II

It is not to be expected that an extremely English intonation should

ever be agreeable to Americans, or an extremely American intonation to

Englishmen. We ourselves laugh at a "haw-haw" intonation in English;

why, then, should we forbid Americans to do so? If "an accent like a

banjo" is recognised as undesirable in America (and assuredly it is),

there is no reason why we in England should pretend to admire it. But a

vulgar or affected intonation is clearly distinguishable, and ought to

be clearly distinguished, from a national habit in the pronunciation of

a given letter, or accentuation of a particular word, or class of words.

For instance, take the pronunciation of the indefinite article. The

American habitually says "[=a] man" (_a_ as in "game"); the Englishman,

unless he wants to be emphatic, says, "[)a] man."[T] Neither is right,

neither wrong; it is purely a matter of habit; and to consider either

habit ridiculous is merely to exhibit that childishness or provincialism

of mind which is moved to laughter by whatever is unfamiliar. Again,

when I first read the works of the sagacious Mr. Dooley, I thought it a

curiously far-fetched idea on the part of that philosopher to talk of

Admiral Dewey as his "Cousin George," and assert that "Dewey" and

"Dooley" were practically the same name. I had not then noticed that the

American pronunciation of "Dewey" is "Dooey," and that the liquid "yoo"

is very seldom heard in America. In the course of the five minutes I

spent in the Supreme Court at Washington, I heard the Chief Justice of

the United States make this one remark: "That, sir, is not

_constitootional_." To our ears this "oo" has an old-fashioned ring,

like that of the "ee" in "obleeged;" but to call it wrong is absurd, and

to find it ridiculous is provincial. Very possibly it can be proved that

had Shakespeare used the word at all, he would have said

"constitootional;" but that would make the "oo" neither better nor worse

in my eyes. There always have been, and always will be, changing

fashions in pronunciation; and the Americans have as good a right to

their fashion as we to ours. Fifty years hence, perhaps, our grandsons

will be saying "constitootional," and theirs "constityootional." I

confess that, in point of abstract sonority, I prefer the "yoo" to the

dry "oo;" but that, again, is a pure matter of taste. If Americans

choose to say,

"From morn

To noon he fell, from noon to dooey eve,

A summer's day."

I am perfectly willing that they should do so, reserving always my own

right to say "dyooey." It would not at all surprise me to learn that

Milton said "dooey;" but neither would it lead me to alter the

pronunciation which, as one of the present generation of Englishmen, I

have learnt to prefer.

It is said that when Mr. Daly's company returned to New York, after a

long visit to England, they pronounced "lieutenant" according to the

English fashion, "leftenant," but were called to order by an outburst of

protest. Though, for my own part, I say "leftenant," I heartily

sympathise with the protesters. "Leftenant," though a corruption of

respectable antiquity, is a corruption none the less, and since it has

died out in America, it would be mere snobbery to reintroduce it.

So, too, with questions of accentuation. We say "prim-arily" and

"tem-porarily;" most (or at any rate many) Americans say "primar-ily"

and "temporar-ily." Here there is no question of right or wrong,

refinement or vulgarity. The one accentuation is as good as the other.

It may be argued, indeed, that our accentuation throws into relief the

root, the idea, the soul of the word, not the mere grammatical suffix,

the "limbs and outward flourishes;" but on the other hand, it may be

contended with equal truth that the American accentuation has the Latin

precedent in its favour. Neither advantage is conclusive; neither,

indeed, is, strictly speaking, relevant; for Englishmen do not make a

principle of accentuating the root rather than the prefix or suffix,

else we should say "inund-ation," "resonant," "admir-able;" and the

Americans do not make a principle of following the Latin emphasis, else

they would say "ora-tor" and "gratui-tous," and the recognised

pronunciation of "theatre" would be "theayter." It is argued that there

is a general tendency among educated Englishmen to throw the accent as

far back as possible; that, for instance, the educated speaker says

"in-teresting," the uneducated, "interest-ing." True; but until this

tendency can be proved to possess some inherent advantage, there is not

a shadow of reason why Americans should be reproached or ridiculed for

obeying their own tendency rather than ours. The English tendency is a

matter of comparatively recent fashion. "Con-template," said Samuel

Rogers, "is bad enough, but bal-cony makes me sick." Both forms have

maintained themselves up to the present; but will they for long? I think

one may already trace a reaction against the universal throwing backward

of the accent. I myself say "per-emptory" and "ex-emplary;" but it would

take very little encouragement to make me say "peremp-tory" and

"exemp-lary," which seem to me much more expressive words. There is

surely no doubt that, in accenting a prefix rather than the root of the

word, we lose a certain amount of force. "Con-template," for instance,

is not nearly so strong a word as "contemp-late." We say an

"il-lustrated" book or the "_Il-lustrated London News_" because we do

not require any particular force in the epithet; but when the sense

demands a word with colour and emotion in it, we say the "illus-trious"

statesman, the "illus-trious" poet, throwing into relief the essential

element in the word, the "lustre." What a paltry word would

"tri-umphant" be in comparison with "trium-phant!" But the larger our

list of examples, the more capricious does our accentuation seem, the

more evidently subject to mere accidents of fashion. There is scarcely a

trace of consistent or rational principle in the matter. To make a merit

of one practice, and find in the other a subject for contemptuous

criticism, is simply childish.

