548 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Probably Doctor Johnson shared this feeling when he exclaimed in the 

 preface to his dictionary, Quis autem custodiet ipsos custodes? 



So much for the lexicographers of the eighteenth century. Let us 

 now consider some of the pronunciations authorized by them, which 

 have long since been discarded. These will serve as illustrations to 

 bring home to the mind of the reader the truth that our speech is slowly 

 but surely and constantly changing, and that English pronunciation, 

 unlike English spelling, has never been stereotyped in a fast, unvary- 

 ing form. They will also show how indispensable an auxiliary to 

 our crystallized, conventional spelling has the pronouncing dictionary 

 become. 



An interesting illustration is furnished by the word asparagus. 

 The popular pronunciation of this word in the eighteenth century was 

 sparrowgrass. This was felt by the orthoepists, however, to be a vulgar 

 corruption of the word, and they therefore strove with concerted effort 

 to stem the popular tide and to make the pronunciation conform to 

 abstract propriety as indicated by the spelling. Walker, in comment- 

 ing upon the pronunciation of the word, remarks, as if apologizing for 

 the theoretically correct form which he recommends, that ' the corrup- 

 tion of the word into sparrow-grass is so general that asparagus has 

 an air of stiffness and pedantry.' Another word with a no less inter- 

 esting history is cucumber. This word used to be generally pronounced 

 coivcumber. The popular pronunciation of this word as well as of 

 asparagus, once so universal, has survived even up to the present in 

 the lingo of the illiterate whites of New England and in the Negro 

 dialect. This vulgar pronunciation which was a thorn in the flesh to 

 the eighteenth century lexicographers, it is instructive to note in pass- 

 ing, was not the result of mere caprice, but was warranted by an old 

 variant spelling of the word. This historic spelling, long since dis- 

 carded altogether by the users of English, was formerly very prevalent 

 and in good literary usage. Hence little wonder that the vulgar 

 pronunciation for a long time contested the supremacy with the mode 

 of utterance now universally accepted. Even so high an authority as 

 Mr. Pepys refers in his ' Diary ' to a certain man as ' dead of eating 

 cowcumbers.' It was not till wellnigh the middle of the last century 

 that the orthoepists Knowles and Smart ventured to denounce cow- 

 cumber along with sparroiv-grass as vulgar and therefore tabooed in 

 polite circles. 



It is a well-established fact in the history of English pronunciation 

 that in the seventeenth century and far into the following century 

 such words as spoil, toil, boil, and so on, were pronounced, even in 

 best usage, precisely as they are uttered to-day in the Negro dialect 

 and by the illiterate whites among us, that is, just as if they were 

 written ' spile,' ' tile ' and ' bile.' This is conclusively proved by the 



