whose 'Excellency' Webster had dedicated the little volume of essays just mentioned, because of his interest in linguistic questions. About twenty years before, Franklin had published a book on spelling reform, in which he proposed a system of thoroughly phonetic spelling devised by himself. The poetical passages and letters transcribed in this system are documents of inestimable value in determining the American pronunciation of the eighteenth century. Two examples will suffice to show that Franklin's pronunciation differed somewhat from that which prevailed among his British contemporaries. In would and should he retains the sound of l. Marlowe and Ben Jonson bear witness to the fact that the omission of in these words l had already begun in England in the Elizabethan period. This pronunciation, however, did not receive recognition from the majority of the seventeenth-century orthoëpists, although it had undoubtedly been spreading rapidly in popular speech. For after 1701 would is considered by all English authorities a homonym of wood, and Franklin's pronunciation, if it still existed in England in the middle of the century, was certainly antiquated or rare, if not altogether vulgar. Another word in which Franklin's pronunciation did not agree with the majority of his transatlantic contemporaries was get, which he pronounced unmistakably git. This, again, together with yis and yit, was a common pronunciation in seventeenth-century England. But by the middle of the next century it had apparently fallen to the vulgar level to which it was later to sink in America.

In these variations in the speech of Webster and Franklin from that of the mother country the remarkable fact is not so much their existence, as the character of the differences. The American pronunciations were not vulgar

innovations or indiscreet perversions of good English sounds; rather were they conservative survivals of sounds which in the meantime had undergone modification and change in England itself. In all the remarks about the pronunciation at the time, it is evident that we were lagging behind our transatlantic brethren in those changes which inevitably accompany the development of a living language.

In the first part of the last century we find outcroppings of this conservative tendency. Americans felt obliged to pronounce the w in sword for some time after Englishmen had abandoned it. In 1839, the older professors at Yale still pronounced nature to rhyme with later, a pronunciation which flourished in the time of Addison and Pope.

It is doubtless disagreeable to those who would improve American English to contemplate among the British users of our tongue any precipitancy in furthering changes which every purist would consider corruptions.

Most purifiers of our language have strangely imagined that all corruption of English must necessarily have its origin in America. They have failed to observe that the history of our treatment of the language seems to point plainly to the fact that, in the past, America often clung to the old while England was introducing the new. And this condition is not at all anomalous. The present descendants of those Norsemen who settled Iceland in the ninth and tenth centuries have left the Old Norse language comparatively unchanged, while the inhabitants of the Scandinavian peninsula, though unaffected by invasions or race-mixture, have so much modified this same inheritance as to split it into two distinct and mutually unintelligible languages, Norwegian and Swedish. Similarly the Irish pronunciation of English, so far from having suffered a sea-change by

its transference to the Emerald Isle, is nearer to that of the age of Elizabeth than the best pronunciation of Southern England to-day. In fact, colonists from any country whatever tend to preserve their language in a much more primitive state than those who remain at home.

II

Whether the speech of educated Americans even to-day possesses more of antiquity than that of educated Englishmen, is perhaps a more uncertain question. Several circumstances have combined in opposing a complete conservation of seventeenth-century English in this country. The territory over which the colonists spread was so extraordinarily large, that, even making the untenable assumption that they all originally spoke the same English dialect, it was naturally impossible to maintain a uniform tradition. Moreover, the lack of isolation and the continual and increasing intercourse with the mother country have prevented the speech of Americans and Englishmen from diverging very widely, particularly as there have already existed in this country persons so deluded as to waste much time and energy in the endeavor to approximate as closely as possible every innovation in the British mode of speech.

The fact that the United States has absorbed great numbers of foreigners may also have had some slight effect upon American English. But this influence is easily exaggerated, and it is unlikely that either Irish or German has caused more modification in our speech, -except in certain localities,

than

has Italian or Russian. Indeed, all these circumstances have hardly been sufficient to neutralize our tendency to adhere to older forms of speech.

One can adduce almost as many particular words in proof of conservatism

in England as in America. But in the more general changes which are alone worthy of citation as proof, America can be said to have a certain advantage. The dropping of the r, which is one of the chief characteristics of the socalled standard dialect of England, is obviously a later development than the retention of the letter in the speech of most Americans. The almost complete disappearance of the secondary accent in difficulty and laboratory is another important change to which we have not yet succumbed in any perceptible degree. At any rate we have treated our inheritance in quite as respectful and exemplary a manner as the English. To ask us to anglicize our pronunciation in order to preserve it pure and undefiled would be altogether ridiculous.

Before considering what other reasons may exist for the regulation of our pronunciation by that of cultured Englishmen, it may be well to enumerate some of the points upon which the two countries obviously differ. Several have already been mentioned. The majority of educated Englishmen certainly do not pronounce the r before a consonant. Just as certainly the majority of educated Americans pronounce it distinctly. Another important deviation of English from American pronunciation is the amount of stress given to the third syllable of polysyllabic words. The English say what to American ears sounds like litrrrry, as opposed to our distinct literary, holidy as opposed to holiday. It is evident that our so-called secondary accent is in many cases almost as important as the primary. In England a secondary accent in such words as temporary and necessary has practically ceased to exist. Which mode is the better is a question both unprofitable to discuss and perhaps impossible to decide. But be it remarked that if the secondary accent had first suffered this desuetude in America, the

loss would have been stigmatized as a monstrous corruption which only the linguistically unfit could perpetrate.

