Page:The American language; an inquiry into the development of English in the United States (IA americanlanguage00menc 0).pdf/230

 for the pronunciation of German is at least as clear as that of Spanish. Swedish would have supported his case far better: the Swedes debase their vowels and slide over their consonants even more markedly than the English. Marsh believed that there was a tendency among Southern peoples to throw the accent toward the ends of words, and that this helped to bring out all the syllables. A superficial examination shows a number of examples of that movement of accent in American: advertisement, paresis, pianist, primarily, telegrapher, temporarily. The English accent all of these words on the first syllable except advertisement, which is accented on the second; Americans usually accent primarily and telegrapher on the second, temporarily and advertisement on the third, and paresis and pianist on the second. Again there are frontier and harass. The English accent the first syllables; we accent the second. Yet again there is the verb, to perfect. Tucker says that its accentuation on the second syllable, "bringing it into harmony with perfume, cement, desert, present, produce, progress, project, rebel, record, and other words which are accented on the final syllable when used as verbs, originated in this country." But when all these examples have been marshalled, the fact remains that there are just as many examples, and perhaps many more, of an exactly contrary tendency. The chief movement in American, in truth, would seem to be toward throwing the accent upon the first syllable. I recall mamma, papa, inquiry, ally, recess, details, idea, alloy, deficit, armistice and adult; I might add defect, excess, address, magazine, decoy and romance.

A factor which may have had a great deal to do with the establishment of precise habits of pronunciation in the United States is discussed at length by Henry Cecil Wyld, in his "History of Modern Colloquial English." This factor, he says, has been responsible in England for many artificialities, including especially spelling pronunciations. It may be described briefly as the influence of a class but lately risen in the social scale and hence a bit unsure of itself—a class intensely eager to avoid giving away its vulgar origin by its speech habits. The great historical changes