ii6 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



if sofis and suns, and reign and rain had been spelt alike, as our reformers 

 desire ? Hail, Holey Light and Cease, O clamorous Mews are other monstrous 

 puns which the said ingenious gentlemen would foist upon us. As a reformer 

 myself, I find it difficult to deal with homophones without modifying our 

 principle of one sound one sign — yet these are only a few examples which 

 occur to me curretite calanio. But while I agree that air, ere, and heir should 

 be distinguished, I see no reason why all of them should have been spelt 

 wrong, as they are. 



I think that Mr. Bridges is not concerned so much with collecting the 

 homophone carrots in his back-garden as in throwing remarks over the paling 

 at those enemies of the human race who live in the adjoining premises — 

 the fonertishnz. He is aghast at the horrors of English prernunsieishn, 

 as disclosed in the Phonetic Dictionary of the English Language by Herr 

 Hermann Michaelis of Briebrich and Mr. Daniel Jones, Lecturer on Phonetics 

 at University College, London (Hachette & Co., 191 3.) This work seems 

 to have been designed to teach German commercial travellers how to pass 

 in England for natives and even for members of English Universities, not 

 to mention of our aristocracy ; and it is a good book because it succeeds in its 

 object— of showing foreigners, by means of the International Phonetic 

 Association's alphabet, how exactly slipshod English may be mumbled in 

 familiar conversation. But nevertheless it reminds me of the Chinese 

 tailor who, when told to copy a pair of trousers, put in the patches as well ; 

 or, more expressly, of the German who before the war aspired to teach his 

 countrymen the art of fashionable golf, and therefore showed them, not how 

 to play well, but how to press, slice, and adopt the correct stance ! 



The Poet Laureate admits the competence of the book for its project, 

 but quarrels with the authors because of their delusion that their pronunci- 

 ation is the ideal one ; and he has fully established his point. The language 

 is certainly often spoken as they indicate ; but also in many other ways, 

 depending upon locality, class, race, individuality, and even momentary 

 occasion. Thus, I myself am conscious that I use different pronunciations 

 over the table, through a telephone, and to a large audience. Which of all these 

 dialects, or shades of dialect, is the correct one, even — let us say — at Oxford ? 

 I have been interested in the subject for forty years, and have indeed fre- 

 quently tried to solve the great problem of " the average pronunciation " 

 by a means which I have not seen mentioned in books on Phonetics — 

 by going (wickedly enough) to church in order to hear the massed pronunci- 

 ation of the congregation in responses or singing. It has been a revelation. 

 Persons who employed the worst Michaelis- J ones speech in conversation 

 were now heard to space their unstressed vowels in a way which would 

 have shocked the lexicogrerferz extrordnrly. Yet the change was evidently 

 unconscious. The truth is that, as Mr. Bridges emphasises, the pronunci- 

 ation indicated in the written language is the standard pronunciation 

 (when the spelling is normal), and the Michaelis- Jones language is merely 

 the result of hurried verbalisation. He gives us a useful analogy in the 

 case of handwriting — which we know too well varies from a beautiful 

 calligraphy to utter scrawl : one might as well argue that the scribble is 

 the correct way of writing because it is the most common — and in fact 

 there is actually a type of fool who writes badly on purpose, in order to show 

 his own " character," just as other people drawl or drivel their speech. 



This alleged scientific establishment of the despotism of a degraded 

 pronunciation by means of phonographs and phonetic type is now a very 

 old pose, and was, I think, started by Henry Sweet and R. J. Lloyd at the end 

 of last century. I knew the latter and discussed the question with him often ; 

 and though he died in Switzerland early this century his views persist in 

 the Dictionary. I for one agree with few of the doctrines laid down in the 

 preface of that book. The authors say that the spoken language is far more 



