Society for Pure English Part 13

pulse (_pease_).

quean.

rail (_chide_).

raze.

reave.

reck.

repair (_resort_).

rheum.

rood.

rue.

sack (_v._).

sage (_adj._).

sallow (_willow_).

sere.

soar.

spray (_sprig_).

still (_adj._ n.b. _keep still_).

stoup.

surge.

swift.

teem.

toil (_snare_).

vane.

van (_fan_).

vail (_v._).

wage (_war_).

wain.

ween.

whit.

wight.

wile.

wrack.

wreak.

wot.

aught.

[Footnote 15: Some of the words in this table are also in the last list. This list is an attempt to tabulate words falling out of use or seldom heard now in the conversation of average educated persons who talk Southern English or what is called P.S.P. (see p. 38); to some of them the word may be unknown, and if it is known, they avoid using it because it sounds to them strange or affected. It is difficult to _prove_ that any particular word is in this condition, and the list is offered tentatively. It is made from Jones' dictionary, which is therefore allowed to rule whether the word is obsolescent rather than obsolete: some of these seem to be truly obsolete. Some will appear to be convincing examples of obsolescence, others not; but it must be remembered that the fact of a word being still commonly heard in some district or trade (though that may seem to show that it is in 'common use') is no evidence that it is not dying out; it is rather evidence that it was lately more living, which is the same as being obsolescent.]

4. _THAT THE LOSS DUE TO h.o.m.oPHONY THREATENS TO IMPOVERISH THE LANGUAGE._

New words are being added to the dictionary much faster than old words are pa.s.sing out of use, but it is not a question of numbers nor of dictionaries. A chemist told me that if the world were packed all over with bottles as close as they could stand, he could put a different substance into each one and label it. And science is active in all her laboratories and will print her labels. If one should admit that as many as ninety-nine per cent. of these artificial names are neither literary nor social words, yet some of them are, since everything that comes into common use must have a name that is frequently spoken.

Thus _baik_, _sackereen_, and _mahjereen_ are truly new English word-sounds; and it may be, if we succ.u.mb to anarchical communism, that margarine and saccharine will be lauded by its dissolute mumpers as enthusiastically as men have hitherto praised and are still praising b.u.t.ter and honey. 'Bike' certainly would have already won a decent place in poetry had it been christened more gracefully and not nicknamed off to live in backyards with cab and bus. The whole subject of new terms is too vast to be parenthetically handled, and I hope that some one will deal with it competently in an early publication of the S.P.E. The question must here remain to be determined by the evidence of the words in the table of obsoletes, which I think is convincing; my overruling contention being that, however successful we may be in the coinage of new words (and we have no reason to boast of success) and however desirable it is to get rid of some of the bad useless h.o.m.ophones, yet we cannot afford to part with any old term that can conveniently be saved.

We have the best Bible in the world, and in Shakespeare the greatest poet; we have been suckled on those twin b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and our children must have degenerated if they need a.s.ses' milk. Nor is it only because the old is better than the new that we think thus. If we speak more proudly of Trafalgar than of Zeebrugge, it is not because Trafalgar is so far finer a sounding word than Zeebrugge, as indeed it is, nor because we believe that the men of Nelson's time were better than our men of to-day, we know they were not, but because the spirit that lives on ideals will honour its parents; and it is thinking in this way that makes n.o.ble action instinctive and easy. Nelson was present at Zeebrugge leading our sailors, as Shakespeare is with us leading our writers, and no one who neglects the rich inheritance to which Englishmen are born is likely ever to do any credit to himself or his country.

5. _THAT THE SOUTH ENGLISH DIALECT IS A DIRECT AND CHIEF CAUSE OF h.o.m.oPHONES._

[Sidenote: Evidence of Jones' dictionary.]

Evidence of the present condition of our ruling educated speech in the South of England I shall take from Mr. Daniel Jones' dictionary,[16]

the authority of which cannot, I think, be disputed. It is true that it represents a p.r.o.nunciation so bad that its slovenliness is likely to be thought overdone, but there is no more exaggeration than any economical system of phonetic spelling is bound to show. It is indeed a strong and proper objection to all such simplifications that they are unable to exhibit the finer distinctions; but this must not imply that Mr. Jones' ear is lacking in delicate perception, or that he is an incompetent observer. If he says, as he does say, that the second syllable in the words _obloquy_ and _parasite_ are spoken by educated Londoners with the same vowel-sound (which he denotes by [e], that is the sound of _er_ in the word _danger_), then it is true that they are so p.r.o.nounced, or at least so similarly that a trained ear refuses to distinguish them [obl_er_quy, par_er_site].

[Footnote 16: _A Phonetic Dictionary of the English Language_, by Hermann Michaelis, Headmaster of the Mittelschule in Berlin, and Daniel Jones, M.A., Lecturer on Phonetics at University College, London, 1913. There is a second edition of this book in which the words are in the accustomed alphabetical order of their literary spelling.]

To this an objector might fairly reply that Mr. Jones could distinguish the two sounds very well if it suited him to do so; but that, as it is impossible for him to note them in his defective phonetic script, he prefers to confuse them. I shall not lose sight of this point,[17] but here I will only say that, if there really is a difference between these two vowels in common talk, then if Mr. Jones can afford to disregard it it must be practically negligible, and other phoneticians will equally disregard it, as the Oxford Press has in its smaller dictionary.

