§ 8 Pronunciation
—Before anything approaching a thorough and profitable study of the sounds of the American common speech is possible, there must be a careful assembling of the materials, and this, unfortunately, still awaits a philologist of sufficient enterprise and equipment. Dr. William A. Read, of the State University of Louisiana, has made some excellent examinations of vowel and consonant sounds in the South, Dr. Louise Pound has done capital work of the same sort in the Middle West,79 and there have been other regional studies of merit. But most of these become misleading by reason of their lack of scope; forms practically universal in the nation are discussed as dialectical variations. This is the central defect in the work of the American Dialect Society, otherwise very industrious and meritorious. It is essaying to study localisms before having first platted the characteristics of the general speech. The dictionaries of Americanisms deal with pronunciation only casually, and often very inaccurately; the remaining literature is meagre and unsatisfactory.80 Until the matter is gone into at length it will be impossible to discuss any phase of it with exactness. No single investigator can examine the speech of the whole country; for that business a pooling of forces is necessary. But meanwhile it may be of interest to set forth a few provisional ideas.
At the start two streams of influence upon American pronunciation may be noted, the one an inheritance from the English of the colonists and the other arising spontaneously within the country, and apparently much colored by immigration. The first influence, it goes without saying, is gradually dying out. Consider, for example, the pronunciation of the diphthong oi. In Middle English it was as in boy, but during the early Modern English period it was assimilated with that of the i in wine, and this usage prevailed at the time of the settlement of America. The colonists thus brought it with them, and at the same time it lodged in Ireland, where it still prevails. But in England, during the pedantic eighteenth century, this i-sound was displaced by the original oi-sound, not by historical research but by mere deduction from the spelling, and the new pronunciation soon extended to the polite speech of America. In the common speech, however, the i-sound persisted, and down to the time of the Civil War it was constantly heard in such words as boil, hoist, oil, join, poison and roil, which thus became bile, hist, ile, jine, pisen and rile. Since then the school-marm has combatted it with such vigor that it has begun to disappear, and such forms as pisen, jine, bile and ile are now very seldom heard, save as dialectic variations. But in certain other words, perhaps supported by Irish influence, the i-sound still persists. Chief among them are hoist and roil. An unlearned American, wishing to say that he was enraged, never says that he was roiled, but always that he was riled. Desiring to examine the hoof of his horse, he never orders the animal to hoist but always to hist. In the form of booze-hister, the latter is almost in good usage. I have seen booze-hister thus spelled and obviously to be thus pronounced, in an editorial article in the American Issue, organ of the Anti-Saloon League of America.81
Various similar misplaced vowels were brought from England by the colonists and have persisted in America, while dying out of good England usage. There is, for example, short i in place of long e, as in critter for creature. Critter is common to almost all the dialects of English, but American has embedded the vowel in a word that is met with nowhere else and has thus become characteristic, to wit, crick for creek. Nor does any other dialect make such extensive use of slick for sleek. Again, there is the substitution of the flat a for the broad a in sauce. England has gone back to the broad a, but in America the flat a persists, and many Americans who use sassy every day would scarcely recognize saucy if they heard it. Yet again, there is quoit. Originally, the English pronounced it quate, but now they pronounce the diphthong as in doily. In the United States the quate pronunciation remains. Finally, there is deaf. Its proper pronunciation, in the England that the colonists left, was deef, but it now rhymes with Jeff. That new pronunciation has been adopted by polite American, despite the protests of Noah Webster, but in the common speech the word is still always deef.
However, a good many of the vowels of the early days have succumbed to pedagogy. The American proletarian may still use skeer for scare, but in most of the other words of that class he now uses the vowel approved by correct English usage. Thus he seldom permits himself such old forms as dreen for drain, keer for care, skeerce for scarce or even cheer for chair. The Irish influence supported them for a while, but now they are fast going out. So, too, are kivver for cover, crap for crop, and chist for chest. But kittle for kettle still shows a certain vitality, rench is still used in place of rinse, and squinch in place of squint, and a flat a continues to displace various e-sounds in such words as rare for rear (e. g., as a horse) and wrassle for wrestle. Contrariwise, e displaces a in catch and radish, which are commonly pronounced ketch and reddish. This e-sound was once accepted in standard English; when it got into spoken American it was perfectly sound; one still hears it from the most pedantic lips in any.82 There are also certain other ancients that show equally unbroken vitality among us, for example, stomp for stamp,83 snoot for snout, guardeen for guardian, and champeen for champion.
