Questions at Issue in Our English Speech

by Edwin W. Bowen

In the light of these facts, then, we appreciate more fully the significance of the words of Ellis, in his monumental work on Early English Pronunciation: “For the polite sounds of a past generation are the bêtes noires of the present. Who at present, with any claim to “eddication” would jine in praising the pints of a picter? But certainly there was a time when education, join, points and picture would have sounded equally strange.”

In the Yankee dialect, as we learn from Lowell’s admirable essay on this theme in the introduction to his Biglow Papers, “the u in the ending ture is always shortened, making ventur, natur, pictur, and so on. This was common also among the educated of the last generation. I am inclined to think it may have been once universal, and I certainly think it more elegant than the vile vencher, naycher, pickcher, that have taken its place, sounding like the invention of a lexicographer to mitigate a sneeze.” When Lowell wrote these words, very little attention had been given to the study of dialects and their significance as exhibiting fossilized forms of a language. But since the publication of Ellis’s excellent work on the early pronunciation of our mother-tongue, a flood of light has been shed upon the tortuous path of the history of English sounds. Thus we can be sure that the speech of our illiterates, however vulgar and antiquated it may sound to our twentieth century ears, is, at least in many instances, the polite pronunciation of the seventeenth century. It is the English which the Pilgrim Fathers brought over with them when they landed on the shores of the New World.

So much for the dialect of our illiterates, the lingua rustica. Let us now consider the Irish dialect which is another fruitful source of vulgarisms with a pedigree. A moment’s reflection will suffice to convince the reader that this speech is very closely allied in origin with the English brought to America by the early settlers.

It is well known that the English language, as spoken by the Irish, has a peculiarity of utterance commonly called “the Irish brogue” and differs materially from standard English. Why this clearly marked and distinctive mode of utterance which differentiates the English speech on Irish lips from the same language as spoken in England and America? As a matter of fact the English spoken by the educated sons of Erin is the same as that used in England and America. But the language of the Irish in the rural districts of Ireland and of those who have emigrated to America is something quite different, and varies considerably in idiom and pronunciation from standard English. It is this which is usually termed “the Irish brogue.”

To get at the origin of this lingo we must go back to the time when Ireland was settled by the English. The tongue originally spoken in Ireland was of course the Old Irish, or Gaelic, and this was very closely related to the Welsh and the speech of the ancient Britons who resisted the Roman invasion under Julius Caesar. This was the tongue of the whole of Britain when our Saxon forefathers first found their way across the Channel from Northern Germany. This therefore was the vernacular of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table mentioned in the Arthurian legends.

As far back as the twelfth century, history records that the English began to plant colonies on the Emerald Isle and to settle parts of it, such as Forth and Bargay. But these were unimportant from our present point of view. The English settlements in Ireland from which the English language spread and diffused itself over the country were those made in Ulster and the north during the reign of James I, in 1611. This English emigration was re-enforced by the invasion of Cromwell, in 1649. So then it was during the seventeenth century that the domain of the Irishman’s native tongue was invaded by the English speech.

It will be recalled that, inasmuch as Ireland was originally populated by the Celtic race, it follows that the genuine Irishman is really a Celt, not a Saxon, although he now speaks English as his venacular. He was therefore of the same race and blood as the ancient Britons whom our Saxon forefathers found in possession of the country when they first came to Britain from the Continent. The British people represent a fusion of these two races—Celtic and Saxon—with the Saxon element predominating. According to Matthew Arnold’s dictum, it is from the Celtic blood flowing in the veins of the Englishman that he gets his sentiment. In his composite being, the modern Englishman combines with his original steady-going Saxon temperament something of the Celt’s instinct for sentiment, love of beauty, charm and spirituality, together with something of the Norman’s tact for business. According to Matthew Arnold, therefore, there is a commingling of these three streams in the English race, the Celtic and the Norman both being merged in the Saxon. As the defect of his qualities the Celt had ineffectualness and self-will,—qualities which still mark the Irish genius. The words of that eminent nineteenth century critic are very suggestive as indicating the influence of the Celtic spirit upon the Saxon, whether we are prepared to share his opinion or not. “If I were asked,” remarks he in his admirable essay On the Study of Celtic Literature, “where English poetry got these three things—its turn for style, its turn for melancholy, and its turn for natural magic, for catching and rendering the charm of nature in a wonderfully near and vivid way—I should answer, with some doubt, that it got much of its turn for style from a Celtic source; with less doubt, that it got much of its melancholy from a Celtic source; with no doubt at all, that from a Celtic source it got nearly all of its magic.”

