Footnote 12: [(return)]
A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, by Otto Jespersen, Heidelberg, 1909. Streitberg's Germanische Bibliothek, vol. i, p. 441.
Footnote 13: [(return)]
To give an example of this. In old Greek we and you were ημεις and υμεις: and those words became absolutely homophonous, so that one of them had to go. The first person naturally held on to its private property, and it invented sets for outsiders. Now the first step towards this absurdest of all homophonies, the identity of meum and tuum, was no doubt the modification of the true full u to ii. The ultimate convenience of the result may in itself be applauded; but it is inconceivable that modern Greek should ever compensate itself for its inevitable estrangement from its ancient glories.
Footnote 14: [(return)]
The words aural and oral are distinguished in the pronunciation of the North Midlands and in Scotland, and the difference between the first syllables is shown in the Oxford dictionary. In Southern English no trace of differentiation remains.
Footnote 15: [(return)]
Some of the words in this table are also in the last list. This list is an attempt to tabulate words falling out of use or seldom heard now in the conversation of average educated persons who talk Southern English or what is called P.S.P. (see p. [38]); to some of them the word may be unknown, and if it is known, they avoid using it because it sounds to them strange or affected. It is difficult to prove that any particular word is in this condition, and the list is offered tentatively. It is made from Jones' dictionary, which is therefore allowed to rule whether the word is obsolescent rather than obsolete: some of these seem to be truly obsolete. Some will appear to be convincing examples of obsolescence, others not; but it must be remembered that the fact of a word being still commonly heard in some district or trade (though that may seem to show that it is in 'common use') is no evidence that it is not dying out; it is rather evidence that it was lately more living, which is the same as being obsolescent.
Footnote 16: [(return)]
A Phonetic Dictionary of the English Language, by Hermann Michaelis, Headmaster of the Mittelschule in Berlin, and Daniel Jones, M.A., Lecturer on Phonetics at University College, London, 1913. There is a second edition of this book in which the words are in the accustomed alphabetical order of their literary spelling.
Footnote 17: [(return)]
I am not likely to forget it or to minimize it, for it is my own indictment against Mr. Jones' system, and since his practice strongly supports my contention I shall examine it and expose it (see p. [43]); but the objection here raised is not really subversive of my argument here, as may be judged from the fact that the Oxford University Press has adopted or countenanced Mr. Jones' standard in their small popular edition of the large dictionary.
Footnote 18: [(return)]
This is a very common condition. The habitual pronunciation is associated in the mind with the familiar eye-picture of the literary printed spelling so closely that it is difficult for the speaker to believe that he is not uttering the written sounds; but he is not competent to judge his own speech. For instance, almost all Englishmen believe that the vowel which we write u in but, ugly, unknown, &c., is really a u, like the u in full, and not a disguised a; and because the written s is sometimes voiced they cannot distinguish between s and z, nor without great difficulty separate among the plural terminations those that are spoken with an s from those that are spoken with a z. I was shocked when I first discovered my own delusions in such matters, and I still speak the bad Southern English that I learnt as a child and at school. I can hardly forgive my teachers and would not myself be condemned in a like reprobation.
Footnote 19: [(return)]
The dictionary allows mitigated variants of some of these words.
Footnote 20: [(return)]
A fair list might no doubt be made; the most amusing item would be—Ophelia = aphelia: then illusion = elusion, paten = pattern, seaman = seamen, phial = file, custody = custardy, and of course verdure = verger and fissure = fisher. It would also allow partition = petition, proscribe = prescribe, and upbraid = abrade! I take these from the first edition.
Footnote 21: [(return)]
The two editions of Jones' dictionary do not exactly correspond, e.g. in the first edition the words boar and bore are under baw, and no other pronunciation is mentioned. But in the second edition b[ore] and b[oar] are allowed as variants. In the first edition four, fore and for are all under faw [fə:], and I find pour, pore, and poor all under paw, though in every case there are variants, and on p. 404 he records that shore and sure may be pronounced alike. Again, in the first edition, yerr [jə:] is one normal for year and also dialectal for ear (!), while in the second edition only y[ear] [ji:] is given for year, and yerr is not mentioned at all. As I am sure that this sort of stuff must be almost more tedious and annoying to read than it is to write, I desist from further details, but cannot resist the opportunity of pointing out that in their English pronunciation of Latin our classical teachers and professors have wantonly introduced this mischievous homophony of au and or into Latin, although the proper pronunciation of the 'diphthong' au in Latin is not like our awe, but like the ou of out. Thus with them corda and cauda are similar sounds, and the sacred Sursum corda means 'Cock your tail' just as much as it means 'Lift up your hearts'.