But all these vowels, whether approved or disapproved, have been under the pressure, for the past century, of a movement toward a general vowel neutralization, and in the long run it promises to dispose of many of them. The same movement also affects standard English, as appears by Robert Bridges’ “Tract on the Present State of English Pronunciation,” but I believe that it is stronger in America, and will go farther, at least with the common speech, if only because of our unparalleled immigration. Standard English has 19 separate vowel sounds. No other living tongue of Europe, save Portuguese, has so many; most of the others have a good many less; Modern Greek has but five. The immigrant, facing all these vowels, finds some of them quite impossible; the Russian Jew, as we have seen, cannot manage ur. As a result, he tends to employ a neutralized vowel in all the situations which present difficulties, and this neutralized vowel, supported by the slip-shod speech-habits of the native proletariat, makes steady progress. It appears in many of the forms that we have been examining—in the final a of would’a, vaguely before the n in this’n and off’n, in place of the original d in use’ to, and in the common pronunciation of such words as been, come and have, particularly when they are sacrificed to sentence exigencies, as in “I b’n thinking,” “c’m ’ere,” and “he would ’ve saw you.”
Here we are upon a wearing down process that shows many other symptoms. One finds, not only vowels disorganized, but also consonants. Some are displaced by other consonants, measurably more facile; others are dropped altogether. D becomes t, as in holt, or is dropped, as in tole, han’kerchief, bran-new and fine (for find). In ast (for ask) t replaces k: when the same word is used in place of asked, as often happens, e. g., in “I ast him his name,” it shoulders out ked. It is itself lopped off in bankrup, quan’ity, crep, slep, wep, kep, gris’-mill and les (=let’s = let us), and is replaced by d in kindergarden and pardner. L disappears, as in a’ready and gent’man. S becomes tsh, as in pincers. The same tsh replaces c, as in pitcher for picture, and t, as in amachoor. G disappears from the ends of words, and sometimes, too, in the middle, as in stren’th and reco’nize. R, though it is better preserved in American than in English, is also under pressure, as appears by bust, stuck on (for struck on), cuss (for curse), yestiddy, sa’s’parella, pa’tridge, ca’tridge, they is (for there is) and Sadd’y (for Saturday). An excrescent t survives in a number of words, e. g., onc’t, twic’t, clos’t, wisht (for wish) and chanc’t; it is an heirloom from the English of two centuries ago. So is the final h in heighth. An excrescent b, as in chimbley and fambly, seems to be native. Whole syllables are dropped out of words, paralleling the English butchery of extraordinary; for example, in bound’ry, hist’ry, lib’ry and prob’ly. Ordinary, like extraordinary, is commonly enunciated clearly, but it has bred a degenerated form, onry or onery, differentiated in meaning. Consonants are misplaced by metathesis, as in prespiration, hunderd, brethern, childern, interduce, apern, calvary, govrenment, modren and wosterd (for worsted). Ow is changed to er, as in feller, swaller, yeller, beller, umbreller and holler; ice is changed to ers in jaunders. Words are given new syllables, as in ellum, mischievious and municipial.