[Footnote 17: I am not likely to forget it or to minimize it, for it is my own indictment against Mr. Jones' system, and since his practice strongly supports my contention I shall examine it and expose it (see p. 43); but the objection here raised is not really subversive of my argument here, as may be judged from the fact that the Oxford University Press has adopted or countenanced Mr. Jones' standard in their small popular edition of the large dictionary.]

[Sidenote: Its trustworthiness.]

I suppose that thirty years ago it would have been almost impossible to find any German who could speak English so well as to pa.s.s for a native: they spoke as Du Maurier delighted to represent them in _Punch_. During the late war, however, it has been no uncommon thing for a German soldier to disguise himself in English uniform and enter our trenches, relying on his mastery of our tongue to escape suspicion; and it was generally observed how many German prisoners spoke English _like a native_. Now this was wholly due to their having been taught Southern English on Mr. Jones' model and method.

Again, those who would repudiate the facts that I am about to reveal, and who will not believe that in their own careless talk they themselves actually p.r.o.nounce the words very much as Mr. Jones prints them,[18] should remember that the sounds of speech are now mechanically recorded and reproduced, and the records can be compared; so that it would betray incompetence for any one in Mr. Jones'

position to misrepresent the facts, as it would be folly in him to go to the trouble and expense of making such a bogus book as his would be were it untrue; nor could he have attained his expert reputation had he committed such a folly.

[Footnote 18: This is a very common condition. The habitual p.r.o.nunciation is a.s.sociated in the mind with the familiar eye-picture of the literary printed spelling so closely that it is difficult for the speaker to believe that he is not uttering the written sounds; but he is not competent to judge his own speech. For instance, almost all Englishmen believe that the vowel which we write _u_ in _but_, _ugly_, _unknown_, &c., is really a _u_, like the _u_ in _full_, and not a disguised _a_; and because the written _s_ is sometimes voiced they cannot distinguish between _s_ and _z_, nor without great difficulty separate among the plural terminations those that are spoken with an _s_ from those that are spoken with a _z_. I was shocked when I first discovered my own delusions in such matters, and I still speak the bad Southern English that I learnt as a child and at school. I can hardly forgive my teachers and would not myself be condemned in a like reprobation.]

Again, and in support of the trustworthiness of the records, I am told by those concerned in the business that for some years past no Englishman could obtain employment in Germany as teacher of English unless he spoke the English vowels according to the standard of Mr. Jones' dictionary; and it was a recognized device, when such an appointment was being considered, to request the applicant to speak into a machine and send the record by post to the Continent; whereupon he was approved or not on that head by the agreement of the record with the standard which I am about to ill.u.s.trate from the dictionary.

All these considerations make a strong case for the truth of Mr.

Jones' representation of our 'standard English', and his book is the most trustworthy evidence at my disposal: but before exhibiting it I would premise that our present fas.h.i.+onable dialect is not to be considered as the wanton local creator of all the faults that Mr.

Jones can parade before the eye. Its qualities have come together in various ways, nor are the leading characteristics of recent origin.

I am convinced that our so-called standard English sprang actively to the fore in Shakespeare's time, that in the Commonwealth years our speech was in as perilous a condition as it is to-day, and at the Restoration made a self-conscious recovery, under an impulse very like that which is moving me at the present moment; for I do not look upon myself as expressing a personal conviction so much as interpreting a general feeling, shared I know by almost all who speak our tongue, Americans, Australians, Canadians, Irish, New Zealanders, and Scotch, whom I range alphabetically lest I should be thought to show prejudice or bias in any direction. But this is beyond the present purpose, which is merely to exhibit the tendency which this so-called degradation has to create h.o.m.ophones.

[Sidenote: Mauling of words.]

As no one will deny that h.o.m.ophones are to be made by mauling words, I will begin by a selection of words from Mr. Jones' dictionary showing what our Southern English is doing with the language. I shall give in the first column the word with its literary spelling, in the second Mr. Jones' phonetic representation of it, and in the third column an attempt to represent that sound to the eye of those who cannot read the phonetic script, using such makes.h.i.+ft spellings as may be found in any novel where the p.r.o.nunciation of the different speakers is differentiated.

_Examples from Mr. Jones' p.r.o.nouncing Dictionary._[19]

parsonage. p[a]:s[n.]i[dz] [-sn-] pahs'nidge _or_ pahsnidge.

picture. pik[ts][e] pictsher.

scriptural. skrip[ts][er]r[er]l scriptshererl _or_ scriptshrl.

temperature. tempri[ts][e] tempritsher.

interest. intrist intrist.

senator. senit[e] _and_ senniter _and_ sen[e]tor sennertor.

blossoming. bl[o]s[e]mi[ng] blosserming.

natural. nae[ts]r[er]l natshrerl _or_ natshrl.

orator. [o]r[e]t[e] orrerter.

rapturous. raep[ts][er]r[e]s raptsherers _or_ raptshrers.

parasite. paer[e]sait parrersite.

obloquy. [o]bl[e]kwi oblerquy.

syllogise. sil[e][dz]aiz sillergize.

equivocal. ikwiv[e]k[er]l ikwivverk'l.

immaterial. im[e]ti[e]ri[e]l immertierierl.

miniature. mini[ts][e] minnitsher.

extraordinary. ikstr[o]:dnri ikstrordnry.

salute. s[e]lu:t [-lju:-] serloot _and_ serlute.

solution. s[e]lu:[s][e]n [-lju:-] serloosh'n _and_ serl[=u]sh'n.