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♦ KNOW^LEDGE ♦ 



[August 1, 1888. 



membrance of the fact that Hartford, of Connecticut, was 

 named after old Hertford, in England. 



Many words regarded as Americanisms, and iu one sense 

 very properly so, are in danger of losing the evidence of 

 their old Eaglish origin through the changes of sound that 

 have come over our simple and diphthongal vowel?. For 

 example, consider the words " peart " and " slick." These 

 are commonly regarded as provincial English in origin, and 

 as Americanisms because they are apt to be heard all over 

 Ameriai and to be used by classes which in England do not 

 use these words even in the very districts where they are 

 commonly used by the working orders. In reality, these 

 words are simply "pert" and "sleek" differently pro- 

 nounced. Analysing them according to the rules we have 

 recognised, we see that neither " pert " nor " peart " can be 

 the original pronunciation of the word "pert." "Slick" 

 and " sleek " are both very near to the old pronunciation of 

 "sleek," probably "slick" the nearer of the two. (We 

 have in the Danish " slikke," in Icelandic slikr.) As for 

 " pert " it is derived from the old French " apert," still 

 existing in combination in the word malapert (which shows, 

 by the way, that originally the woi-d " pert " implied no 

 rudeness or impertinence). Therefore, the original sound 

 was " pairt " — as we should now spell it. This would be 

 represented in old times by " peart" ; and, indeed, we find 

 Sir Philip Sidney spelling the word " pearte," writing of 

 " pearte boldness " (not, be it noticed, simply " peartness " 

 as he would if the word " pert " alone had had in his day an 

 unpleasant significance). It was also written " peert," just 

 as " great " is written " greet " in the passage quoted near 

 the beginning of this essay. But with the known force of 

 " ea " and " ee " in old times, each spelling assures us that 

 the original pronunciation of the word was " pairt," and 

 that the " pert," " peart," and " peert " of to-day are one 

 and the same word, all of them more or less corrupt in 

 pronunciation. 



Before leaving the English vowels, about whose sounds, 

 however, a volume might be written and thousands of 

 curious examples produced, I must note one or two usages 

 which, at a first hearing, seem (to Englishmen at any rate) 

 peculiar. 



Take first the "a" in "bath" and such words, which 

 Westerners are so tickled by when they hear it from an 

 English mouth. The true English sound is " bahth," not 

 as too often rendered in America (by an exaggeration of our 

 method) " bawth." Now, this is nearer the old pronuncia- 

 tion than " bath " with the " a " as in " fat." The New 

 Englander who s;iys (not that all do) " mahn " for " man " 

 is probably nearer the old .sound than the Englishman who 

 says " man " ; but the Westerner has departed from old 

 usage still farther when he says "bath "with the "a" as 

 in " bat." 



In America the country folk mostly say " wrastle " for 

 " wrestle." Here both the English and the country 

 American pronunciation are corrupt ; though, of course, 

 no educated man can say anything but " wrestle." " I 

 would have told you," says Le Beau in "As You Like It" 

 (folio edition), " of good wr.astling " — and " wrastle " it is 

 all through, whether the Beau, or Celia, or llosalind, the 

 Duke, Orlando, or Charles the Wrastler himself, uses the 

 word. But how was the word pronounced ? It could not 

 possibly have been " wrestle," as we say it. It might have 

 bsen either with the " a " as in " fat," " fote." or " tar," 

 " wrassel," " wraystle," or " wrahstle." Probably the word 

 was pronounced " wraystle," which would be correctly 

 represented in Shakespeare's time by " wrastle," and a little 

 later by " wrestle " (now representing a difl'erent sound). 

 The old Sason verb was " wraestlian " ; that origin, as well 

 as usage in regard to vowel letters, would indicate this 



pronunciation. The American and country English pro- 

 nunciation are obviously nearer the old form than our 

 modern English and the cultured American usage. 



I have mentioned an American way of pronouncing the 

 word " very." It chances that this was the first Americanism 

 I ever noticed, and I noticed it rather early in my American 

 experience. I had had but one conversation with an 

 American, on business, in which I had noticed no difference, 

 unless the careful pronunciation " afterwards " for our 

 clipped English " afterw'ds" could be called such, when, on 

 Friday, (Jctober 2, 1873, I travelled from London to Liver- 

 pool in the same carriage with an American lady and gentle- 

 man. At Euston the gentleman asked his wife some 

 question about his luggage ; the answ-er, " I'm not vuhry 

 sure," introduced to my notice the pronunciation I refer to. 

 (" Vuhry " does not represent the exact sound; the vowel 

 tone is correctly represented Iiy the " u " in " fur," but there 

 is a curious rest on the first syllable, which gives the " u" 

 sound a little more stress than it has, for example — in the 

 word "furry.") In England, of course, "very" rhymes 

 perfectly with " merry." But the English pronunciation 

 is certainly a corruption. The word was indeed formerly 

 written " verri " as well as " veray," and in the French 

 vrni we have evidence of a sound nearer to our English 

 " very " than to the Americanism we are consideiing. But 

 the original French word was " verai," and the Latin 

 " vrrus " indicates the proper pronunciation of the " e " as 

 in the modern Italian " ver " (" e " like " a " iu " fate "). 

 The Scotch in their " vara " are not quite right, neither 

 are we in England. Nor is the Ameriranism right. The 

 incorrupt prouunciatiou which, however, would by no 

 means be correct now, would make " very " rhyme very 

 nearly with " fairy." •■* 



And now a word or two on the consonants. It might 

 seem that they can undergo little change — a " t " is a " t " 

 wherever the English language is spoken, nay all the world 

 over. It may be altered into a " d " or into " th," but it is not 

 of such alterations that I am here chiefly speaking. Rather I 

 am trying to show that the actual force of particular letters 

 has changed. It seems at first sight impossible that con- 

 sonantal letters can have altered in their actual force as 

 we have seen that vowels have. Yet not a few of our 

 consonants have altered in this manner. Take first our old 

 friend the letter " h." I am not about to dwell on the 

 special English misuse of this letter, which, indeed, I con- 

 sidered fully about two years since in the pages of the 

 Atlantic Monthly. I am proposing to show what many, I 

 believe, will be somewhat surprised to learn, that the letter 

 " h " originally represented more than a mere aspirate. The 

 English race began to misuse the " h " long before they 

 began to drop their aspirates and to throw aspirates in 

 where they are not wanted. Consider first the very name 

 given of old to this letter and still used, though its signifi- 

 cance has long since passed away. We call the letter 

 " aitch." Every other consonant is called by a name which 

 includes the force of the letter, and no other consonantal force 

 whatever. In the name of " h " .alone there is a consonantal 

 force which is more than the letter itself, however fully 

 aspirated or even exaspirated, ever has in our mouths. Is 

 there not some evidence here that " h " formerly had a 

 similar force 1 



We may here pause a moment to ask if the letter were 

 always so called, or if the name given to it, though similarly 



* One of tlie oddest of all the vowel changes I have ever heard of 



has recently come under my notice. I had long observed that 

 uncultured persons in America spoke of Eyetalians for Italians ; 

 Rooshans (like Mrs. Gamp) for Russians, and so forth ; but that our 

 old familiar Louisa should be pronounced Lou-ej-e-sar was, I must 

 admit, a new and painful e.^perience. 