In the complete sentence, assimilation makes this disorganization much more obvious. Mearns, in a brief article84 gives many examples of the extent to which it is carried. He hears “wah zee say?” for “what does he say?” “ware zee?” for “where is he?” “ast ’er in” for “ask her in,” “itt’m owd” for “hit them out,” “sry” for “that is right,” and “c’meer” for “come here.” He believes that t is gradually succumbing to d, and cites “ass bedder” (for “that’s better”), “wen juh ged din?” (for “when did you get in?”), and “siddup” (for “sit up”). One hears countless other such decayed forms on the street every day. Have to is almost invariably made hafta, with the neutral vowel where I have put the second a. Let’s, already noticed, is le’ ’s. The neutral vowel replaces the oo of good in g’by. “What did you say” reduces itself to “wuz ay?” Maybe is mebby, perhaps is p’raps, so long is s’long, excuse me is skus me; the common salutation, “How are you?” is so dismembered that it finally emerges as a word almost indistinguishable from high. Here there is room for inquiry, and that inquiry deserves the best effort of American phonologists, for the language is undergoing rapid changes under their very eyes, or, perhaps more accurately, under their very ears, and a study of those changes should yield a great deal of interesting matter. How did the word stint, on American lips, first convert itself into stent and then into stunt? By what process was baulk changed into buck? Both stunt and buck are among the commonest words in the everyday American vocabulary, and yet no one, so far, has investigated them scientifically.
A by-way that is yet to be so much as entered is that of naturalized loan-words in the common speech. A very characteristic word of that sort is sashay. Its relationship to the French chassé seems to be plain, and yet it has acquired meanings in American that differ very widely from the meaning of chassé. How widely it is dispersed may be seen by the fact that it is reported in popular use, as a verb signifying to prance or to walk consciously, in Southeastern Missouri, Nebraska, Northwestern Arkansas, Eastern Alabama and Western Indiana, and, with slightly different meaning, on Cape Cod. The travels of café in America would repay investigation; particularly its variations in pronunciation. I believe that it is fast becoming kaif. Plaza, boulevard, vaudeville, menu and rathskeller have entered into the common speech of the land, and are pronounced as American words. Such words, when they come in verbally, by actual contact with immigrants, commonly retain some measure of their correct native pronunciation. Spiel, kosher, ganof and matzoh are examples; their vowels remain un-American. But words that come in visually, say through street-signs and the newspapers, are immediately overhauled and have thoroughly Americanized vowels and consonants thereafter. School-teachers have been trying to establish various pseudo-French pronunciations of vase for fifty years past, but it still rhymes with face in the vulgate. Vaudeville is vawd-vill; boulevard has a hard d at the end; plaza has two flat a’s; the first syllable of menu rhymes with bee; the first of rathskeller with cats; fiancée is fy-ancé-y; née rhymes with see; décolleté is de-coll-ty; hofbräu is huffbrow; the German w has lost its v-sound and becomes an American w. I have, in my day, heard proteege for protégé, habichoo for habitué, connisoor for connisseur, shirtso for scherzo, premeer for première, eetood for étude and prelood for prelude. Divorcée is divorcey, and has all the rakishness of the adjectives in -y. The first syllable of mayonnaise rhymes with hay. Crème de menthe is cream de mint. Schweizer is swite-ser. Rochefort is roke-fort. I have heard début with the last syllable rhyming with nut. I have heard minoot for minuet. I have heard tchef doover for chef d’œuvre. And who doesn’t remember
As I walked along the Boys Boo-long
With an independent air
and
Say aw re-vore,
But not good-by!
Charles James Fox, it is said, called the red wine of France Bordox to the end of his days. He had an American heart; his great speeches for the revolting colonies were more than mere oratory.
Footnotes
1 Sweet, perhaps the abbot of the order, makes almost indecent haste to sin. See the second paragraph on the very first page of vol. i of his New English Grammar.
2 Yale Review, April, 1918, p. 548.
3 Yale Review, op. cit., p. 560.
4 The Difficulties Created by Grammarians Are to be Ignored, by W. H. Wilcox, Atlantic Educational Journal, Nov., 1912, p. 8. The title of this article is quoted from ministerial instructions of 1909 to the teachers of French lyceés.
