NOTES 633 



to be studied apart from its special purpose ; but I should like to make two 

 remarks upon it. 



First, regarding the supposed pronunciation of English. As I said before, 

 I do not think that it is a sound rendering. Pronunciation is a very variable 

 quantity, and I myself am conscious of using different pronunciations when 

 I speak in various ways. When I talk casually to a friend I suppose that I 

 approach very nearly to fernetik EngUsh ; when I talk through the telephone 

 my phones are much more distinctly uttered ; and when I am called upon to 

 address an audience I am forced to be equally distinct, and therefore to soar 

 far above the fernetik standard. This book adopts the first class of pro- 

 nunciation almost throughout, not only when Dickens's characters are 

 speaking, but when he speaks himself. With the former perhaps we can 

 have no quarrel ; but is it quite fair to treat Dickens himself in a similar 

 manner ? Would he have said klouz instead of clothes ? Above all, would 

 he have dropped his h's in unstressed words, as in him and his ? I do not 

 quite blame Mr. Rice for this, because I know that it has long been supposed 

 among fonertishns that we actually do drop our h's in unstressed positions — 

 even when we speak " educated " English ; though, of course, we should not 

 dream of dropping an h at the beginning of a stressed word. The pose is a 

 similar one to that which ascribes to our aristocracy the habit of dropping 

 g's in shootin' z,nd fishin\ But I do not think either accusation is true, and 

 have recently made some very careful observations on the point among my 

 friends. Indeed, they have been struck by the fact that I have attended 

 much more closely to their conversation than usual, and, on their asking the 

 reason why, they have been informed that I wished to find out whether they 

 dropped their unstressed h's. As a matter of fact, not one of them did so, 

 even though many of them are such humble or half-educated creatures as 

 mere men of science, or doctors, or the like. But I have had the supreme 

 honour of listening to one peer, and he dropped neither his h's nor his g's ; 

 while lecturers on platforms and parsons in pulpits have seldom done so in 

 my hearing. On the other hand, I know a peer who drops his stressed h's, 

 and always does so, I am convinced, on purpose, just to show his indepen- 

 dence — and quite right too I As the result of my inquiry my friends have 

 been rather hurt ; but I did find one common defect even among the most 

 distinguished of them, namely, the horrible one of inserting an r where it 

 ought not to be. For example, a man told me that he was just off to the 

 Indier Office. The reader will easily obtain an idear of what I mean. This 

 is, of course, a serious fault. 



Now, as to the script employed — I am very familiar with the notation 

 of I.P.A., but must confess that this book has given me a rude shock. I 

 find great difficulty in reading the book, in spite of my familiarity with that 

 notation. It has fundamental mistakes which ought never to have been 

 made — though, at first sight, they seem to be very small matters. We 

 must remember, however, that ordinary script has been evolved after many 

 centuries of trial and is designed, if not for expressing words phonetically, 

 yet certainly for expressing them legibly. For example, capitals are not 

 used in this book for proper names, thus causing immediate stumbling of 

 the reader almost in every sentence. Again, the " longus " employed for 

 the vowels is a very bad one, because it breaks up numbers of words as if 

 with a colon, and it takes a moment or two to learn whether we are not 

 dealing with a mark of punctuation. Again, the word weev perplexed me 

 for some time until I found it meant we've — another defect in the notation, 

 because we must make such distinctions in the written word if not in the spoken. 

 Again, the accents (which are placed before the accentuated syllables) are a 

 terrible plague, and are often unnecessary. Really the consonantal diphthong 

 in judge is not very truthfully represented by dzhudzh — unless the speaker 

 has been dining somewhat freely. In this case, however, the speaker seldom 



