Educated Mispronunciations

A BRILLIANT Irishman of Boston says that New Yorkers accuse him of speaking with an “ educated mispronunciation.” The phrase characterizes excellently a kind of error of speech which is different from vulgar error in that it is proud of itself : vulgar error does not recognize itself as error, and when it does arrive at self-consciousness it is heartily ashamed.

No one objects to the mistakes of an educated person ; they do much to make him human. Often, too, the cultivated person wears his mistakes with a kind of distinction, just as a well-bred body carries with grace an ill-fitting garment. But most odious is the cultivated error that sets itself up — in print — as criterion for the mob. What intellectual snobbery ! What narrow provincial urbanity ! Some months ago I read a paper in one of the magazines by a cultivated English lady on what she called, with irritating assumption, “ the trick of education.” Her underlying thought was that between two forms equally correct, the educated person chooses the better. That is an old and obvious idea which I have read in about fifteen textbooks on rhetoric. And because it is old and obvious and still remembered, it is a good idea. My regards to the lady for her nice plea for fine distinctions ! But, alas, she falls into the pitfall which was digged, by what Thomas Hardy would call the Spirit of Irony, for the aloof and highstepping few. Why should she crystallize as correct and preferable downright blunders, of which her particular social class happens to be uniformly guilty ?

With easy assurance she informs us that “ girl ” does not rhyme with “ whirl” and “ pearl ” and “ curl.” She is a poet, and she ought to know better. But no, she expects us to give up our beautiful lyric about the little girl who did not dress her hair in pompadour. How, then, are we to pronounce “ girl ” ? Listen ! “ He who says ' girl ’ to rhyme with ‘ pearl ’ has less the trick of education than he who says ‘ girl ’ with the vowel of ‘ care.’ ” “ The trick of education seems

indeed to be fond of this vowel — the vowel of ‘care’ and ‘girl.’” It must be a low-down trick. The vowel of “ girl ” and “ care,” a long “ a,” is pronounced like the long “ o ” in “ teeth,” and only a few English people can get it.

A little more education (say, in a good university) and a little less “ trick of education ” would tell this lady that the “ ir ” in “ whirl ” and the “ ir ” in “ girl ” are the same. A better ear for language, and some study of the physiology of phonetics, would show her that as a plain physical fact of vocal utterance the weak vowels become identical before “r.” “ R ” is a sort of cotton fibre sound which muffles distinctions. Assertion for assertion, by the facts of phonetics, by the ineluctable physics of sound, “ girl ” must rhyme with “ whirl ” and “ pearl ” and “ curl.” And so it does in all the poets.

If there is a possible better pronunciation of “ girl,” it is that which I have heard from the strong throats of Scotsmen, who say the word exactly as it is spelled,“ girl.” It is difficult to manage ; you begin as if you were to speak of the gill of a fish, and then stuff in between the “ i ” and the “ 1 ” a good hoarse “ r.” This pronunciation is historical; it will show you how to pronounce the word “ girles ” in Chaucer. But here, again, though we have a more reasonable “ preference,” the natural physiology of sound forbids.

The same lady prefers “ inexplicable,” “ indissoluble,” “ inacceptable,” to “ inexplicable,” “ indissoluble,” and “ unacceptable.” In the first two cases she is right, except that it is not a question of preference. The only correct pronunciation is “ inexplicable ” and “ indissoluble.” In the third case she is embalming two errors. In the first place, the word “ inacceptable ” does not exist ; she means “unacceptable.” In the second place, it is accented only on the antepenult, and no other accentuation is correct. So she is preferring something which is quite wrong.

Cultivated people are delightful when they mispronounce ; they give humbler folk a comforting sense of equality. When, however, persons of culture insist on their errors, they are irritating. One of the best readers and speakers I know prides himself on saying “ middiff ” for “midwife.” He fancies that the least usual thing is the best, and he is beautifully misled in this case by “ housewife,” which may be pronounced “ hussiff ” if one prefers. The pronunciation “ middiff ” does not exist. I have no quarrel with his error. My quarrel is with his persisting that the only right way to pronounce the word is less preferable. In the same way he prefers “ cumred ” to “ commrăd.” He has a right to his preference; but once he cried out in alarm because I said “ commrăd,” which is also correct. His error in setting down as wrong what he does not prefer is pernicious.

Another critic and philosopher of my acquaintance is irritated by the flat “ a” of the Westerner, which sounds like the slap of a shingle against a picket fence. Swinging to the other extreme, my friend carefully pronounces “ man ” like the German “ mann.” Oh, blunderer ! Oh, earless one ! To talk like that and pretend to give lectures on poetry !

The comic papers have already made ridiculous the man who speaks of “ chawming weathah.” And even cultivated people would pronounce “ r ” if they could. In the east of America, the letter is obsolete before consonants and at the end of a word. In the west it is multiplied to the vibrations of a thousand telegraph wires. Who is left in the land that can pronounce “ carthorse ” ?

Well, no matter about that; it is beside my theme. My protest is aimed at the chests of persons who call themselves educated, and boast their blunders as part of their education. Consider the lilies ! Listen to the mocking-baird ! Oh, temporary morals ! “ The little

gayrl refused the unACceptable mann.” Would not that make even a Bostonian go west of Worcester and rejoice in the shrill purring of the Chicago “ r ” ? Would not that sentence render even tolerable the New Yorker’s “ little goil who oiled hoy coils with hair-oil, and watched the little boid sitting on the coib-stone ” ?

Let us cleave to our preferences, but let us not prefer anything that is positively incorrect. Above all, let us not try to reduce our preferences for what is wrong into law and prophecy for the Common People.