Mere slovenliness of pronunciation is a totally different matter. For

instance, the use of "most" for "almost" is distinctly, if not a

vulgarism, at least a colloquialism. It may be of ancient origin; it may

have crossed in the _Mayflower_ for aught I know; but the overwhelming

preponderance of ancient and modern usage is certainly in favour of

prefixing the "al," and there is a clear advantage in having a special

word for this special idea. If American writers tried to make "most"

supplant "almost" in the literary language, we should have a right to

remonstrate; the two forms would fight it out, and the fittest would

survive. But as a matter of fact I am not aware that any one has

attempted to introduce "most," in this sense, into literature. It is

perfectly recognised as a colloquialism, and as such it keeps its place.

Again, such pronunciations as "mebbe" for "maybe" and "I'd ruther" or "I

druther" for "I'd rather" are obvious slovenlinesses. No American would

defend them as being correct, any more than an Englishman would defend

"I dunno" for "I don't know" or "atome" for "at home." If an actor, for

instance, were to say,

"I druther be a dog and bay the moon

Than such a Roman,"

American and English critics alike could not but protest against the

solecism; for in poetry absolute precision of utterance is clearly

indispensable. But in everyday speech a certain amount of colloquialism

is inevitable. Let him whose own enunciation is chemically free from

localism or slovenliness cast the first stone even at "mebbe" and

"ruther."

A curious American colloquialism, of which I certainly cannot see the

advantage, in the substitution of "yep," or "yup" for "yes," and of

"nope" for "no." No doubt we have in England the coster's "yuss;" but

one hears even educated Americans now and then using "yep," or some

other corruption of "yes," scarcely to be indicated by the ordinary

alphabetical symbols. It seems to me a pity.

Much more respectable in point of antiquity is the habit which obtains

to some extent even among educated Americans, of saying "somewheres" and

"a long ways." Here the "s" is an old case-ending, an adverbial

genitive. "He goes out nights," too, on which Mr. Andrew Lang is so

severe, is a form as old as the language and older. I turn to Dr. Leon

Kellner's _Historical English Syntax_ (p. 119) and find that the Gothic

for "at night" was "nahts," and that the form (with its correlative

"days ") runs through old Norse, old Saxon, old English, and middle

English: for instance, "dages endi nahtes" _(Hêliand)_, "dæges and

nihtes" _(Beówulf)_, "dæies and nihtes" (Layamon), all meaning "by day

and by night." In all, or almost all, words ending in "ward," the

genitive inflection, according to modern English practice, can either be

retained or dropped at will. It is a mere pedantry to declare "toward"

better English than "towards," "upward" than "upwards." Thus we see

that here again there is neither logical principle nor consistent

practice to be invoked. At the same time, as "somewheres" has become

irremediably a vulgarism in England, it would, I think, be a graceful

concession on the part of educated Americans to drop the "s." After all,

"somewhere" does not jar in America, and "somewheres" very distinctly

jars in England.

An insidious laxity of pronunciation (rather than of grammar), which is

taking great hold in America, is the total omission of the "had" or

"have," in such phrases as "You'd better," "we've got to." Mr. Howells's

Willis Campbell, a witty and cultivated Bostonian, says, in _The Albany

Depot_, "I guess we better get out of here;" Mr. Ade's Artie, a Chicago

clerk, says, "I got a boost in my pay," meaning "I have got:" the

locution is very common indeed. It is no more defensible than "swelp me"

for "so help me." It arises from sheer laziness, unwillingness to face

the infinitesimal difficulty of pronouncing, "d" and "b" together. As a

colloquialism it is all very well; but I regard it with a certain alarm,

for where all trace of a word disappears, people are apt to forget the

logical and grammatical necessity for it. Though contracted to its last

letter, a word still asserts its existence; but when even the last

letter has vanished its state is parlous indeed.

An Anglicism much ridiculed in America is "different to." As a

Scotchman, I dislike it, and would neither use nor defend it. At the

same time I cannot but hint to American critics that the use of a

particular preposition in a particular context is largely a matter of

convention; that when we learn a new language we have simply to get up

by rote the conventions that obtain in this regard, reason being little

or no guide to us; and that within the same language the conventions are

always changing. You may easily nonplus even a good grammarian by asking

him suddenly, "What preposition should you use in such-and-such a

context?" just as you may puzzle a man by asking him to spell a word

which, if he wrote it without thinking about it, would present no

difficulty to him. Some very good American writers always say, "at the

North," and "at the South," where an Englishman would certainly say

"in." "At," to my mind, suggests a very narrow point of space. I should

say "at" a village, but "in" a city--"at Concord," but "in Boston." I

recognise, however, that this is a mere matter of convention, and do

not dream of condemning "at the North" as an error. In the same way I

would claim tolerance, though certainly not approval, for "different

to."

As a general rule, I think, educated Americans are more apt to err on

the side of purism than of laxity. I have before me, for example, a long

list of rules and warnings for American writers, issued by the _New York

Press_, many of which are very much to the point, while others seem to

me captious and pedantic. For instance, a woman is not to "marry" a man;

she is "married to" him; "the clergyman or magistrate marries both." The

grammatical suitor, then, when the awful moment arrives, must not say to

the blushing fair, "Will you marry me?" but "Will you be married to me?"

Again, you not only must not split infinitives, but you must not

separate an auxiliary from its verb; you must say "probably will be,"

not "will probably be." This is English by the card indeed.

I will not waste space upon discussing the different fashions of

spelling in England and America. The rage excited in otherwise rational

human beings by the dropping of the "u" in "favor," or the final "me" in

"program," is one of the strangest of psychological phenomena. The

baselessness of the reasonings used to bolster up the British clinging

to superfluous letters is very ably shown in Professor Matthews'

_Americanisms and Briticisms_. Let me only put in a plea for the

retention of such abnormal spellings as serve to distinguish two words

of the same sound. For instance, it seems to me useful that we should

write "story" for a tale and "storey" for a floor, and in the plural

"stories" and "storeys."