Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/48



Is English pronunciation at the present time on the road to ruin? and if so, can anything be done to save it?

The object of this paper is to exhibit and advocate a remedy. As to the preliminary question, whether there is need for such a remedy, the answer is manifest, and I should not have put that question if I were not purposely appealing to many who may never have considered the matter.

It is natural that one should be unconcerned so long as one is not alive to the situation: to expose the situation and to awaken the necessary concern I am content to take what I think is the most evident example, that is the degradation of the unaccented vowels.

Our unaccented vowels, which have been for centuries losing their distinction, are coming now perilously near to being pronounced all alike, i.e. with the sound of the second syllable of the word danger, wherein neither the e nor the r is sounded, but in their place a sort of indeterminate vowel, which may for identification be denoted by a reversed e, thus, ǝ. In Victorian spelling it would be written er.

This sound may be long or short. If it is unaccented, as in danger, it is short; if it is accented it is long, and might be circumflexed, thus:

Do not ə̂, my beloved brethren,