Page:The American language; an inquiry into the development of English in the United States (IA americanlanguage00menc 0).pdf/239

 gather, lather and blather, and even there it is often abandoned for the flat a by speakers who are very careful to avoid the latter in palm, dance and aunt. Krapp says that the broad a is used in "some words of foreign origin," notably lava, data, errata, bas-relief, spa, mirage and garage. This is certainly not true of the first three, all of which, save exceptionally, have the flat a. Garage, at one time, threatened to acquire the flat a, too, and so became a rhyme for carriage, but I believe that a more correct pronunciation is prevailing. In a number of other classes of words the pronunciation of the a varies. In patriot and its derivatives, for example, the a is sometimes that of hat and sometimes that of late. In radish the a is sometimes that of cab and sometimes a sort of e, hard to distinguish from that of red. In such proper names as Alabama, Montana, Nevada and Colorado the flat a is commonly heard (especially in the states themselves), but a broad a is not unknown. The usual pronunciation of again and against gives them a second a indistinguishable from the e of hen, but the influence of the schoolmarm has launched a pronunciation employing the a of lane.

The other vowels present fewer variations from standard English. A spelling pronunciation often appears in pretty, making the first syllable rhyme with set; it always rhymes with sit in standard English. The use of the long e in deaf, though ardently advocated by Noah Webster, has almost disappeared from cultivated speech; it persists, however, in the vulgate, and is noted in Chapter IX. In the same way the i-sound, as in sit, has disappeared from get, yet, chest and instead; even the vulgate is losing it. So, again, the old ai-sound, as in laid, has vanished from egg, peg, leg and their cognates, though here the vulgate preserves it. As Krapp shows, the neutral e, toward which all our vowels seem to be tending, shows signs of itself disappearing. This is particularly noticeable, in American, in such words as moral, quarrel and real, which be-