Page:The American Language.djvu/191

Rh short i, in England, is almost universally substituted for the e in pretty, and this pronunciation is also inculcated in most Amer- ican schools, but I often hear an unmistakable e-sound in the United States, making the first syllable rhyme with bet. Con- trariwise, most Americans put the short i into been, making it rhyme with sin. In England it shows a long e-sound, as in seen. A recent poem by an English poet makes the word rhyme with submarine, queen and unseen. The o-sound, in American, tends to convert itself into an aw-sound. Cog still retains a pure o, but one seldom hears it in log or dog. Henry James denounces this "flatly-drawling group" in "The Question of Our Speech," and cites gawd, dawg, sawft, lawft, gawne, lawst and frawst as horrible examples. But the English them- selves are not guiltless of the same fault. Many of the accusa- tions that James levels at American, in truth, are echoed by Robert Bridges in "A Tract on the Present State of English Pronunciation." Both spend themselves upon opposing what, at bottom, are probably natural and inevitable movements for example, the gradual decay of all the vowels to one of neutral color, represented by the e of danger, the u of suggest, the sec- ond o of common and the a of prevalent. This decay shows itself in many languages. In both English and High German, during their middle periods, all the terminal vowels degenerated to e now sunk to the aforesaid neutral vowel in many German words, and expunged from English altogether. The same sound is encountered in languages so widely differing otherwise as Arabic, French and Swedish. "Its existence," says Sayce, "is a sign of age and decay; meaning has become more important than outward form, and the educated intelligence no longer demands a clear pronunciation in order to understand what is said."

All these differences between English and American pronun- ciation, separately considered, seem slight, but in the aggregate they are sufficient to place serious impediments between mutual