August 1, 1888.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



219 



Compared with the misery which the tenderest and truest 

 men and women have suffered, and must suffer, at the 

 thought of some at least among their lost dear ones 

 enduring an eternal life of suffering (or were it even but 

 the loss of the eternity of happiness of which their faith 

 assures them), the cruelties which men have inflicted on their 

 kind because of faith in the doctrine of everhisting life, 

 may be regarded (terrible though they have been) as adding 

 relatively "but little to the sum-total of misery which the 

 doctrine — be it true or folse— has assuredly entailed upon 

 the human race. Moreover, the contemplation of man's 

 cruelty to man in the holy name of religion tends to wrath 

 rather than to sorrow. Therefore I will leave such considera- 

 tions here untouched. 



ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 



{Concluded from p. 198.) 



HE passage in " As You Like It," where Celia 

 ridicules Le Beau's pronunciation, " spot " 

 for •' sport," suggests not only that in 

 Shakespeare's time the " r " was rolled, but 

 also that the pronunciation of the " o " was 

 then more nearly like our " u " in " but," 

 or that "spot" was pronounced " spoot," 

 and " sport " " spoort." For there is now a 

 marked ditferenco between the vowel sounds in the words 

 "spot" and "sport," whereas, Celia's play on the words 

 suggests that, but for the " r " lost in Le Beau's affected 

 pronunciation the words had the same sound. There is, 

 indeed, re;ison for supposing that a.s " a " in old times was 

 " ah," and " e " was our " a " (as in fate), so " o " was more 

 nearly our " u." Thus we find Constance saying : 



O lawful let it be 

 That I have room with Kome to curse awhile. 



In old Scottish writing our word " but " appears nearly 

 always " hot." The pronunciation '• goald " for " gold " is 

 even yet heard in many parts of England, and is common in 

 Ireland and Scotland. And the " u " sound in .such words 

 as " shoe," " London," (fee., serves to show that " o " was 

 regarded of old as representing this sound. (Observe that 

 this being so, the " u " sound in " London " is not a modern 

 corruption). 



On the other hand, there is no reason for supposing that 

 " u " originally represented the sound of " iu " or " yu " 

 given to it now. The pronimciations " dook " for " duke," 

 instead of '• dyook," and " Toosday " for " Tyoosday," should 

 be regarded rather as archaisms than as vulgarisms. 



We have already seen that diplithongs like " ea " in 

 English, " ai " in French and the various combinations used 

 at diff'erent stages of the progress of a language as spoken 

 and written, give useful information as to the force of the 

 simple vowels in past times. As steady changes have 

 taken place in this respect, we can not alwa3's be quite 

 certain as to the force of a simple vowel at any given time, 

 or even of a diphthong, though the latter is usually a much 

 easier matter. For instance, old Pepys spells the word 

 " skate " (not the fish, which, so far as I know, is not 

 mentioned in his diary) in both the forms, " skate " and 

 " skeat." We can infer from this that in his time " a " 

 had already lost the "ah" sound, since "skeat" Ciinnot 

 possibly represent the sound " skaht," while " ea " still 

 represented the sound of " a " in fate. But we know that 

 long after Pepys' time the proper sound for " a " was 

 regarded as " ah." The first letter of the alphabet was even 

 called " ah " till a much later time in England, and is still 

 so called in Ireland, r being chstinguished in .sound by being 



called " ahrr " — -justifying the name given it by the nurse in 

 " Romeo and Juliet "— " the dog's letter." 



Let us consider another diphthong, " ei." If this is dealt 

 with according to the known sounds of "e" and "i" in 

 long past times, we see that it represented the sound which 

 we should now write " aee " given as a diphthong. Here 

 we recognise the justice of the rule suggested at the outset, 

 that the further we go from the parent stem the more likely 

 we are to find the older pronunciations adhered to. The 

 Englishman says " eyether " and " neyether," the American 

 says " eether " and " necther," which is decidedly nearer the 

 old sound. But when the Irishman was asked : " Do you 

 say 'neyether' or 'neether,'" he answered, "I say 

 ' nayther,' " an answer doubly true. For it tells the 

 Irishman's practice, and it indicates what really is the true 

 pronunciation of the word, if old fashion is to be followed. 

 Moreover, though it would decidedly be .a solecism now to 

 say " ayther," yet the knowledge that this is the true pro- 

 nunciation is useful, as helping to show the origin of the 

 word from the old Saxon " aegther " contracted from 

 " aegh-wtether " i.e. "each-whether." (In passing we note 

 that, according to the interpretation we have found already 

 for " ea," " each " would be properly pronounced " aytch," 

 by which the connection existing between " either " and 

 " each " is clearly enough indicated — I mean, by noting that 

 they were sounded " aytcli " and " ayther." This connection 

 is not lost in the American pronunciation, but it is entirely 

 lost when we pronounce the words as in England " eetch " 

 and " eyether.") 



One of the strangest features of our English speech to 

 Americans is the pronunciation of such words as " Derby," 

 " Hertford," " clerk," &c., " Darby," '• Hartford," " dark," 

 and so forth. Here both countries have changed their 

 modes of pronunciation, but in opposite dii-ections (I refer 

 to the more usual American pronunciation of such words, 

 for in New England we not unfrequently hear " dark," <fec., 

 as in the old country). There can be no doubt that the 

 original pronunciation of " clerk " was like that given still 

 to the word " clerc " in France. For we are certain that the 

 word is of French origin, and we are equally certain that its 

 pronunciation in France, always represented by the same 

 vowel letter, has changed very little, if at all. The word 

 then of old w.as pronounced " clairk " — as we should now 

 write the sound. " Clerk," no doubt, represented that 

 sound rightly enough of old. In Scotland this is the way 

 the word is actually pronounced, often even by the educated, 

 though thev recognise that in Great Britain at any rate 

 custom requires the sound " dark." In England the correct 

 intermediate sound " clairk " gradually changed tow.ards 

 " dark " till this usage became established. In America the 

 spelling of the word seems to have regulated the pronuncia- 

 tion, at first, among the educated, from whom (as was 

 natural in colonial communities) the rest took their pronun- 

 ciation. Hence, as the force of " e " in sjjelling gradually 

 changed to its present " er," or short " u," value, " clerk," 

 pronounced " clairk," gradually changed to " clurk." B>it 

 the proper name spelled and pronounced Clark, Clarke, etc., 

 shows in America as in England how usage long since esta- 

 blished the English pronunciation of the word. So does 

 t'le American spelling of the name " Hartford." Here the 

 influence of teaching could not, as in the case of the 

 scholarly " clerk," bring the general body of the community 

 to say " Hurtford," for men never willingly alter the pro- 

 nunciation of old home-place names. So, as the mountain 

 would not come to Mohamed — " the proverb is something 

 musty " — they altered the spelling to correspond with the 

 common pronunciation, since the common pronunciation 

 would not conform itself to the spelling. Yet Americans 

 should not allow the spelling, " Hartford," to destroy re- 