Again, the flat a in such words as blast and command, although condemned by all orthoëpists, seems to have many more adherents in this country than the English ah. Here, it is said, we are inferior in elegance. The contrary may be affirmed in a fourth point of difference. In England such words as fertile and hostile are pronounced with the i long as in tile. This change cannot be out of any respect for Latin quantity, which happens to be short in the one case and long in the other. It appears to be one of those 'spelling-pronunciations' which have influenced the speech of both countries to a great extent.

Besides these general differences, many particular words at once distinguish an Englishman from an American. In trait the English have thought it proper to keep the French pronunciation. In schedule the tremendous influence of Webster has made us conform to what he deemed to be consistent with its Greek origin, while the very unclassical shedule prevails in England. All these differences are not so important as to make Englishmen and Americans mutually unintelligible; yet they are not so negligible that they remain unnoticed and undisputed by those who long for that linguistic Utopia in which the English language shall be at once elegant and uniform.

III

Both the possibility and the desirability of attaining this state of affairs seem to be taken for granted by most orthoëpic reformers. Generally they deem it unwise or perhaps unnecessary to obliterate all distinctions at once. They content themselves with the task of suppressing our most flagrant vio

lations of purity of speech. But they never seem disturbed by the thought that language in general, and pronunciation in particular, have never been changed in this artificial way.

When a certain sound is obsolescent, or when it has already arisen in one section of the country, it may be possible, by excessive 'school-mastering' of the young and much heroic endeavor on the part of the old, to revive it and prevent its extinction in the one case, or to hasten its spread in the other. In the pronunciation of particular words, especially, it is possible by persistent assertion of authority to effect a change. But a general innovation involving numerous words or sets of words, such as the substitution of a broad a for a flat one, cannot be brought about by mere voluntary endeavor Phonetic changes have always occurred, not because of any desire on the part of speakers to effect them, but simply because of the workings of a natural law of which they were unconscious or which they were at least powerless to check. Even the failure after long years of effort to pronounce naturally and consistently blahst and commahnd has not convinced the Anglomaniacs of the uselessness of their attempts. Some, in fact, with the true spirit of martyrs, seem to imagine that the struggle is the more glorious because the object is impossible of accomplishment. We have heard of the man who votes for a presidential candidate merely because he is certain to win. But the man who would vote for a presidential candidate merely because he is certain to lose possesses a mental equipment even more peculiar.

Although people still refuse to recognize the futility of their labors, and persist in the opinion that our speech should conform to that of England, one might presume that they must have the best of reasons for asserting the desirability of accomplishing this change.

It may be well to mention that many imitators of the English are inspired only by that love of the exotic which admires everything indiscriminately from China to Peru. They imitate English pronunciation merely because it is not American. On the other hand, there appear to be people who honestly believe that they are benefiting their fellow countrymen and the language by practicing themselves and imposing upon others what they regard as the only true pronunciation of English. But even these more serious-minded mortals are strangely reluctant to advance any reasons for their position; and the arguments they do propound are generally not very convincing. It has been necessary at the outset to dispose of the belief which underlies many of the pronouncements on the subject,

the mistaken notion that existing differences in pronúnciation are corruptions introduced by America. In enumerating these differences we have seen that, though comparatively few, they are not of such a nature as to be affected by individual effort. It now remains to examine what few reasons have impelled many intelligent people to attempt this impossible task.

At least two arguments can be discovered which are either definitely stated or unmistakably implied. The first may be given in the words of Richard Grant White: 'For English is the language spoken by the English people, and while the most important and most cultivated part of the English race, that which is the direct continuation of the original state, remains in England, where it was first planted and grew to maturity, it is manifestly to England that we are to go if we would find that which is emphatically and unquestionably English.'

To some people this declaration may not appear so obvious and irrefutable as it evidently did to the propounder.

The statement that 'English is the language spoken by the English people,' is naturally true as a mere assertion; but as a definition it is entirely inadequate. Its use as an argument is nothing but sophistry and confusion of names. English is just as truly the language spoken by the American people. Therefore, we might say by this method of reasoning, to America we must turn for the purest English. Again, one must be extremely humble, if not altogether sycophantic, to admit unconditionally that in England is 'the most important and most cultivated part of the English race.'

The whole question, it may be remarked, is bound up with our right to independence in other linguistic matters. No one can have read Professor Lounsbury's recent articles on Americanisms without realizing the necessity of differences in vocabulary. In this respect, indeed, it is now generally recognized that a dual standard not only was inevitable, but is actually salutary. Many Americanisms have become valuable additions to the English vocabulary, and our 'joint-ownership' of the language—as Mr. Brander Matthews calls it is, in this particular, being gradually conceded by England herself. Differences in the living language are naturally greater and more noticeable; it is perhaps for this reason that attempts to efface them utterly are still being made. None the less, they are even more inevitable, and the fact that no perceptible benefit arises from their existence, and several distinct disadvantages seem to attend it, cannot prevent their continuance.

The second reason for our adoption of the pronunciation of Southern England seems to be that Englishmen of culture are not subject to the same linguistic lapses and hideous errors which beset the speech of Americans. Two pronunciations in particular have been