Peculiarities of Pronunciation.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 7, 12 February 1903, Page 4

Peculiarities of Pronunciation.

The strange vocabulary of the Scotch Lowlanders (says the London ' Academy ') has long been a valuable' literary asset ; in Scott's footsteps petty men have trodden their way to fame and fortune. It had been remarked that Great Britain is being divided amongst the novelists, who carve out kingdoms for themselves, like the Saxons of the Heptarchy, and, acquiring power with time, need fear no trespasser. The Lord of Wessex, as in Saxon days, is the strongest ruler ; the Yorkshire Moors were held by a woman, whose fame giows, like a tree, in unmarked lapse of time ; London is now mourning a kind master. Writers must illustrate the universal by the particular, and local color, remote dialects, appeal also to the desire for novelty which is often the only strong passion of novel readers. Certain novels, written largely in broad Scotch, were received some years ago with' so much enthusiasm that one could imagine the reading public to believe, like Mr. George Moore, that English was worn out as a means of literary expression." Like nine-tenths of the Gaelic League, he has no Gaelic, and he scorns the English which his Irish fellow-countrymen speak. It is indeed strange that the gutturals' of a Scotch farmer are held worthy of many phonographs, while the gentle Irish brogue always calls forth an English smile. Nobody seems to have studied the genesis and development of the English which Irishmen speak, the speech of the potato-patch is ignoble compared with that of the kail-yard. Yet a study of the English spoken in Ireland is interesting and profitable to a student of English literature. The Irish accent is the result of arrested development. Everybody knows how Cromwell planted Munster with English colonists, and how they throve therein until, after the Restoration, the bishops harried them as Nonconformists, and the English Government closed all markets against them, and how they faded out of the joyless land which they had made smiling and fertile. The native Irish learn readily, and never forget. The English garrison, Cromwell's veterans, when they were established and dominant, taught the Gaels English. Since that time the Irish have learned no new fashions in English speaking. They pronounce it to-day as Cromwell and his troopers, as Milton, Dryden, and even Pope pronounced it. Slight changes were made, as must be when a people learns an alien tongue. Still we may say on the whole that the brogue at which the English smile is the accent which Ireland learned from the Puritan settlers. Mr Flavin and his fellows abuse the House of Commons in much the same tone as that which Cromwell once used to a more famous Parliament. It is no new suggestion that Irishmen talk better English than the English. Dean Swift wrote to Pope expressing his regret at some slighting rematk of the latter 's concerning the Irish : ' The English colonies who are three parts in four, are much more civilised than many counties in England, and speak better English, and are much better bred.' It is possible here to give only a few illustrations of the survival of old words and pronunciations in Ireland. The multitude who are ' agin the government ' use the old preposition which they learned before it was modernised into ' against.' The word survives, of course, in n any rural districts of England, where there is little reading of books. The peculiarity of pronunciation which most strikes the tourist is the broad sound gi\en to such \\ o' ds as ' please, sea, beast, complete ' Waller, Dryden and Pope habitually pronounced them as ' plaze, say, baste, compute.' as all students of seventeenth and eightoonth ct ntury poetry have noticed. Dryden, for example, wiote: Nentune, yet doubtful whom ho should obey, Held to them both the trident of the sea. Pope pronounced ' tea ' in the same manner as a Tipperary peasant does. One example, referring to ' great Anna,' is well-known ; here is another : Soft yielding minds to water glide away, And sip. with nymphs, the elemental tea So in Munster the county folk talk of the ' lay,' meaning ' lea,' that pretty word which Englishmen have abandoned to the poets.' It was the influence of French that made our ancestois pronounce 'complete' and ' theme,' and the influence still holds good o\er hare. Listen to Pope again : Here swells the shelf with Opilby the great There, stamped with arms, Newcastle shines complete. English, with characteristic inconsistency, has kept the broad sound in ' great.' ' Key,' in Dryden, rhymes with 'play,' and why do modern English pronounce " quay 'in the same w<iy as ' key ' ? Tope, who stood at the parting of the ways, was already inconsistent, and rhymes ' appear ' with ' bier.' In Milton editors have replaced, for ' height,' the proper spelling ' hiehth,' a noun formed regularly from the adjective, as ' depth ' irom ' deep.' People find it ridiculous that the Irishman, faithful to his teacheis, speaks of ' the hoith of good company.' So we ha\e forgotten Shakespeaie's pronunciation of ' character,' but the Irish se.rvant still talks of Rotting a good ' character.' It seems as if Englishmen have quite lately rid themselves of the aspirate in words that begin with ' wh,' such as ' which.' what.' Dickens drew attention to its absence in the Cockney speech of his day by means of the spelling, ' wot,' ' vich,' and it may have been strange

in the ears of men of his time. The Scotch, as well as the Irish, have been true in this matter. Innovations make their way, even now, more slowly in Ireland During the last century the Scotch diminutive ' donkey ' has won its way all over England, but here the ass generally keeps his ancient name. Schoolboys 'cog,' as they did in Shakespeare's time, when they have not learned their work, but English boys ' crib.' By the same token, as Dean Swift used to say, all classes speak of a pack of cards as a ' deck,' just as Pope and he used to speak of them. The peasantry believe as strongly as ever in a personal devil, and he lends his name to many landscapes ; appeals to him are on every tongue, but they call him ' the Divil.' That is the unvarying spelling of the word in the Elizabethan dramas, and it is hard to see why the spelling and pronunciation were changed.