The Mother Tongue (15 page)

For example, the Elizabethans, unlike modern English speakers, continued to pronounce many
er
words as
ar
ones, rhyming
serve
with
carve
and
convert
with
depart.
In England, some of these pronunciations survive, particularly in proper nouns, such as Derby, Berkeley, and Berkshire, though there are many exceptions and inconsistencies, as with the town of Berkamsted, Hertfordshire, in which the first word is pronounced “birk-,” but the second is pronounced “hart-.” It also survives in a very few everyday words in Britain, notably
derby, clerk,
and—with an obviously modified spelling—
heart,
though not in
jerk, kerb
(the English spelling of
curb
),
nerve, serve, herd, heard,
or almost any others of the type. In America, it has been even more consistently abandoned and survives only in
heart.
But the change is more recent than you might suppose. Well into the nineteenth century, Noah Webster was still castigating those who would say
marcy
for
mercy
and
marchant
for
merchant.
And then of course there's that favorite word of Yosemite Sam's,
varmint,
which is simply a variant of
vermin.
In both Britain and America the problem was sometimes resolved by changing the spelling: Thus Hertford, Connecticut, became Hartford, while in Britain Barclay and Carr became acceptable variants for Berkeley and Kerr. In at least three instances this problem between “er” and “ar” pronunciation has left us with modern doublets:
person
and
parson, university
and
varsity,
and
perilous
and
parlous.

It is probable, though less certain, that words such as
herd, birth, hurt,
and
worse,
which all today carry an identical “er” sound—which, entirely incidentally, is a sound that appears to be unique to English—had slightly different pronunciations up to Shakespeare's day and perhaps beyond. All of these pronunciation changes have continued up until fairly recent times. As late as the fourth decade of the eighteenth century Alexander Pope was rhyming
obey
with
tea, ear
with
repair, give
with
believe, join
with
devine,
and many others that jar against modern ears. The poet William Cowper, who died in 1800, was still able to rhyme
way
with
sea. July
was widely pronounced “Julie” until about the same time.
Gold
was pronounced “gould” until well into the nineteenth century (hence the family name) and
merchant
was still often “marchant” long after Webster's death.

Sometimes changes in pronunciation are rather more subtle and mysterious. Consider, for example, changes in the stress on many of those words that can function as either nouns or verbs—words like
defect, reject, disguise,
and so on. Until about the time of Shakespeare all such words were stressed on the second syllable. But then three exceptions arose—
outlaw, rebel,
and
record
—in which the stress moved to the first syllable when they were used as nouns (e.g., we re bel′ against a reb′el; we re ject′ a re′ject). As time went on, according to Aitchison [
Language Change,
page 96], the number of words of this type was doubling every hundred years or so, going from 35 in 1700 to 70 in 1800 and to 150 by this century, spreading to include such words as
object, subject, convict,
and
addict.
Yet there are still a thousand words which remain unaffected by this 400-year trend, among them
disdain, display, mistake, hollow, bother,
and
practice.
Why should this be? No one can say.

What is certain is that just as English spellings often tell us something about the history of our words, so do some of our pronunciations, at least where French terms are concerned. Words adopted from France before the seventeenth century have almost invariably been anglicized, while those coming into the language later usually retain a hint of Frenchness. Thus older
ch-
words have developed a distinct “tch” sound as in
change, charge,
and
chimney,
while the newer words retain the softer “sh” sound of
champagne, chevron, chivalry,
and
chaperone. Chef
was borrowed twice into English, originally as
chief
with a hard
ch
and later as
chef
with a soft
ch.
A similar tendency is seen in
-age,
the older forms of which have been thoroughly anglicized into an “idge” sound (
bandage, cabbage, language
) while the newer imports keep a Gallic “ozh” flavor (
bodinage, camouflage
). There has equally been a clear tendency to move the stress to the first syllable of older adopted words, as with
mutton, button,
and
baron,
but not with newer words such as
balloon
and
cartoon.
Presumably because of their proximity to France (or, just as probably, because of their long disdain for things French) the British have a somewhat greater tendency to disguise French pronunciations, pronouncing
garage
as “garridge,”
fillet
as “fill-ut,” and putting a clear first-syllable stress on
café, buffet, ballet,
and
pâté.
(Some Britons go so far as to say “buffy” and “bally.”)

Spelling and pronunciation in English are very much like trains on parallel tracks, one sometimes racing ahead of the other before being caught up. An arresting example of this can be seen in the slow evolution of verb forms in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that turned
hath
into
has
and
doth
into
does.
Originally
-th
verbs were pronounced as spelled. But for a generation or two during the period from (roughly) 1600 to 1650 they became pronounced as if spelled in the modern way, even when the spelling was unaltered. So, for example, when Oliver Cromwell saw
hath
or
chooseth,
he almost certainly read them as “has” or “chooses” despite their spellings. Only later did the spellings catch up [cited by Jespersen, page 213].

