CHAPTER II.

It is obsolete now to use the article an before words beginning with long u or with eu, and it has become more elegant, in modern style, to say, "a university," "a useful article," "a European," "a euphonious combination of sentences," &c., &c. It is also proper to say "such a one," not "such an one."

II.

Some people pronounce the plural of handkerchief, scarf, wharf, dwarf, handkerchieves, scarves, wharves, dwarves. This is an error, as these words, and perhaps a few others, are exceptions to the rule laid down, that nouns ending in f and fe shall change these terminations into ves to form the plural.

III.

There is an illiterate mode of pronouncing the adverb too, which is that of contracting it into the sound of the preposition to; thus, "I think I paid to much for this gun," "This line is to long by half." The adverb too should be pronounced like the numeral adjective two, and have the same full distinct sound in delivery, as, "I think I paid two much for this gun," "This line is two long by half."

IV.

One does not expect to hear such words as "necessi'ated," "preventative," &c., from people who profess to be educated; but one does hear them, nevertheless, and many others of the same genus, of which the following list is a specimen, not a collection.

"Febuary" and "Febbiwerry," instead of February.
"Seckaterry"	instead of	secretary.
"Gover'ment"	"	government.
"Eve'min"	"	evening.
"Sev'm"	"	seven.
"Holladiz"	"	holidays.
"Mossle"	"	morsel.

"Chapped," according to orthography, instead of chopped, according to polite usage.

And we have even heard "continental" pronounced continential, though upon what authority we know not. Besides these, a multitude of others might be quoted, which we consider too familiar to particularize and "too numerous to mention."

There is an old jest on record of a person hearing another pronounce the word curiosity "curosity," and remarking to a bystander, "That man murders the English language." "Nay," replies the person addressed, "he only knocks an eye (i) out." And I am invariably reminded of this old jest whenever I hear such pronunciations as the following,—"Lat'n" for Latin, "sat'n" for satin, and Britain pronounced so as to rhyme with written,—of which a few examples will be given on a subsequent page, not with the wild hope of comprising in so short a space all the perversions of prosody which are constantly taking place, but simply with the intention of reminding careless speakers of some general principles they seem to have forgotten, and of the vast accumulation of error they may engraft upon themselves by a lazy adherence to the custom of the crowd. Before, however, proceeding to the words in question, it may be satisfactory to our readers to recall to their memory the observations of Lindley Murray on the subject. He says, "There is scarcely anything which more distinguishes a person of poor education from a person of a good one than the pronunciation of the unaccented vowels. When vowels are under the accent, the best speakers, and the lowest of the people, with very few exceptions, pronounce them in the same manner; but the unaccented vowels in the mouths of the former have a distinct, open, and specific sound, while the latter often totally sink them, or change them into some other sound." The words that have chiefly struck me are the following, in which not only the i but some of the other vowels are submitted to the mutilating process, or, as I have heard it pronounced, mutulating.

Brit'n	instead of	Britain.
Lat'n	"	Latin.
Sat'n	"	Satin.
Patt'n	"	Patten.
Curt'n	"	Curtain.
Cert'n	"	Certain.
Bridle	"	Bridal.
Idle	"	Idol.
Meddle	"	Medal.
Moddle	"	Model.
Mentle	"	Mental.
Mortle	"	Mortal.
Fatle	"	Fatal.
Gravle	"	Gravel.
Travle	"	Travel.
Sudd'n	"	Sudden.
Infidle	"	Infidel.
Scroop'-lous	"	Scru-pu-lous.

And a long train of et cetera, of which the above examples do not furnish a tithe.

Note.—That to sound the e in garden and often, and the i in evil and devil, is a decided error. They should always be pronounced gard'n and oft'n, ev'l and dev'l.

Some people pronounce the I in Irish and its concomitants so as to make the words Ireland, Irishmen, Irish linen, &c., sound as if they were written Arland, A-rishmen, Arish linen, &c. This is literally "knocking an i out."

VI.

It is affected, and contrary to authority, to deprive the s of its sharp hissing sound in the words precise, desolate, design, and their derivatives.

VII.