5 Op cit. p. 7. Mr. Wilcox is an instructor in the Maryland State Normal School.
6 See especially chapters ix and x of Words and Their Uses and chapters xvii, xviii and xix of Every-Day English; also the preface to the latter, p. xi et seq. The study of other languages has been made difficult by the same attempt to force the characters of Greek and Latin grammar upon them. One finds a protest against the process, for example, in E. H. Palmer’s Grammar of Hindustani, Persian and Arabic; London, 1906. In all ages, indeed, grammarians appear to have been fatuous. The learned will remember Aristophanes’ ridicule of them in The Clouds, 660-690.
7 The case is well summarized in Simpler English Grammar, by Patterson Wardlaw, Bull. of the University of S. Carolina, No. 38, pt. iii, July, 1914.
8 Cincinnati, 1868; rev. ed., 1878.
9 New York, 1903; rev. ed., 1915.
10 Even Sweet, though he bases his New English Grammar upon the spoken language and thus sets the purists at defiance, quickly succumbs to the labelling mania. Thus his classification of tenses includes such fabulous monsters as these: continuous, recurrent, neutral, definite, indefinite, secondary, incomplete, inchoate, short and long.
11 By W. F. Webster and Alice Woodworth Cooley; Boston, 1903; rev. eds., 1905 and 1909. The authors are Minneapolis teachers.
12 Op. cit. p. 8.
13 Bulletin No. 2; Washington, 1917.
14 The Middle American, American Magazine, March, 1907.
15 Cf. White: Every-Day English, p. 367 et seq.
16 Cf. Sweet: New English Grammar, vol. i, p. 5.
17 Dr. Charters’ report appears as Vol. XVI, No. 2, University of Missouri Bulletin, Education Series No. 9, Jan., 1915. He was aided in his inquiry by Edith Miller, teacher of English in one of the St. Louis high-schools.
18 You Know Me Al: New York, 1916.
19 Saturday Evening Post, July 11, 1914.
20 Bin is the correct American pronunciation. Bean, as we have seen, is the English. But I have often found ben, rhyming with pen, in such phrases as “I ben there.”
21 See p. 209.
22 Seldom used. Get is used in the place of it, as in “I am getting old” and “he got sick.”
23 Burned, with a distinct d-sound, is almost unknown in American. See p. 201.
24 Not used.
25 Cotched is heard only in the South, and mainly among the negroes. Catch, of course, is always pronounced ketch.
26 But “I drew three jacks,” in poker.
27 Fotch is also heard, but it is not general.
28 Fit and fitten, unless my observation errs, are heard only in dialect. Fit is archaic English. Cf. Thornton, vol. i, p. 322.
29 Glode once enjoyed a certain respectability in America. It occurs in the Knickerbocker Magazine for April, 1856.
30 Hanged is never heard.
31 Het is incomplete without the addition of up. “He was het up” is always heard, not “he was het.”
32 Always so pronounced. See p. 236.
33 See pp. 57 and 202.
34 Always used in place of rinse.
35 Always used in place of roil.
36 Sot is heard as a localism only.
37 See set, which is used almost invariably in place of sit.
38 Thunk is never used seriously; it always shows humorous intent.
39 See pp. 201 and 211.
40 Cf. Lounsbury: History of the English Language, pp. 309-10.
41 English As We Speak It In Ireland, p. 77.
42 The Science of Language, vol. i, p. 166.
43 The last stand of the distinct -ed was made in Addison’s day. He was in favor of retaining it, and in the Spectator for Aug. 4, 1711, he protested against obliterating the syllable in the termination “of our praeter perfect tense, as in these words, drown’d, walk’d, arriv’d, for drowned, walked, arrived, which has very much disfigured the tongue, and turned a tenth part of our smoothest words into so many clusters of consonants.”
44 A New English Grammar, pt. i, p. 380.
45 History of the English Language, p. 398.
46 And still more often as an adjective, as in “it was a boughten dress.”
47 You Know Me Al, p. 180; see also p. 122.
48 Cf. Lounsbury: History of the English Language, pp. 393 et seq.
49 Remark of a policeman talking to another. What he actually said was “before the Elks was c’m ’ere.” Come and here were one word, approximately cmear. The context showed that he meant to use the past perfect tense.
