelt; Lund, Sweden, 1933; English Pronunciation From the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century, by Constance Davies; London, 1934; and English Pronunciation as Described in Shorthand Systems of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, by Helge Kökeritz, Studia Neophilologica, 1935. A history of Modern Colloquial English, by H. C. Wyld; London, 1920, gives an excellent account of the changes in English since 1450.
45 This a, of course, is really two a’s, the first that of that and the other that of ham. They differ, however, only in length, and for the present purpose they may be regarded as substantially identical. For a discussion of the situations in which either the one or the other is used see The Pronunciation of Short A in American Standard English, by George L. Trager, American Speech, June, 1930.
46 The Pronunciation of English, by Daniel Jones; Cambridge, 1914, p. 38.
47 Pronunciation, a Practical Guide to American Standards, by Thorleif Larsen and Francis C. Walker; London, 1930, p. 23 ff.
48 J. S. Kenyon has calculated (Flat A and Broad A, American Speech, April, 1930, p. 324) that the number of situations in which the English and American a’s differ amounts to 14% of the total situations in which a occurs.
49 His conclusions are set forth at length in The English Language in America, Vol. II, p. 36 ff.
50 I am indebted here to Krapp, p. 67.
51 Fashion and the Broad A in Old and New; Cambridge, Mass., 1920, pp. 25–30.
52 This gradual decay of the Boston a is also discussed in Observations on the Broad A, by Miles L. Han-ley, Dialect Notes, Vol. V, Pt. VIII, 1925.
53 Richard Meade Bache denounced it in Lafayette, in his Vulgarisms and Other Errors of Speech, 2nd ed., Philadelphia, 1869, p. 65.
54 The Pronunciation of Standard English in America, above cited, p. 60.
55 New York Nation, Aug. 30, 1919, p. 290. See also Vays, Vayz or Vahz, by Janet R. Aiken, North American Review, Dec., 1929.
56 The Rev. W. G. Polack, of Evansville, Ind., who has made a valuable inquiry into ecclesiastical terminology in America, tells me that among the Lutherans of the Middle West, amen has the flat a when spoken and the broad a when sung. So with the first syllable of hallelujah, though the last a is always broad. The Baptists appear to follow the same plan. Their denominational papers print frequent notices that amen should have the long a in hymns but the short a in ordinary speech. See, for example, the Baptist and Commoner (Little Rock, Ark.), Jan. 2, 1928, and the Western Recorder (Louisville, Ky.), Oct. 2, 1924.
57 In his Dissertations on the English Language, 1789, Webster said that the English then made the a of patriotism long and the Americans made it short. How the double reversal came about I don’t know. “In all these cases, where the people are not uniform,” said Webster, “I should prefer the short sound, for it appears to me the most analogous.” He was probably thinking of cat and rat.
58 Pronunciation, above cited, p. 24.
59 A long list of the vulgarisms of the late 40’s is in the introduction to J. R. Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms, 2nd ed.; Boston, 1859. Many of those of a somewhat earlier period are in the glossary attached to The Yankey in England, by David Humphreys; Hartford, 1815. This glossary is reprinted in The Beginnings of American English, edited by M. M. Mathews; Chicago, 1931.
60 The following is from his Dissertations on the English Language, 1789, p. 128. “Deaf is generally pronounced deef. It is the universal practice in the Eastern States; and it is general in the Middle and Southern; though some have adopted the English pronunciation, def. The latter is evidently a corruption; for the word is in analogy with leaf and sheaf, and has been from time immemorial.” Always his analogies!
61 The Pronunciation of English in America, Atlantic Monthly, March, 1915, p. 361.
62 This tendency is not confined to English. The same e is encountered in languages as widely differing otherwise as Arabic, French and Swedish. “Its existence,” says Sayce, in The Science of Language, Vol. I, p. 259, “is a sign of age and decay; meaning has become more important than outward form, and the educated intelligence no longer demands a clear pronunciation in order to understand what is said.”
63 Good English; New York, 1867, pp. 42–43. This book was a reprint of articles contributed to the New York Evening Post, then edited by William Cullen Bryant.
64 Language and the Study of Language; New York, 1867, p. 43.
65 The Elements of English Pronunciation, in Oriental and Linguistic Studies; New York, 1874, p. 221.
66 Words and Their Uses; New York, 1876. My quotations are from the revised edition, 1876, pp. 263–4.
67 On the Pronunciation of Either and Neither, American Speech, June, 1932. A very informing and amusing paper. Dr. Pound quotes the following from The Lady Buyer, by Frances Anne Allen, American Mercury, Feb., 1928: “[The department-store lady buyer] may say Eye-talian even after having been sent abroad for her firm, she may write formally for formerly and shamme for chamois, and may unashamedly flaunt a dozen grammatical errors, but always standing her in good stead, and ready at the tip of her tongue, is her crystal-clear British pronunciation of either.… Nothing on earth could make her whisper ee-ther in the darkest corner of the stock-room.”