Often, however, the process has worked the other way around, with pronunciation following spelling. We will see how the changes of spelling in words like
descrive/describe
and
parfet/perfect
resulted in changes in pronunciation, but many other words have been similarly influenced.
Atone
was once pronounced “at one” (the term from which it sprang), while
atonement
was “at one-ment.” Many people today pronounce the
t
in
often
because it's there (even though they would never think to do it with
soften, fasten,
or
hasten
) and I suspect that a majority of people would be surprised to learn that the correct (or at least historic) pronunciation of
waistcoat
is “wess-kit,” of
victuals
is “vittles,” of
forehead
is “forrid,” and of
comptroller
is “controller” (the one is simply a fancified spelling of the other). In all of these the sway of spelling is gradually proving irresistible.

Quite a few of these spelling-induced pronunciation changes are surprisingly recent. At the time of the American Revolution,
husband
was pronounced “husban,”
soldier
was “sojur,” and
pavement
was “payment,” according to Burchfield [page 41]. Until well into the nineteenth century,
zebra
was pronounced “zebber,”
chemist
was “kimmist,” and
Negro,
despite its spelling, was “negger” (hence the insulting term
nigger
). Burchfield goes on to point out that until the nineteenth century
swore
was spoken with a silent
w
(as
sword
still is) as were
Edward
and
upward,
giving “Ed′ard” and “up′ard.”

Much of this would seem to fly in the face—indeed,
does
fly in the face—of what we were saying earlier, namely that pronounciations tend to become slurred over time. Although that is generally true, there are constant exceptions. Language, never forget, is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling, and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines. People say things sometimes because they are easier or more sensible, but sometimes simply because that's the way everyone else is saying them.
Bounteous,
for instance, was in Noah Webster's day pronounced “bountchus”—a clear case of evolutionary slurring—but for some reason purists took exception to it and
bountchus
quickly became a mark of ignorance. It is for the same reason precisely that in modern England it is considered more refined to pronounce
ate
as “et.”

But without doubt the most remarkable example of pronunciation change arising purely as a whim of fashion was the sudden tendency in eighteenth-century upper-class southern England to pronounce words like
dance, bath,
and
castle
with a broad
a,
as if they were spelled
dahnce, bahth,
and
cahstle.
In the normal course of things, we might have expected the pronunciations to drift back. But for some reason they stuck (at least they have so far), helping to underscore the social, cultural, and orthoepic differences between not only Britons and Americans but even between Britons and Britons. The change was so consequential and far-reaching that it is not so much a matter of pronunciation as of dialect. And that rather neatly takes us to the topic of our next chapter.

7.

Varieties of English

W
hether you call a long cylindrical sandwich a hero, a submarine, a hoagie, a torpedo, a garibaldi, a poor boy, or any of at least half a dozen other names tells us something about where you come from. Whether you call it cottage cheese, Dutch cheese, pot cheese, smearcase, clabber cheese, or curd cheese tells us something more. If you call the playground toy in which a long plank balances on a fulcrum a dandle you almost certainly come from Rhode Island. If you call a soft drink tonic, you come from Boston. If you call a small naturally occurring object a stone rather than a rock you mark yourself as a New Englander. If you have a catch rather than play catch or stand on line rather than in line clearly you are a New Yorker. Whether you call it pop or soda, bucket or pail, baby carriage or baby buggy, scat or gesundheit, the beach or the shore—all these and countless others tell us a little something about where you come from. Taken together they add up to what grammarians call your
idiolect,
the linguistic quirks and conventions that distinguish one group of language users from another.

A paradox of accents is that in England where people from a common heritage have been living together in a small area for thousands of years, there is still a huge variety of accents, whereas in America, where people from a great mix of backgrounds have been living together in a vast area for a relatively short period, people speak with just a few voices. As Simeon Potter puts it: “It would be no exaggeration to say that greater differences in pronunciation are discernible in the north of England between Trent and Tweed [a distance of about 100 miles] than in the whole of North America” [
Our Language,
page 168]. Surely we should expect it to be the other way around. In England, the prolonged proximity of people ought to militate against differences in accent, while in America the relative isolation of many people ought to encourage regional accents. And yet people as far apart as New York State and Oregon speak with largely identical voices. According to some estimates almost two-thirds of the American population, living on some 80 percent of the land area, speak with the same accent—a quite remarkable degree of homogeneity.

Some authorities have suggested that once there was much greater diversity in American speech than now. As evidence, they point out that in
Huckleberry Finn,
Mark Twain needed seven separate dialects to reflect the speech of various characters, even though they all came from much the same area. Clearly that would not be necessary, or even possible, today. On the other hand, it may be that thousands of regional accents exist out there and that we're simply not as alert to them as we might be.

The study of dialects is a relatively recent thing. The American Dialect Society was founded as long ago as 1889, and the topic has been discussed by authorities throughout this century. Even so, systematic scientific investigation did not begin until well into this century. Much of the most important initial work was done by Professor Hans Kurath of the University of Michigan, who produced the seminal
A Word Geography of the Eastern United States
in 1949. Kurath carefully studied the minute variations in speech to be found along the Eastern seaboard—differences in vocabulary, pronunciation, and the like—and drew lines called isoglosses that divided the country into four main speech groups: Northern, Midland, Southern, and New England. Later work by others enabled these lines to be extended as far west as Texas and the prairie states. Most authorities since then have accepted these four broad divisions.