THE POINT OF VIEW
A Question of
Accent.
I suppose there is no gainsaying the authority of "general usage" in the matter of English pronunciation—even when that usage is etymologically wrong. If there is one instinct in the Anglo-Saxon race which is at once widespread and admirable, it is surely our instinct to avoid even the semblance of preciosity; the Prig is justly our pet abhorrence. Maybe some of us incline to carry this instinct a thought too far; as, for instance, the educated English lady who, when taken to task by an American for saying sónorous, replied: "We always say sónorous; of course we know well enough that it really is sonórous, but it would sound awfully priggish to say so in every-day talk!" But she was an extreme example, and, though I still persist in saying sonórous, I am far from wishing to undo the long-done work of that "general usage" which has given us bálcony (for balcóny) and anémone (for anemóne). About paresis I may be in some doubt, for the word is so young in general use that there may still be time to check the spread of the illiterate parésis. The latter pronunciation does not seem to me to have been consecrated by sufficiently long usage to have won indisputable authority; there may be a chance for páresis yet!
There are, however, many words in our language, derived from the Latin, on the accentuation of which both authority and usage are still divided; and I cannot think the time past for etymology fairly having something to say about these. Yet it seems to me that the etymological rule for accenting such words, as it is commonly set down, leaves a good deal to be desired in point of logic. It is that syllables which are long by derivation should be accented, that those which are short should not; and by it we get compénsate, contémplate, etc.; but a large number of recognizedly educated people say cómpensate and cóntemplate, and also have the authority of some excellent lexicographers therefore. What authority there may be for throwing the accent upon the penult in these words cannot yet be considered as final.
A word which leads me to an explanation of my idea is elegiac—which the Standard Dictionary now gives as elégiac only, but which used to be pronounced elegíac by most cultivated English speakers. It is rather a scholarly word, and I fancy most scholars to-day still pronounce it elegíac; it seems to me that there still hangs about elégiac, as Walker said in his day, a "suspicion of illiteracy." But, if elegíac is right, why is it right? The rule for accenting syllables that are long by etymology does not hold good here, for the i in elegiācus is short, as it is also in the Greek elegiakós. It seems to me so highly probable as to amount almost to a certainty, that scholarly Englishmen fell into the habit of saying elegíac simply because they had already formed the habit of saying elegiācus. They accented the i in English because it was accented in Latin; and in Latin it is accented, not because it is long (which it is not), but because the a which follows it is short. And, if English scholars said elegíac from habit, may not the results of a similar Latin habit be found in our pronunciation of hosts of other English words of Latin origin?
The rule for accentuation I would propose is this: "If the syllable which is penultimate in the English word is accented in the Latin, it should be accented in the English word also; if, however, this syllable is unaccented in Latin, the accent in the English word should fall back upon the antepenult." Thus the penultimate i in elegiac is accented because the corresponding i is accented in elegíacus. An old school-master of mine used to insist upon our saying Quirínal, because the i was long; I maintain that Quírinal is right, because the second i in Quirinālis is unaccented. This rule would give us cóntemplate and cómpensate because the syllables tem and pen are unaccented in contemplātus and compensātus respectively. (It is of no avail to argue in favor of contémplate that the tem is long, and accented in contémplo; our English word is derived from the Latin participle, not from the first person singular of the present indicative.) Désiccate would be right on the same principle, and desíccate, wrong.
By this rule of mine we can preserve an English pronunciation as nearly like the original Latin as it is in the spirit of our language to do; and, where authority and usage are wellnigh equally divided, this seems to me worth while.