The American Language
American enunciates it clearly, rhyming it with /damn/. Or try the two
with any word ending in /-g/, say /sporting/ or /ripping/. Or with any
word having /r/ before a consonant, say /card/, /harbor/, /lord/ or
/preferred/. "The majority of Englishmen," says Menner, "certainly do
not pronounce the /r/ ...; just as certainly the majority of educated
Americans pronounce it distinctly."[83] Henry James, visiting the
United States after many years of residence in England, was much
harassed by this persistent /r/-sound, which seemed to him to resemble
"a sort of morose grinding of the back teeth."[84] So sensitive to it
did he become that he began to hear where it was actually
non-existent, save as an occasional barbarism, for example, in
/Cuba-r/, /vanilla-r/ and /California-r/. He put the blame for it, and
for various other departures from the strict canon of contemporary
English, upon "the American common school, the American newspaper, and
the American Dutchman and Dago." Unluckily for his case, the full
voicing of the /r/ came into American long before the appearance of
any of these influences. The early colonists, in fact, brought it with
them from England, and it still prevailed there in Dr. Johnson's day,
for he protested publicly against the "rough snarling sound" and led
the movement which finally resulted in its extinction.[85] Today,
extinct, it is mourned by English purists, and the Poet Laureate
denounces the clergy of the Established Church for saying "the /sawed/
of the /Laud/" instead of "the sword of the Lord."[86]
But even in the matter of elided consonants American is not always the
conservator. We cling to the /r/, we preserve the final [Pg172] /g/,
we give /nephew/ a clear /f/-sound instead of the clouded English
/v/-sound, and we boldly nationalize /trait/ and pronounce its final
/t/, but we drop the second /p/ from /pumpkin/ and change the /m/ to
/n/, we change the /ph/(=/f/)-sound to plain /p/ in /diphtheria/,
/diphthong/ and /naphtha/,[87] we relieve /rind/ of its final /d/,
and, in the complete sentence, we slaughter consonants by
assimilation. I have heard Englishmen say /brand-new/, but on American
lips it is almost invariably /bran-new/. So nearly universal is this
nasalization in the United States that certain American lexicographers
have sought to found the term upon /bran/ and not upon /brand/. Here
the national speech is powerfully influenced by Southern dialectical
variations, which in turn probably derive partly from French example
and partly from the linguistic limitations of the negro. The latter,
even after two hundred years, has great difficulties with our
consonants, and often drops them. A familiar anecdote well illustrates
his speech habit. On a train stopping at a small station in Georgia a
darkey threw up a window and yelled "Wah ee?" The reply from a black
on the platform was "Wah oo?" A Northerner aboard the train, puzzled
by this inarticulate dialogue, sought light from a Southern passenger,
who promptly translated the first question as "Where is he?" and the
second as "Where is who?" A recent viewer with alarm[88] argues that
this conspiracy against the consonants is spreading, and that English
printed words no longer represent the actual sounds of the American
language. "Like the French," he says, "we have a marked /liaison/--the
borrowing of a letter from the preceding word. We invite one another
to 'c'meer' (=come here) ... 'Hoo-zat?' (=who is that?) has as good a
/liaison/ as the French /vois avez/." This critic believes that
American tends to abandon /t/ for /d/, as in /Sadd'y/ (=Saturday) and
/siddup/ (=sit up), and to get rid of /h/, as in "ware-zee?" (=where
is he?). But here we invade the vulgar speech, which belongs to the
next chapter. [Pg173]
Among the vowels the most salient difference between English and
American pronunciation, of course, is marked off by the flat American
/a/. This flat /a/, as we have seen, has been under attack at home for
nearly a century. The New Englanders, very sensitive to English
example, substitute a broad /a/ that is even broader than the English,
and an /a/ of the same sort survives in the South in a few words,
/e. g./, /master/, /tomato/ and /tassel/, but everywhere else in the
country the flat /a/ prevails. Fashion and the example of the stage
oppose it,[89] and it is under the ban of an active wing of
schoolmasters, but it will not down. To the average American, indeed,
the broad /a/ is a banner of affectation, and he associates it
unpleasantly with spats, Harvard, male tea-drinking, wrist watches and
all the other objects of his social suspicion. He gets the flat sound,
not only into such words as /last/, /calf/, /dance/ and /pastor/, but
even into /piano/ and /drama/. /Drama/ is sometimes /drayma/ west of
Connecticut, but almost never /drahma/ or /drawma/. /Tomato/ with the
/a/ of /bat/, may sometimes borrow the /a/ of /plate/, but /tomahto/
is confined to New England and the South. /Hurrah/, in American, has
also borrowed the /a/ of /plate/; one hears /hurray/ much oftener than
/hurraw/. Even /amen/ frequently shows that /a/, though not when sung.
Curiously enough, it is displaced in /patent/ by the true flat /a/.
The English rhyme the first syllable of the word with /rate/; in
America it always rhymes with /rat/.
The broad /a/ is not only almost extinct outside of New England; it
begins to show signs of decay even there. At all events, it has
gradually disappeared from many words, and is measurably less sonorous
in those in which it survives than it used to be. A century ago it
appeared, not only in /dance/, /aunt/, /glass/, /past/, etc., but also
in /Daniel/, /imagine/, /rational/ and /travel/.[90] And in 1857
Oliver Wendell Holmes reported it in /matter/, /handsome/,
/caterpillar/, /apple/ and /satisfaction/. It has been displaced in
virtually all of these, even in the most remote reaches of the back
country, [Pg174] by the national flat /a/. Grandgent[91] says that
the broad /a/ is now restricted in New England to the following
situations:
1. when followed by /s/ or /ns/, as in /last/ and /dance/.