68 The Contrast; New York, 1924, p. 225.
69 Pronunciation, above cited, p. 46.
70 Watch, Water, Wash, American Speech, April, 1929.
71 The English Language in America, Vol. II, p. 83.
72 A woman teacher of English, born in Tennessee, tells me that the y-sound is much more persistent in the South than in the North. “I have never,” she says, “heard a native Southerner fail to retain the sound in new. The same is true of duke, stew, due, duty and Tuesday. But it is not true of blue and true.”
73 High School Circular No. 17, June 19, 1912.
74 Every-Day English; Boston, 1881, p. 243.
75 There is an inconclusive discussion of the question in the Oxford Dictionary, under lieutenant.
76 I am indebted here to Dr. H. K. Croessmann, of Du Quoin, Ill.
77 Parts of Speech and Accidence; Boston, 1935, p. 119.
78 “Why a dropped g should be considered to be good English,” says St. John Ervine in The Curse of “Refanement,” London Daily Mail, Aug. 30, 1926, “when a dropped h is considered to be a sign of ill-breeding I cannot imagine; but seemingly if those who drop their final g’s took to dropping their initial h’s, while those who drop their h’s took to dropping their g’s instead, h-dro
pping would be ‘the best English’ and g-dropping would be damnable. The ‘best people,’ whoever they may be, have fashions of speech that are as vulgar as that of ‘the worst people.’ ” Krapp shows that the change of ng to n was probably common in early American. John Walker, in his Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language; London, 1791, argued for dropping the g in the final syllables of participles of verbs ending in g, e.g., singing and ringing.
79 A Tract on the Present State of English Pronunciation; Oxford, 1913.
80 On English Homophones; Oxford, 1919.
81 The Pronunciation of English in America, Atlantic Monthly, March, 1915, p. 362.
82 Some Notes on American R, American Speech, March, 1926, p. 333.
83 The Question of Our Speech; Boston, 1905, p. 29.
84 In the New York dialect it is lost between the neutral vowel and a consonant, as in thoid, boid, goil, etc., but that is only on the vulgar level.
85 A History of Modern Colloquial English; London, 1920, p. 298.
86 The English Language in America, Vol. II, p. 220.
87 The English Language in America, p. 231. There is a long and interesting discussion of the variations in the American r in Some Notes on American R, by John S. Kenyon, American Speech, March, 1926. See also The Dog’s Letter, by C. H. Grandgent, in Old and New; Cambridge, Mass., 1920; Loss of R in English Through Dissimilation, by George Hempl, Dialect Notes, Vol. I, Pt. VI, 1893, and The Humorous R, by Louise Pound, American Mercury, Oct., 1924, p. 233 ff. Dr. Pound deals with such forms as dorg, purp, school-marm, orter and orf. She shows that when a r is intruded in English humorous writing, as in larf, gorn, and arnswer it is not intended to be pronounced: it simply indicates that the preceding vowel is to have the sound of a in father.
88 In Concerning the American Language, which Mark Twain included in The Stolen White Elephant; Hartford, 1882, and described as “part of a chapter crowded out of A Tramp Abroad,” he represented himself as saying to an Englishman met on a train in Germany: “If the signs are to be trusted even your educated classes used to drop the h. They say humble now [with the clear h], and heroic, and historic, etc., but I judge that they used to drop those h’s because your writers still keep up the fashion of putting an an before those words instead of an a. This is what Mr. Darwin might call a ‘rudimentary’ sign that an was justifiable once, and useful — when your educated classes used to say ’umble, and ’eroic, and ’istorical. Correct writers of the American language do not put an before those words.” But a correspondent sends me the following argument for the use of an: “My sense of euphony (and, I believe, the genius of the English language) requires something between the a and the h-sound in all such cases. Witness the absence of English words showing such a combination. I believe that all English words beginning with a, in which a syllable beginning with h follows, are dissyllables. That is to say, the h-syllable is accented. Witness ahead, ahoy, ahem.” See Text, Type and Style, by George B. Ives; Boston, 1921, p. 269, and A and An Before H and Certain Vowels, by Louis Feipel, American Speech, Aug., 1929.
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