There is one peculiarity which we feel bound to notice, because it has infected English speakers,—that of corrupting the e and the i into the sound of a or u, in the words ability, humility, charity, &c.; for how often is the ear wrung by such barbarisms as, humilutty, civilutty, qualaty, quantaty, crualty, charaty, humanaty, barbaraty, horruble, terruble, and so on, ad infinitum!—an uncouth practice, to which nothing is comparable, except pronouncing yalla for yellow.

VIII.

There is in some quarters a bad mode prevalent of pronouncing the plural of such words as face, place, &c., fazes, plazes, whilst the plural of price seems everywhere subject to the same strange mutation. The words should be faces, places, prices, without any softening of the c into z. There is, too, an ugly fashion of pronouncing the ng, when terminating a word or syllable, as we pronounce the same combination of letters in the word finger, and making such words as "singer," "ringer," &c., rhyme with linger. Sometimes the double o is elongated into the sound which we give to that dipthong in "room," "fool," "moon," &c., which has a very bad effect in such words as book, look, nook, took, &c.; and sometimes it is contracted into the sound of short u, making "foot," and some other words, rhyme with but.

IX.

And having remarked on the lingering pronunciation, it is but fair to notice a defect, the reverse of this, namely, that of omitting the final g in such words as saying, going, shilling, &c., and pronouncing them "sayin," "goin," "shillin." This is so common an error that it generally escapes notice, but is a greater blemish, where we have a right to look for perfection, than the peculiarities of the provinces in those who reside there.

It is also a common fault to add a gratuitous r to words ending with a vowel, such as Emmar, Louisar, Juliar, and to make draw, law, saw, flaw, with all others of the same class, rhyme with war; to omit the r in such words as corks, forks, curtains, morsel, &c.; in the word perhaps, when they conscientiously pronounce the h; and sometimes in Paris; or to convert it into the sound of a y when it comes between two vowels, as in the name Harriet, and in the words superior, interior, &c., frequently pronounced Aah-yet, su-pe-yor, in-te-yor, &c.

XI.

There is a vicious mode of amalgamating the final s of a word (and sometimes the final c, when preceded and followed by a vowel) with the first letter of the next word, if that letter happens to be a y, in such a manner as to produce the sound of sh or of usu in usual; as, "A nishe young man," "What makesh you laugh?" "If he offendsh you, don't speak to him," "Ash you please," "Not jush yet," "We always passh your house in going to call on Missh Yates,—she lives near Palash Yard;" and so on through all the possibilities of such a combination. This is decided, unmitigated cockneyism, having its parallel in nothing except the broken English of the sons of Abraham; and to adopt it in conversation is certainly "not speaking like a Christian." The effect of this pronunciation on the ear is as though the mouth of the speaker were filled with froth, which impedes the utterance, and gives the semblance of a defect where nature had kindly intended perfection; but the radical cause of this, and of many other mispronunciations, is the carelessness, sometimes the ignorance, of teachers, who permit children to read and speak in a slovenly manner, without opening their teeth, or taking any pains to acquire a distinct articulation.

XII.

Whilst we are on the subject of Prosody, we must not omit to mention the vicious pronunciation occasionally given to the words new, due, Tuesday, stupid, and a few others, sometimes corrupted into noo, doo, Toosday, stoopid, &c., by way of refinement, perhaps, for lips which are too delicate to utter the clear, broad, English u.

XIII.

Never say "Cut it in half," for this you cannot do unless you could annihilate one half. You may "cut it in two," or "cut it in halves," or "cut it through," or "divide it," but no human ability will enable you to cut it in half.

XIV.

Never speak of "lots" and "loads" of things. Young men allow themselves a diffusive license of speech, and of quotation, which has introduced many words into colloquial style that do not at all tend to improve or dignify the language, and which, when heard from ladies' lips, become absolute vulgarisms. A young man may talk recklessly of "lots of bargains," "lots of money," "lots of fellows," "lots of fun," &c., but a lady may not. Man may indulge in any latitude of expression within the bounds of sense and decorum, but woman has a narrower range,—even her mirth must be subjected to rule. It may be naïve, but must never be grotesque. It is not that we would have primness in the sex, but we would have refinement. Women are the purer and the more ornamental part of life, and when they degenerate, the Poetry of Life is gone.

