Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/332

328 expected to call for a jug and basin, since there a pitcher means only a little jug and a bowl is used exclusively for serving food in. On the street, instead of a letter box near a lamp post, you see a pillar box near a lamp pillar, and you perhaps meet a person pushing a perambulator, called 'pram' for short, instead of a baby-carriage. For drygoods you go to a mercer's, where you will find white calico sold for muslin. For cloth you go to a draper's, for wooden ware to a turnery, for hardware to an ironmonger's, for milk, butter and eggs to a cowkeeper's or a dairy, and for fish, game and poultry to a fish shop. If you desire any of your purchases sent to your address, you order them sent by express-carrier, carriage paid.

If at any time you desire the services of a scrub-woman to clean your apartments, you send for a charwoman. If you wish to have some furniture upholstered, you request the upholder to undertake the work for you. If you need the services of a doctor, you call in a medical man. You must be careful to address surgeons and dentists by the common democratic title 'mister,' since the English custom does not warrant you to address them as 'doctor.' If you are well, to your inquiring friends you are reported 'fit,' if unwell, 'seedy,' if sick, invariably 'ill.'

To an American ear British orthoepy offers quite as noteworthy surprises as the idiomatic diction does. Of course it is to be presumed that there should be more or less marked variations in the matter of habitual utterance of certain sounds, especially the long o- and the long a-vowel, as in 'fast,' 'dance,' 'sha'n't,' etc., which are at striking variance with American usage. Indeed, these sounds are so characteristic that, like the English custom of ending almost every sentence with a question, when clearly natural and not an affectation, they serve as a shibboleth of British nativity. But notable eccentricities are to be observed in the English mode of pronouncing many proper names such as Derby, pronounced 'darby'; Berkeley, pronounced 'barclay'; Magdalen, pronounced 'maudlin'; Cadogan, pronounced 'kerduggan'; Marylebone, pronounced 'merrybone'; Cholmondeley, pronounced 'chumly'; Marlborough, pronounced 'mobrer'; Albany, pronounced so that the first syllable rhymes with Al- in Alfred, etc. It is unnecessary to multiply examples. Suffice it to say that there is a large class of these words the spelling and pronunciation of which seem to an American rather curiously divorced. Certainly American usage offers no parallel where there is so complete a divorce of orthoepy from orthography. American usage makes for phonetic spelling and tends to make the conventional pronunciation and spelling conform somewhat, at least.

Having drawn attention to a few Briticisms, we are now prepared to discuss some of our Americanisms which seem to excite in the pure