OUR MOTHER TONGUE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23330, 23 October 1937, Page 19

OUR MOTHER TONGUE

RANDOM NOTES By Professor Arnold Wall LITTLE PROBLEMS —£&.- and its relations.—There Is nothing problematic about the facts here, but a problem arises when we consider what to do about them A medical correspondent draws my attention to the widespread and frequent abuse of the terms which relate to tuberculosis.' To begin with, we use the abbreviation, T.B. or t.b. to denote the disease when it really stands only for the words "tubercle bacillus." For example, we find the heading in a daily paper, "High T.B. Death Rate," which is unmeaning if we supply the "Tubercle Bacillus" for T.B. I fear that nearly all of us use this convenient abbreviation both in writing and in speech with the excuse that we do not know what the letters properly stand for. When we do learn the facts, we ought, of course, to mend our ways, but we cannot well do this without eeeming to assume an attitude of superiority, which we do not care to do. Hence the problem. There is also a great regrettable confusion in the minds of the majority of us in respect of the terms "tubercular " and " tuberculous." We have, for instance, in a newspaper article, "Chronic tubercular cases." Now, "tubercular" means "of the nature or form of a tubercle," not "affected by tuberculosis," which is what the writer meant. The prooer word here is "tuberculous," which means in its most general sense "affected with tubercles." The word "tuberculosis," which dates from about 1860, originally meant any disease characterised by the formation of tubercles, but since the discovery of the tubercle bacillus by Koch in 1882 it has been restricted to diseases caused by this bacillus, such as pulmonary consumption and scrofula. The plain man cannot reasonably be expected to know these facts, or to be able to distinguish the exact meanings of "tubercular" and " tuberculous, yet when once his attention has been drawn to • them he ought to observe the distinctions carefully. Substitution "of" or "for."—l am appealed to for a decision on the correctness or otherwise of the following: —" This portion of the order is in substitution of ... of one monthly shipment only." My correspondent suggests that "for" should have been used instead of the first "of" in this sentence. In the sentence as it stands neither "of" nor "for" is quite satisfactory, though of the two " for" Is preferable to "of." The full and correct expression with "substitution" requires both "of" and "for"; "this portion is in substitution of 'for . . ~" but the writer of the sentence quoted should have used "substituted" instead of "substitution," and then the trouble would have been avoided. The sentence would run, "this portion has been substituted for . . ." A LITTLE BLACK LIST

t " Took ill." The correspondent who asks for a comment on this phrase describes it as "commonly used and ugly." It is characterised in the Oxford Dictionary as "colloquial and dialect." This is perhapis a little too kind, for it is rather a vulgarism than a colloquialism. I have heard it from speakers who ought to know better, but feel sure that it would be condemned as vulgar by any observer of the proprieties of our Mother Tongue. In its favour it may indeed be pleaded that it is of respectable antiquity, for ,/it is recorded from about 1820, and was used by Trevelyan: "Mr Pitt took ill and died," in 1903. Yet, judged by the company it keeps it stands condemned by modern usage. "Diptheria." This pronunciation of " diphtheria " is, of course, vulgar, even sinful. No valid excuse for it is to be devised, but something may be said of, not for, the cause which underlies it. It is really rather difficult to pronounce two spirants like "f " or " s " and " th " together. The vulgar "spere" for "sphere" and the very common "dipthong" for "diphthong" are in their sin companions of " diptheria." BANBURY CROSS Referring to a previous note of mine upon the Shakespearian "goss" for " gorse," a co-respondent speculates upon the possible pronunciation of " horse " as " hoss " by Shakespeare, and adduces the example of the old nursery rhyme to illustrate the point. The fact is that most English vords of this group tended to be pronounced in the shorter manner from about the sixteenth century onwards. After making a strong bid for recognition, the "hoss," "wuss," "nussi, "wuth," "grfss," "cuss," etc., were frowned down by the more careful and genteel speakers and reduced to the rank of provincialisms or vulgarisms. By a curious coincidence the word "cross," like others of its group—"loss," "off," etc. —was for a long time pronounced both ways by different speakers (and, Indeed, still is), " crawss " and " cross," and so on, so that " cross " rhymed with "hoss" at one time, and "crawss" rhymed more or less well with " horse " at any time after the " r " disappeared from "horse" and its group—that is during the later eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. All this does not tell us whether Shakespeare himself said "hoss" for "horse," but it is quite possible that he did so; and we must remember that he would not in any case say "horse" as we do in English but with a trilled "r" as a Scot does still. "POOR" AND "DOOR" A correspondent, noticing that in Goldsmith, for instance, "door" rhymes with "moor," sends me some comments and a query regarding the modern pronunciation of "door." He has certainly put his finger upon a Curious point, if not a weakness, in our modern manner of pronouncing English. • The words of the group to which both "door" and "moor" belong have not behaved in a regular or quite seemly manner. Taking the commonest of them only, and examining how they are represented in Daniel Jones's Dictionary, we find that (translating his phonetic symbols into ordinary spelling), "moor" is best pronounced as "mooer," but also as "mawer" and "maw." that "poor" agrees exactly with "moor"; that "door" is best pronounced as "daw," and also as " dawer "; and that " boor " Is pronounced as " booer " only. Many people will, of course, object to this account of " door," insisting that it should be "dooer." like "pooer," but the close observer will probably say that whatever it ought to be, it actually is " daw," or something very like that, in the mouths of the great majority of speakers at the present day. The reason for this seems to be the extreme commonness of the word, for as a general rule words which are in verv frequent use tend to change more freely and rapidly than the rarer words, for obvious reasons. The difference in sound between a common and a rare word of the same form is rather like that between an old boot and a new one.