50 These examples are from Lardner’s story, A New Busher Breaks In, in You Know Me Al, pp. 122 et seq.
51 You Know Me Al, op. cit., p. 124.
52 The Making of English, p. 53.
53 Cf. Dialect Notes, vol. iii, pt. i, p. 59; ibid., vol. III, pt. iv, p. 283.
54 Henry Bradley, in The Making of English, pp. 54-5: “In the parts of England which were largely inhabited by Danes the native pronouns (i. e., heo, his, heom and heora) were supplanted by the Scandinavian pronouns which are represented by the modern she, they, them and their.” This substitution, at first dialectical, gradually spread to the whole language.
55 Cf. Sweet: A New English Grammar, pt. i, p. 344, par. 1096.
56 Before a noun beginning with a vowel thine and mine are commonly substituted for thy and my, as in “thine eyes” and “mine infirmity.” But this is solely for the sake of euphony. There is no compensatory use of my and thy in the absolute.
57 The Making of English, p. 58.
58 Cf. The Dialect of Southeastern Missouri, by D. S. Crumb, Dialect Notes, vol. ii, pt. iv, 1903, p. 337.
59 It occurs, too, of course, in other dialects of English, though by no means in all. The Irish influence probably had something to do with its prosperity in vulgar American. At all events, the Irish use it in the American manner. Joyce, in English As We Speak It in Ireland, pp. 34-5, argues that this usage was suggested by Gaelic. In Gaelic the accusative pronouns, e, i and iad (=him, her and them) are often used in place of the nominatives, sé, si and siad (=he, she and they), as in “is iad sin na buachaillidhe” (=them are the boys). This is “good grammar” in Gaelic, and the Irish, when they began to learn English, translated the locution literally. The familiar Irish “John is dead and him always so hearty” shows the same influence.
60 Pp. 144-50.
61 Modern English, p. 300.
62 A New English Grammar, pt. i, p. 339.
63 History of the English Language, pp. 274-5.
64 Modern English, p. 288-9.
65 Cf. p. 145n.
66 A New English Grammar, pt. i, p. 341.
67 It may be worth noting here that the misuse of me for my, as in “I lit me pipe” is quite unknown in American, either standard or vulgar. Even “me own” is seldom heard. This boggling of the cases is very common in spoken English.
68 A New English Grammar, pt. i, p. 341.
69 The King’s English, p. 63.
70 “Hon.” Edward E. Browne, of Wisconsin, in the House of Representatives, July 18, 1918, p. 9965.
71 Cf. Vogue Affixes in Present-Day Word-Coinage, by Louise Pound, Dialect Notes, vol. v, pt. i, 1918.
72 The Speech of a Child Two Years of Age, Dialect Notes, vol. iv, pt. ii, 1914.
73 A New English Grammar, pt. i, pp. 437-8.
74 The King’s English, p. 322. See especially the quotation from Frederick Greenwood, the distinguished English journalist.
75 Report of Edward J. Brundage, attorney-general of Illinois, on the East St. Louis massacre, Congressional Record, Jan. 7, 1918, p. 661.
76 The King’s English, op. cit.
77 Oct. 1, 1864.
78 At all, by the way, is often displaced by any or none, as in “he don’t lover her any” and “it didn’t hurt me none.”
79 See the bibliography for the publication of Drs. Read and Pound.
80 The only book that I can find definitely devoted to American sounds is A Handbook of American Speech, by Calvin L. Lewis; Chicago, 1916. It has many demerits. For example, the author gives a z-sound to the s in venison (p. 52). This is surely not American.
81 Maryland edition, July 18, 1914, p. 1.
82 Cf. Lounsbury: The Standard of Pronunciation in English, p. 172 et seq.
83 Stomp is used only in the sense of to stamp with the foot. One always stamps a letter. An analogue of stomp, accepted in correct English, is strop (e. g., razor-strop), from strap.
84 Our Own, Our Native Speech, McClure’s Magazine, Oct., 1916.