Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/65

II.] similar flattening of the simple sound of a, in such words as grăsp, grăft, dănce—which but a brief time since were universally pronounced grâsp, grâft, dânce (â as in far), and are so still in certain localities—is now so common as to have become the accepted mode of utterance; but no one fails to recognize in it a corruption of the previous pronunciation, made current by example and imitation, prompted and recommended by that lazy habit of mouth which has occasioned the dimming of so many of our clear vowels. The pronunciation eīther and neīther seems at the present time to be spreading in our community, and threatening to crowd out of use the better-supported and more analogical ēither and nēither; but it is only by the deliberate choice of persons who fancy that there is something nicer, more recherché, more "English," in the new sound, and by imitation of these on the part of others. Such phonetic changes, we are accustomed to say, are inevitable, and creep in of themselves; but that is only another way of saying that we know not who in particular is to blame for them. Offences must needs come, but there is always that man by whom they come, could we but trace him out.

It is unnecessary to dwell longer upon this point, or to illustrate it more fully, inasmuch as even those who teach the independent existence and organic growth of language yet allow that phonetic change is the work of men, endeavouring to make things easy to their organs of speech.

A language in the condition in which ours is at present, when thousands of eyes are jealously watching its integrity, and a thousand pens are ready to be drawn, and dyed deep in ink, to challenge and oppose the introduction into it of any corrupt form, of any new and uncalled-for element, can, of course, undergo only the slowest and the least essential alteration. It is when the common speech is in the sole keeping of the uncultivated and careless speakers, who care little for classical and time-honoured usages, to whom the preferences of the moment are of more account than