XV.

"Loads" is a word quite as objectional as "lots," unless it can be reduced to a load of something, such as a ship-load, a wagon-load, a cart-load, a horse-load, &c. We often hear such expressions as "loads of shops," "loads of authors," "loads of compliments;" but as shops, authors, compliments, are things not usually piled up into loads, either for ships or horses, we cannot discover the propriety of the application.

XVI.

Some people, guiltless of those absurdities, commit a great error in the use of the word quantity, applying it to things of number, as "a quantity of friends," "a quantity of ships," "a quantity of houses," &c. Quantity can be applied only where bulk is indicated, as "a quantity of land," "a quantity of timber;" but we cannot say, "a quantity of fields," "a quantity of trees," because trees and fields are specific individualities. Or we may apply it where individualities are taken in the gross, without reference to modes, as "a quantity of luggage," "a quantity of furniture;" but we cannot say "a quantity of boxes," "a quantity of chairs and tables," for the same reason which is given in the former instances. We also apply the term quantity to those things of number which are too minute to be taken separately, as "a quantity of beans," "a quantity of oats," &c., &c.

XVII.

Avoid favorite words and phrases; they betray a poverty of language or of imagination not creditable to a cultivated intellect. Some people are so unfortunate as to find all things vulgar that come "betwixt the wind and their nobility;" others find them disgusting. Some are always anticipating, others are always appreciating. Multitudes are aristocratic in all their relations, other multitudes are as distingués. These two words are chiefly patronized by those whose pretensions in such respects are the most questionable. To some timid spirits, born under malignant influences no doubt, most things present an awful appearance, even though they come in shapes so insignificant as a cold day or an aching finger. But, thanks to that happy diversity of Nature which throws light as well as shadow into the human character, there are minds of brighter vision and more cheerful temperament, who behold all things splendid, magnificent, down to a cup of small beer, or a half-penny orange. Some people have a grandiloquent force of expression, thereby imparting a tremendous or thundering character even to little things. This is truly carrying their conceptions into the sublime,—sometimes a step beyond.

We have, however, no intention of particularizing all the "pet" phrases which salute the ear; but the enumeration of a few of them may make the candid culprit smile, and avoid those trifling absurdities for the future.

We would, under favor, suggest to the reader the advantage of not relying too confidently on knowledge acquired by habit and example alone. There are many words in constant use which are perverted from their original meanings; and if we were to dip into some standard dictionary occasionally, search out the true meanings of words with which we have fancied ourselves acquainted, and convict ourselves of all the errors we have been committing in following the crowd, our surprise, perhaps, would equal that of Molière's Bourgeois Gentilhomme when he discovered that he had been talking prose for forty years.

The words feasible, ostensible, obnoxious, apparent, obtain, refrain, domesticated, and centre, are expressions which, nine times out of ten, are misapplied, besides a host of others whose propriety is never questioned, so firmly has custom riveted the bonds of ignorance.

In closing this little volume, the writer begs leave to say that the remarks offered are intended only as "Hints," which they who desire perfection may easily improve, by a little exercise of the understanding, and a reference to more extensive sources, into a competent knowledge of their own tongue; also as warnings to the careless, that their lapses do not pass so unobserved as they are in the habit of supposing.

Though many of the syntactical errors herein mentioned are to be found in the works of some of our best writers, they are errors nevertheless, and stand as blemishes upon the productions of their genius, like unsightly excrescences upon a lovely skin. Genius is above grammar, and this conviction may inspire in some bosoms an undue contempt for the latter. But grammar is a constituent part of good education, and a neglect of it might argue a want of education, which would, perhaps, be mortifying. It is an old axiom that "civility costs nothing," and surely grammatical purity need not cost much to people disposed to pay a little attention to it, and who have received a respectable education already. It adds a grace to eloquence, and raises the standard of language where eloquence is not.

A handsome man or handsome woman is not improved by a shabby or slatternly attire; so the best abilities are shown to a disadvantage through a style marked by illiteracies.