308 



Linguistic Discussions. 



pronunciation. There was a time in the history of the language when 

 the normal first sound of a was aw, and when all the other vowels 

 were sounded as near as may be like the corresponding ones in Ger- 

 man. But uo man can put his finger on any particular period and 

 say that in such an age or generation that change of the vowel sounds 

 took place. Some time since I made a study of some of the poems of 

 Thomas Sackville. Earl of Dorset, who lived from 1536 to 1608, and 

 of John Donne, who lived 1573 to 1631. Among the rhymes taken 

 at random are : were and fear; fear, there and bear; peer, hear, 

 year and dear ; there, and uprear ; there, hair and where, and con- 

 sequently all these interchangeably used with each other ; wears and 

 tears (the noun) ; bred and dread; dread and need ; beat and great ; 

 heart and smart; wheel, smile and while; shine, fine, and seen ; 

 grief, chief, life and strife; blood, stood, food and good; draught 

 (a drink) and taught ; thought and fraught ; plaint and torment : stone, 

 one, anon ; reward and regard ; wound (to injure) and found. But 

 how these rhyming words were then pronounced is more than any one 

 now living can tell. 



PROPER PRONUI^CIATIOIS'. 



There are two grand divisions of the English speaking people who are 

 affecting the pronunciation of the language ; first, the conservatives, 

 and second, all the rest. The conservative element for the most part 

 is to be found among scholars. The aim of the student is to discover 

 truth and then maintain it. He need not be tauricephalous about it, 

 but should be firm to lead rather than easily to be led by ignorance. 

 A scholar would be apt to say museum and not wzz^seum, heroine, and 

 not heroine, because he knows the e in these words has been handed 

 down to us as long in quantitv. He would, however submit to the 

 idiomatic law^s of the language and say geography and not geography. 

 He would observe the rule that where no violence is done to the general 

 laws of the English pronunciation, the quantity of the vowels in the 

 original tongue is to be retained. When a given pronunciation is once 

 adopted as a standard, although he knows it to be a corruption or degra- 

 dation of an older correct one, he will accept it and try to have others do 

 the same. And just here he will be opposed by others still more conser- 

 vative than himself, the illiterate. They, for instance, have heard 

 their fathers and grandfathers say arth and laming, and they will 

 j regard it as an affectation to hear you pronounce these words earth 

 (urth) and le^'ning (lurning). So far as preserving the old and true 

 and best pronunciation of this class of words is concerned, the illiterate 

 are right — but they are not right in not accepting a decision rendered 



