Page:Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (Walker, 4th edition, London, 1806).pdf/88

84

From the perusal of this selection we see a great majority of words where the first vowel is sounded short, and therefore, to some inspectors it may seem improbable that the original tendency of our Saxon language was to long quantity of the penultimate vowel. But as Mr. Nares very judiciously observes, "the rule is sufficiently general to be admitted, and is undoubtedly founded in the nature of our pronunciation:" for which he quotes Dr. Wallis, who says, "Haec videtur genuina linguae nostrae ratio antiqua." Elements of Orthöepy, page 225.

. Those who have made the progress of languages their study, will observe, it is presumed, that the broad sounds of vowels change to the slender, the difficult consonants to the easier, and the long vowels to short ones. This, it is imagined, will be found to be true in all languages, as well as our own; and such alteration seems founded in the nature of man and of society. The next object to understanding a language being dispatch, it is no wonder that short sounds have been encroaching on us, and depriving us of the tune of our words for the sake of gaining time. This is apparent in the abbreviation of simples when compounded, as in knowledge, shepherd, etc. (518) but as it is the business of art to correct and regulate the eccentricities of nature and the excesses of custom, it should be the care of every philosophic grammarian to keep his eye upon the original genius and general scope of his language, and to suffer custom to depart as little from them as possible. But although no inconsistency or want of analogy can alter any pronunciation which is once acknowledged and settled, yet, when a pronunciation is wavering, consistency, analogy, and general principles, ought to decide against a great majority of mere fashion and caprice.

Thus have I endeavoured to give a distinct view of the correspondence between the accent and quantity of the learned languages and our own; and to rescue a plain Englishman (who, as Ben Jonson says of Shakespeare, has little Latin and less Greek) from the supercilious criticism of those Greeklings and Latinitasters, who are often remarkably ignorant of their own language, and yet frequently decide upon its accent and quantity, because they have a smattering of Greek and Latin. If the question turns upon the accent of an English word, the Latin word it is derived from is immediately produced, and sentence passed without appeal; and yet if the Englishman were to ask the rule on which this decision is founded, the scholar would, in all probability, be at a loss to tell him. Has every English word, he might say, the same accent as the Latin word from which it is derived? This the scholar could not answer in the affirmative, as the least recollection would tell him that parsimony, acrimony, etc. cannot be accented after the Latin parsimonia, acrimonia, etc. as the the Latin is never accented higher than the antepenultimate. But perhaps the English word is adopted whole from the Latin. Here is undoubtedly a fair pretence for pronouncing it with the Latin accent; and yet we see how many exceptions there are to this rule. (See No. 503, b.) Or perhaps the English word, though anglicised, retains the same number of syllables. This, indeed, may be said to be a general rule for preserving the Latin accent, but so general as to be neglected in a thousand instances. (See No. 503, f, g, h, i, k.) But if the scholar, as is often the case, huddles quantity and accent together, and infers the English quantity from the Latin; the English scholar needs only to re-