Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/105

Rh knowe (knoll). But even here we have further anomalies illustrated by sowel (soul), cool (cowl), fool (fowl).

The thin i again is characteristically English. The Scot as well as the foreigner breaks down here. Thus he says keeng for king, or calls a word like pin, peen, or by preference preen, or flattens the vowel, especially if near a liquid, to u (sully for silly to avoid the i sound which he knows not), or to a sound unrepresented in English, such as his rendering of tin. Mr. Chamberlain is here un-English in his aggrándĭsement, thus shunning the name-sound of i. So also Mr. Stanley used to denounce what he called "our suícĭdal" policy in West Africa. The north-eastern counties, however, delight in the attenuated form of this letter. In the case of u the Scot is better off than the Englishman, for he has the peculiar thin sound characteristic of Greek and French, as mune and gude (moon and good), in addition to such forms as we hear in cut and 'cute. All through the Scottish vowel system what is known in German as modification prevails largely. Unlike the Southron the Scot has no special liking for the name-sound of u. It is only the flattery of imitation that makes him say Bew-kanan (Buchanan) Street. A Glasgow business man enlisted the help of his daughter at a push in sending out his accounts. One of his customers was surprised to find himself addressed as Bluechanan. The explanation is that the young lady, having had a modern education (sic), was trying to correct what she knew as the vulgar pronunciation of blue (bew). Human thinking is often a wonderful process. Similarly the English preference for the name-sound of o, combined with the presence of the liquid, has changed the Rome (Room) of Shakspere's time—"Now is it Rome and room indeed" (Jul. Cæs.)—though we still say Froom (Frome), while broom (brougham) is coming into vogue again. On the other hand, it is the Irishman that preserves the seventeenth-century name-sound of a in tea, treat, repeat, though the Englishman still keeps to great (grate). Smollett, with this old sound in view, cleverly produces a comic effect, when Winifred Jenkins in his "Humphrey Clinker" writes that her mistress, having turned Methodist and Evangelical, is "growing in grease and godliness." An Irishman might still call grease, grace. The troubles of the imitative Scot are many. He speaks of Kirkcaddy, Kil-mál-colm, Cupar-Ang-gus, the Rh