But to return to the language of the Irish. When the English settlers emigrated to Ulster, they carried with them the English speech of the seventeenth century. A moment’s reflection teaches us that this was the pronunciation of the days of Milton and Dryden which was transplanted into Ireland. Now, it must be borne in mind that the English of that century was transferred to a country where the native speech and method of utterance were entirely different from those employed in England. The effect of this was to cause some modification in the transplanted language when the English speech came into actual contact with the native Irish tongue on Irish soil. When English was diffused over Ireland the native speech of which differed both in its body of sounds and in its distinctive method of enunciation from the triumphant language, the natives learned to speak the new tongue with their own characteristic mode of utterance. It was but natural therefore that the English speech should undergo a considerable alteration on Irish lips. In similar circumstances the supplanted tongue always produces a greater or less change in its victorious rival, not only in form, but also in construction and idiom. Witness here the triumph of Anglo-Saxon over the Celtic of the native Britons. As an illustration of the change in idiom take this example of “Pidgin-English,” spoken in the treaty ports of China. In one of those ports, an enterprising merchant with a keen relish for the English shillings, but with little feeling for the English tongue, is reputed to have put out over his shop door a sign with this legend: “Groceries for sale, retail and whole-tail!” An illustration of the difference in mode of utterance between two tongues is furnished by the German, or even the French, method of pronouncing our English th-sound. What inherent difficulty a native German or Frenchman, in his unstudied utterance, encounters in pronouncing such simple words as the, then, kith, etc.! On the other hand, one whose vernacular is English experiences as great embarrassment in pronouncing, without studied effort and practice, the German ch-sound, as in Bach, Ich, etc., or the characteristic French u sound as in fût, eut, pu, etc.

When therefore the Irish began to learn English in the seventeenth century, they encountered certain difficulties peculiar to the English speech. The dental combinations in our English tongue appear to have proved a stumbling block to the Irish mode of utterance, and hence such grotesque pronunciations as tthrash for thrash, stthraitch for stretch, Satthirday for Saturday and scoundthrel for scoundrel. In his native speech the Celt trilled his r’s, and nothing was more natural then than that he should do the same thing when he began to speak English. So to the present day the r is emphatically trilled on Irish lips, although it is decidedly un-English to trill it. These few examples will serve to indicate the character of some of the difficulties inherent in the English language which the Irishman encountered in his effort to speak it. But there were other difficulties than those of utterance which had to be overcome in mastering the spoken tongue.

Furthermore, the English speech on Irish soil did not develop and flourish as it did in its own habitat in England. On the contrary, it always remained an exotic and it never kept pace in its growth and development with the language on English soil. If Ireland had been first depopulated and then settled by the British, the variations in speech would have been much less conspicuous, even had they existed at all. But that was not the case. Those conditions came much nearer being fulfilled here in America when the Puritans and Cavaliers came over to the New World, bringing with them practically the same English as that carried into the Emerald Isle. For the first settlements in America by the English colonists correspond in point of time to those made in Ulster,—that is, the early seventeenth century. But the English language in America was not contaminated by contact with the Indian language and, with the exception of a few geographical names, our speech shows almost no trace of Indian influence. Consequently the English speech on American soil has had an entirely different development from that which it had on Irish soil, although it is a transplanted language in both instances. The explanation is found entirely in the difference of environment. However, there are certain fossilized phrases, provincialisms, vulgarisms, or what not, in American English, which betray the affinity of the language of the early settlers of America with that of the early settlers of Ireland. Witness here the coincidence of our vulgar chist (chest), ingine (engine), quair (queer), hade (head), afeard (afraid), weepin (weapon), kag (keg), rassel (wrestle), arrant (errand), deef (deaf), baste (beast), sarmin (sermon), etc., with the Irish pronunciation of these words.