Page:The American Language.djvu/187

Rh Jones, the d is "very commonly, if not usually" omitted. Often, in America, commonly retains a full t; in England it is actually and officially off en. Let an American and an English- man pronounce program(me). Though the Englishman retains the long form of the last syllable in writing, he reduces it in speaking to a thick triple consonant, grm; the American enunci- ates it clearly, rhyming it with damn. Or try the two with any word ending in -g, say sporting or ripping. Or with any word having r before a consonant, say card, harbor, lord or preferred. "The majority of Englishmen," says Menner, "certainly do not pronounce the r…; just as certainly the majority of educated Americans pronounce it distinctly." Henry James, visiting the United States after many years of residence in England, was much harassed by this persistent r-sound, which seemed to him to resemble "a sort of morose grinding of the back teeth." So sensitive to it did he become that he began to hear where it was actually non-existent, save as an occasional barbarism, for exam- ple, in Cuba-r, vanilla-r and Calif ornia-r. He put the blame for it, and for various other departures from the strict canon of con- temporary English, upon "the American common school, the American newspaper, and the American Dutchman and Dago." Unluckily for his case, the full voicing of the r came into Ameri- can long before the appearance of any of these influences. The early colonists, in fact, brought it with them from England, and it still prevailed there in Dr. Johnson's day, for he protested publicly against the "rough snarling sound" and led the move- ment which finally resulted in its extinction. Today, extinct, it is mourned by English purists, and the Poet Laureate de- nounces the clergy of the Established Church for saying "the sawed of the Laud" instead of "the sword of the Lord."

But even in the matter of elided' consonants American is not always the conservator. We cling to the r, we preserve the final