I may also quote what E. R. Edwards says in his Étude phonétique de la langue japonaise (Leipzig, 1903, p. 79): “In France and in England it might be said that women avoid neologisms and are careful not to go too far away from the written forms: in Southern England the sound written wh [ʍ] is scarcely ever pronounced except in girls’ schools. In Japan, on the contrary, women are less conservative than men, whether in pronunciation or in the selection of words and expressions. One of the chief reasons is that women have not to the same degree as men undergone the influence of the written language. As an example of the liberties which the women take may be mentioned that there is in the actual pronunciation of Tokyo a strong tendency to get rid of the sound (w), but the women go further in the word atashi, which men pronounce watashi or watakshi, ‘I.’ Another tendency noticed in the language of Japanese women is pretty widely spread among French and English women, namely, the excessive use of intensive words and the exaggeration of stress and tone-accent to mark emphasis. Japanese women also make a much more frequent use than men of the prefixes of politeness o-, go- and mi-.”
XIII.—§ 6. Phonetics and Grammar.
In connexion with some of the phonetic changes which have profoundly modified the English sound system we have express statements by old grammarians that women had a more advanced pronunciation than men, and characteristically enough these statements refer to the raising of the vowels in the direction of ; thus in Sir Thomas Smith (1567), who uses expressions like “mulierculæ quædam delicatiores, et nonnulli qui volunt isto modo videri loqui urbanius,” and in another place “fœminæ quædam delicatiores,” further in Mulcaster (1582)[53] and in Milton’s teacher, Alexander Gill (1621), who speaks about “nostræ Mopsæ, quæ quidem ita omnia attenuant.”
In France, about 1700, women were inclined to pronounce e instead of a; thus Alemand (1688) mentions Barnabé as “façon de prononcer mâle” and Bernabé as the pronunciation of “les gens polis et délicats ... les dames surtout”; and Grimarest (1712) speaks of “ces marchandes du Palais, qui au lieu de madame, boulevart, etc., prononcent medeme, boulevert” (Thurot i. 12 and 9).
There is one change characteristic of many languages in which it seems as if women have played an important part even if they are not solely responsible for it: I refer to the weakening of the old fully trilled tongue-point r. I have elsewhere (Fonetik, p. 417 ff.) tried to show that this weakening, which results in various sounds and sometimes in a complete omission of the sound in some positions, is in the main a consequence of, or at any rate favoured by, a change in social life: the old loud trilled point sound is natural and justified when life is chiefly carried on out-of-doors, but indoor life prefers, on the whole, less noisy speech habits, and the more refined this domestic life is, the more all kinds of noises and even speech sounds will be toned down. One of the results is that this original r sound, the rubadub in the orchestra of language, is no longer allowed to bombard the ears, but is softened down in various ways, as we see chiefly in the great cities and among the educated classes, while the rustic population in many countries keeps up the old sound with much greater conservatism. Now we find that women are not unfrequently mentioned in connexion with this reduction of the trilled r; thus in the sixteenth century in France there was a tendency to leave off the trilling and even to go further than to the present English untrilled point r by pronouncing [z] instead, but some of the old grammarians mention this pronunciation as characteristic of women and a few men who imitate women (Erasmus: mulierculæ Parisinæ; Sylvius: mulierculæ ... Parrhisinæ, et earum modo quidam parum viri; Pillot: Parisinæ mulierculæ ... adeo delicatulæ sunt, ut pro pere dicant pese). In the ordinary language there are a few remnants of this tendency; thus, when by the side of the original chaire we now have also the form chaise, and it is worthy of note that the latter form is reserved for the everyday signification (Engl. chair, seat) as belonging more naturally to the speech of women, while chaire has the more special signification of ‘pulpit, professorial chair.’ Now the same tendency to substitute [z]—or after a voiceless sound —for r is found in our own days among the ladies of Christiania, who will say gzuelig for gruelig and fsygtelig for frygtelig (Brekke, Bidrag til dansknorskens lydlære, 1881, p. 17; I have often heard the sound myself). And even in far-off Siberia we find that the Chuckchi women will say nídzak or nízak for the male nírak ‘two,’ zërka for rërka ‘walrus,’ etc. (Nordqvist; see fuller quotations in my Fonetik, p. 431).
In present-day English there are said to be a few differences in pronunciation between the two sexes; thus, according to Daniel Jones, soft is pronounced with a long vowel [sɔ·ft] by men and with a short vowel [sɔft] by women; similarly [gɛel] is said to be a special ladies’ pronunciation of girl, which men usually pronounce [gə·l]; cf. also on wh above, p. [243]. So far as I have been able to ascertain, the pronunciation [tʃuldrən] for [tʃildrən] children is much more frequent in women than in men. It may also be that women are more inclined to give to the word waistcoat the full long sound in both syllables, while men, who have occasion to use the word more frequently, tend to give it the historical form [weskət] (for the shortening compare breakfast). But even if such observations were multiplied—as probably they might easily be by an attentive observer—they would be only more or less isolated instances, without any deeper significance, and on the whole we must say that from the phonetic point of view there is scarcely any difference between the speech of men and that of women: the two sexes speak for all intents and purposes the same language.
XIII.—§ 7. Choice of Words.
But when from the field of phonetics we come to that of vocabulary and style, we shall find a much greater number of differences, though they have received very little attention in linguistic works. A few have been mentioned by Greenough and Kittredge: “The use of common in the sense of ‘vulgar’ is distinctly a feminine peculiarity. It would sound effeminate in the speech of a man. So, in a less degree, with person for ‘woman,’ in contrast to ‘lady.’ Nice for ‘fine’ must have originated in the same way” (W, p. 54).
Others have told me that men will generally say ‘It’s very good of you,’ where women will say ‘It’s very kind of you.’ But such small details can hardly be said to be really characteristic of the two sexes. There is no doubt, however, that women in all countries are shy of mentioning certain parts of the human body and certain natural functions by the direct and often rude denominations which men, and especially young men, prefer when among themselves. Women will therefore invent innocent and euphemistic words and paraphrases, which sometimes may in the long run come to be looked upon as the plain or blunt names, and therefore in their turn have to be avoided and replaced by more decent words.
In Pinero’s The Gay Lord Quex (p. 116) a lady discovers some French novels on the table of another lady, and says: “This is a little—h’m—isn’t it?”—she does not even dare to say the word ‘indecent,’ and has to express the idea in inarticulate language. The word ‘naked’ is paraphrased in the following description by a woman of the work of girls in ammunition works: “They have to take off every stitch from their bodies in one room, and run in their innocence and nothing else to another room where the special clothing is” (Bennett, The Pretty Lady, 176).