Page:The American language; an inquiry into the development of English in the United States (IA americanlanguage00menc 0).pdf/238

 mother, on acquiring social aspirations, entered the Protestant Episcopal Church from the Methodist Church. The father remaining behind, the little girl had to learn to say amen with the flat a when she went to church with her father and amen with the broad a when she went to church with her mother. In Canada, despite the social influence of English usage, the flat a has conquered, and along the Canadian-New England border it is actually regarded as a Canadianism, especially in such words as calm and aunt. The broad a, when heard at all, is an affectation, and, as in Boston, is sometimes introduced into words, e. g., amass, which actually have the flat a in England.

A broad a, though somewhat shorter than the a of father (a correspondent compares it aptly to the a in the German mann) is very widely substituted, in the United States, for the o in such words as got, hot, rob, nobby, prophet, stock and chocolate. The same correspondent suggests that it shows itself clearly in the sentence: "On top of the log sat a large frog." To his English ears, this sentence, from American lips, sounds like "Ann tahp uv thu laug sat a lahrge fraug." The same a is also occasionally heard in dog, doll, horrid, hog, orange, coffee and God, though it has a rival in the au-sound of audience. Here, as Krapp observes, there is a considerable variation in usage, even in the same speaker. The man who uses the first a in God may use the au-sound in dog. I believe that the former is generally looked upon as more formal. I have often noticed that a speaker who puts the au-sound into God in his ordinary profane discourse, will switch to the purer a-sound when he wants to show reverence. The broad a in father seems to have very little influence upon cognate words. Save in New England one never hears it in