Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/555

Rh furnished by the British pronunciation of clerk and Derby. The English, as is well known, pronounce these words as if written 'dark' and 'Darby.' They used to pronounce clergy with the same vowel sound, and many other words besides. But it is a significant sign of the approaching change in British usage in respect to these words that a recent British dictionary, the New Historical, in commenting on clerk admits that the American pronunciation of this word has become somewhat frequent of late in London and its neighborhood. (Are we to look upon this as a result of the much-discussed American invasion?) But our British cousins are still wedded to their Derby (Darby) and show no sign of abandoning either the old pronunciation or the custom. Even we Americans cling tenaciously to serjeant and show but little inclination to make that conform speedily to the analogy of other words of its class and to pronounce it in accordance with the spelling. But, no doubt, this word, also, in the course of time, will yield to the pressure of analogy, and our time-honored serjeant, with the flight of years, is destined to be classed among those pronunciations that have lost caste. The early orthoepists uniformly pronounced this entire class of words as our British cousins pronounce them at the present time, that is, as if they were written 'dark,' 'sarjeant' and so on. Indeed, it is the spelling that has been the main factor in effecting the change in the pronunciation of these words. There is a strong tendency in English to pronounce a word as it is written, and this tendency has been asserting itself with ever increasing force since English spelling has been crystallized and thereby rendered less subject to preference or caprice.

A constantly recurring question, which never ceased to vex the spirit of the early orthoepists, was, where to place the accent in the case of contemplate, demonstrate, illustrate and similar words of classical origin. The question at issue here is whether the stress shall fall upon the antepenultimate or the penultimate. Even with all the accumulated knowledge of the centuries we are no nearer a solution of this perplexing question than were the Elizabethans. Shakespeare could say indifferently cónfiscate or confíscate, démonstrate or demónstrate. Here the battle has been waged between the scholars, on the one hand, who insist upon strict propriety, and the uninitiated, on the other, who follow the line of least resistance and by intuition place the accent upon the initial syllable. As is evident at a glance, these words come to us from the classics. The scholars therefore, somewhat pedantically, insist upon retaining the stress on the syllable which bore it in the original Latin or Greek. Per contra, the common people, who know 'little Latin and less Greek' and care not a fig for the original accent, instinctively throw the stress upon the first syllable, in keeping with their feeling for their mother tongue. This feeling