Page:The American Language.djvu/189

Rh Among the vowels the most salient difference between English and American pronunciation, of course, is marked off by the flat American a. This flat a, as we have seen, has been under attack at home for nearly a century. The New Englanders, very sen- sitive to English example, substitute a broad a that is even broader than the English, and an a, of the same sort survives in the South in a few words, e. g., master, tomato and tassel, but everywhere else in the country the flat a prevails. Fashion and the example of the stage oppose it, 89 and it is under the ban of an active wing of schoolmasters, but it will not down. To the average American, indeed, the broad a is a banner of affectation, and he associates it unpleasantly with spats, Harvard, male tea- drinking, wrist watches and all the other objects of his social suspicion. He gets the flat sound, not only into such words as last, calf, dance and pastor, but even into piano and drama. Drama is sometimes drayma west of Connecticut, but almost never drahma or drawma. Tomato with the a of bat, may some- times borrow the a of plate, but tomahto is confined to New Eng- land and the South. Hurrah, in American, has also borrowed the a of plate; one hears hurray much oftener than hurraw. Even amen frequently shows that a, though not when sung. Curiously enough, it is displaced in patent by the true flat a. The English rhyme the first syllable of the word with rate; in America it always rhymes with rat.

The broad a is not only almost extinct outside of New England ; it begins to show signs of decay even there. At all events, it has gradually disappeared from many words, and is measurably less sonorous in those in which it survives than it used to be. A century ago it appeared, not only in dance, aunt, glass, past, etc., but also in Daniel, imagine, rational and travel. 90 And in 1857 Oliver Wendell Holmes reported it in matter, handsome, cater- pillar, apple and satisfaction. It has been displaced in virtually all of these, even in the most remote reaches of the back country,

8 The American actor imitates, not only English pronunciation in all its details, but also English dress and bearing. His struggles with such words as extraordinary are often very amusing.

so Cf. Duncan Mackintosh : Essai RaissonS dur la Grammaire et la Pro- nonciation Anglais; Boston, 1797,