2. when followed by /r/ preceding another consonant, as in /cart/.
3. when followed by /lm/, as in /calm/.
4. when followed by /f/, /s/ or /th/, as in /laugh/, /pass/ and
/path/.
The /u/-sound also shows certain differences between English and
American usage. The English reduce the last syllable of /figure/ to
/ger/; the educated American preserves the /u/-sound as in /nature/.
The English make the first syllable of /courteous/ rhyme with /fort/;
the American standard rhymes it with /hurt/. The English give an
/oo/-sound to the /u/ of /brusque/; in America the word commonly
rhymes with /tusk/. A /u/-sound, as everyone knows, gets into the
American pronunciation of /clerk/, by analogy with /insert/; the
English cling to a broad /a/-sound, by analogy with /hearth/. Even the
latter, in the United States, is often pronounced to rhyme with
/dearth/. The American, in general, is much less careful than the
Englishman to preserve the shadowy /y/-sound before /u/ in words of
the /duke/-class. He retains it in /few/, but surely not in /new/. Nor
in /duke/, /blue/, /stew/, /due/, /duty/ and /true/. Nor even in
/Tuesday/. Purists often attack the simple /oo/-sound. In 1912, for
example, the Department of Education of New York City warned all the
municipal high-school teachers to combat it.[92] But it is doubtful
that one pupil in a hundred was thereby induced to insert the /y/ in
/induced/. Finally there is /lieutenant/. The Englishman pronounces
the first syllable /left/; the American invariably makes it /loot/.
White says that the prevailing American pronunciation is relatively
recent. "I never heard it," he reports, "in my boyhood."[93] He was
born in New York in 1821.
The /i/-sound presents several curious differences. The English make
it long in all words of the /hostile/-class; in America it is commonly
short, even in /puerile/. The English also lengthen it in /sliver/; in
America the word usually rhymes with /liver/. The [Pg175] short /i/,
in England, is almost universally substituted for the /e/ in /pretty/,
and this pronunciation is also inculcated in most American schools,
but I often hear an unmistakable /e/-sound in the United States,
making the first syllable rhyme with /bet/. Contrariwise, most
Americans put the short /i/ into /been/, making it rhyme with /sin/.
In England it shows a long /e/-sound, as in /seen/. A recent poem by
an English poet makes the word rhyme with /submarine/, /queen/ and
/unseen/.[94] The /o/-sound, in American, tends to convert itself into
an /aw/-sound. /Cog/ still retains a pure /o/, but one seldom hears it
in /log/ or /dog/. Henry James denounces this "flatly-drawling group"
in "The Question of Our Speech,"[95] and cites /gawd/, /dawg/,
/sawft/, /lawft/, /gawne/, /lawst/ and /frawst/ as horrible examples.
But the English themselves are not guiltless of the same fault. Many
of the accusations that James levels at American, in truth, are echoed
by Robert Bridges in "A Tract on the Present State of English
Pronunciation." Both spend themselves upon opposing what, at bottom,
are probably natural and inevitable movements--for example, the
gradual decay of all the vowels to one of neutral color, represented
by the /e/ of /danger/, the /u/ of /suggest/, the second /o/ of
/common/ and the /a/ of /prevalent/. This decay shows itself in many
languages. In both English and High German, during their middle
periods, all the terminal vowels degenerated to /e/--now sunk to the
aforesaid neutral vowel in many German words, and expunged from
English altogether. The same sound is encountered in languages so
widely differing otherwise as Arabic, French and Swedish. "Its
existence," says Sayce, "is a sign of age and decay; meaning has
become more important than outward form, and the educated intelligence
no longer demands a clear pronunciation in order to understand what is
said."[96]
All these differences between English and American pronunciation,
separately considered, seem slight, but in the aggregate they are
sufficient to place serious impediments between mutual [Pg176]
comprehension. Let an Englishman and an American (not of New England)
speak a quite ordinary sentence, "My aunt can't answer for my dancing
the lancers even passably," and at once the gap separating the two
pronunciations will be manifest. Here only the /a/ is involved. Add a
dozen everyday words--/military/, /schedule/, /trait/, /hostile/,
/been/, /lieutenant/, /patent/, /nephew/, /secretary/, /advertisement/,
and so on--and the strangeness of one to the other is augmented. "Every
Englishman visiting the States for the first time," said an English
dramatist some time ago, "has a difficulty in making himself understood.
He often has to repeat a remark or a request two or three times to make
his meaning clear, especially on railroads, in hotels and at bars. The
American visiting England for the first time has the same trouble."[97]
Despite the fact that American actors imitate English pronunciation to
the best of their skill, this visiting Englishman asserted that the
average American audience is incapable of understanding a genuinely
English company, at least "when the speeches are rattled off in
conversational style." When he presented one of his own plays with an
English company, he said, many American acquaintances, after witnessing
the performance, asked him to lend them the manuscript, "that they might
visit it again with some understanding of the dialogue."[98]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In Passing English of the Victorian Era; London, n. d., p. 68.
[2] The Oxford Dictionary, following the late J. H. Trumbull, the
well-known authority on Indian languages, derives the word from the