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'SPELLING PRONUNCIATIONS'
Many writers on English pronunciation are accustomed to pour
undiscriminating censure on the growing practice of substituting for the
traditional mode of pronouncing certain words an 'artificial'
pronunciation which is an interpretation of the written form of the words
in accordance with the general rules relating to the 'powers' of the
letters. This practice is especially common among imperfectly educated
people who are ambitious of speaking correctly, and have unfortunately no
better standard of 'correctness' than that of conformity with the
spelling. I remember hearing a highly-intelligent working-class orator
repeatedly pronounce the word _suggest_ as 'sug jest'. Such vagaries as
this are not likely ever to be generally adopted. But a good many
'spelling-pronunciations' have found their way into general educated use,
and others which are now condemned as vulgar or affected will probably at
some future time be universally adopted. I do not share the sentimental
regret with which some philologists regard this tendency of the language.
It seems to me that each case ought to be judged on its own merits, and by
a strictly utilitarian standard. When a 'spelling-pronunciation' is a mere
useless pedantry, it is well that we should resist it as long as we can;
if it gets itself accepted, we must acquiesce; and unless the change is
not only useless but harmful, we should do so without regret, because the
influence of the written on the spoken form of language is in itself no
more condemnable than any other of the natural processes that affect the
development of speech. There are, however, some 'spelling-pronunciations'
that are positively mischievous. Many people, though hardly among those
who are commonly reckoned good speakers, pronounce _forehead_ as it is
written. To do so is irrelevantly to call attention to the etymology of a
word that has no longer precisely its etymological sense. When the thing
to be denoted is familiar, we require an _identifying_, not a
_descriptive_ word for it; and we obey a sound instinct in disguising by a
contracted pronunciation the disturbing fact that _forehead_ is a
compound.
On the other hand, a 'spelling-pronunciation' may conduce to clearness,
and then it ought to be encouraged. I have elsewhere advocated the
sounding of the initial _p_ in learned (not in popular) words beginning
with _ps_; and many other similar reforms might with advantage be adopted.
There are also other reasons besides clearness which sometimes justify the
assimilation of sound to spelling. Thus the modern pronunciation of
_cucumber_ (instead of 'cowcumber') gets rid of the ridiculous association
with the word _cow_; and only a fanatical adherent of the principle
'Whatever was is right' would desire to revive the obsolete form.