Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/559

Rh incorrect, transcends the legitimate bounds of his province. Moreover, he arouses suspicion in the minds of the thoughtful as to his trustworthiness as a guide in matters of pronunciation. For no orthoepist records all the pronunciations sanctioned by good usage, and no one therefore can affirm positively that a given pronunciation of a word may not be warranted by reputable usage in some quarter. Even so high an authority and careful an observer as Ellis lapsed into error in his comment upon the pronunciation of trait, claiming that the silent final t was an unfailing shibboleth of British practice. As a matter of fact, the pronunciation of the final letter of trait, as Professor Lounsbury has clearly shown, had been recognized by English orthoepists as allowable for more than a century. It is manifest that one can not afford to be very positive in English orthoepy: if he is, he will be compelled either to retract or to qualify some of his sweeping statements.

The pronouncing dictionary is, as a general rule, a good guide to standard usage, though it can not be relied upon implicitly. When the orthoepists are all agreed upon a particular pronunciation, one ought to be very chary of using one's customary or pet pronunciation that differs. The chances are that it is not in good repute. But when, on the contrary, the orthoepists themselves differ, one may reasonably infer that no statement of any one of them about the proper pronunciation of a word, however positive it may be, ought to be recognized as a binding authority. For no pronouncing dictionary is an absolutely final authority. Nor can it ever justly claim to be, since the pronouncing dictionary purports to record only such pronunciations as are sanctioned by good usage, and good usage ever varies with the living speech, which, like all living things, is always slowly changing from century to century. The change is sometimes so gradual that hardly the lapse of a century will reveal it. Again, for one reason or another, it is so rapid in development that even a generation suffices to record it.