552 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for the language, which the Germans call ' Sprachgefuhl/ is, after all, 

 a safer guide than the rules laid down by the pedants. Candor compels 

 us to admit that the popular tendency is more in harmony with the 

 genius of our vernacular. But the scholars have made a brave fight 

 for what we may denominate abstract propriety, and the result, thus 

 far, is a drawn battle. Each side has scored some points, and each 

 side has had to make some concessions. Thus balcony, academy, decor- 

 ous and metamorphosis, to cite a few concrete examples, have finally 

 triumphed over the earlier pedantic pronunciations, which required 

 the accent on the penult of these words. Horizon, on the other hand, 

 stands as a monument of a concession to the learned, since this word in 

 Elizabethan times had the stress on the initial syllable, as had also the 

 name of the month July. Popular usage in favor of the received pro- 

 nunciation of auditor, senator, victory, orator and many similar words 

 has achieved' a decided triumph over the early orthoepists, who, it was 

 very obvious, were fighting a losing battle in their efforts to retain the 

 classical accent. 



It follows that pronunciation is the resultant product of several 

 forces which are silently but constantly acting upon the living language. 

 There are, to be sure, various methods of pronunciation, but the 

 standard is that sanctioned by the most cultivated circles of society. 

 Now, it is the function of the pronouncing dictionary, and its sole 

 reason for existence, to determine and record the usage of the most 

 cultured classes. But here is where the rub comes. This is the 

 stumbling-block in the way of the lexicographers. It may seem, upon 

 first blush, that the task of the orthoepist is easy enough. But not so 

 in actual practice. Countless and insuperable difficulties soon begin to 

 loom up a little ahead in the path of the intending orthoepist, and he 

 finds, to his regret and his occasional disgust, that the way he has 

 marked out for himself is not strewn with roses. It is an arduous 

 undertaking which holds out but meager hope of successful accomplish- 

 ment, to make an accurate record of the pronunciation received in any 

 large class of society. The labor and trouble are multiplied many times 

 when an attempt is made to determine the best orthoepical usage in a 

 democracy. There is really no absolute standard of pronunciation in 

 English and there can not be, from the very nature of the case, as 

 Professor Lounsbury has clearly demonstrated in his recent luminous 

 book on this subject. 



Yet it is unquestionably true that the pronouncing dictionary is 

 constantly making for uniformity of pronunciation. There is far less 

 difference in English orthoepy at the beginning of the twentieth cen- 

 tury, even despite the present diversity of good usage, than there was 

 at the beginning of the eighteenth century. A glance at the history 

 usage. If we may trust Professor Lounsbury, an eminent authority 



