The digraph ie is represented but by three vowel sounds. The most common one is that of “long e”—seen, for example, in chief, grieve, believe. But the sound of “long i” is heard in no small number of words, especially monosyllabic words ending in ie, such as lie, die, tie. In one instance it has the sound of short e. Accordingly, in it the first vowel is distinctly superfluous. This is the word friend. Its Anglo-Saxon original is freónd, just as that of fiend is feónd or fiónd. One of the small jokes of the opponents of spelling reform is a professed unwillingness “to knock the eye out of a friend.” Disparaging remarks have been made about this as an argument—as it seems to me, with no justification. Compared with most of the objections brought against the efforts to wash the dirty face of our orthography and make it decently presentable, this particular argument against dropping the i out of friend is, as I look at it, the strongest that has been or can be adduced. It reminds one, indeed, of the objection the French writer made to the dropping of the h out of rhinoceros. The animal would lose his horn and become nothing more than a sheep.
As a matter of linguistic history, however, it was not until late in the sixteenth century that the i, though found long before, appeared in the word friend to an extent worth considering. There were several ways in which it had been spelled previously. Of these frend was naturally a common one in days when the belief still lingered that the office of orthography was to represent pronunciation and not to get as far away from it as possible. Take, as an illustration, the treatise entitled The Schoolmaster of the great English scholar, Roger Ascham. This appeared in 1570. In it the word friend occurs just twenty-five times. It is regularly spelled frend, with the exception of one instance, where the intruding i is found. So also frendly is invariably the form of the adjective, and frendship that of the derivative noun.[22]
Oa, the next digraph in order, comes very near attaining the distinction of being represented by a single sound. It occurs in a fairly large number of words which can be represented by oar, coat, loaf. It is saved, however, from the reproach of regularity by having the sound of the a of “ball” in the words broad, abroad, and groat. Oe is not so common, but, like its reverse eo, what it lacks in number of words it makes up in variety of pronunciation. In foe, hoe, and toe it has the sound of long o. In canoe and shoe it has the sound of long u. In these instances it forms the termination of words. Not so in does, where it has the sound we call “short u.” The use of this digraph, like that of ae, has been much restricted. For instance, the word we now spell fetid was once generally spelled fœtid. So, in truth, it continued to be till the nineteenth century. The digraph, indeed, still lingers in the name of the drug asafœtida, though in the instance of this word the long sound has given way to the short. Not unlike, in some particulars, has been the fortune of certain other terms. Take, for instance, the word economy. Its remote Greek original began with oi, which in English, as in Latin, appeared with the form œ, and sometimes erroneously æ. For these was found occasionally the simple e. In the nineteenth century this last displaced the two others, and gave to the first syllable the present standard form. One of the results, however, of this sort of substitution is that no one seems to be certain whether he ought to pronounce the initial e of economic as long or short.
The ordinary sound of oo, the next digraph to be considered, is that of long u, as we see it in moon, soon, food. But there are about half a dozen words—throwing derivatives out of consideration—in which it has the short sound of u. The difference can be plainly observed by contrasting the pronunciation of the digraph in the two words mood and wood. Furthermore, oo is to be credited with two more sounds. One is that of the “short u” seen in blood and flood. The other is the long sound of o in door and floor, anciently spelled dore and flore. Dore, for instance, can be found in Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and even as late as Bunyan.
The digraph ou is perhaps the banner sign for the frequency of its occurrence and the variety of sounds it indicates. As it appears most commonly, it is a genuine diphthong, as seen in such words as loud, sour, mouth. But there is another large body of words in which the sign has a sound essentially distinct. It can be observed in such words as group, youth, tour. It gives one a peculiar idea of the worth of English orthography as a guide to pronunciation that in thou, the singular of the pronoun of the second person, ou has one value, and in its plural, you, it has a value altogether different. The same observation is true of the possessives our and your. There are two or three words in which these two signs have had for a long period a struggle for the ascendancy. Take the case of the substantive wound. One gets the impression from poetry that in this word the ou constitutes a genuine diphthong. There is no question that it rymes regularly with words containing the diphthongal sound here given. Perhaps that was a necessity; it had to ryme with such or not ryme at all. Still, the verse seems pretty surely to have represented the common pronunciation. In the couplets of Pope, the poetic authority of the eighteenth century, it is joined, for instance, with bound, found, ground. Yet this same pronunciation was unequivocally condemned by Walker at the end of the same century. “To wound,” he writes, “is sometimes pronounced so as to rhyme with found; but this is directly contrary to the best usage.”
This same uncertainty in the pronunciation of words in consequence of the uncertainty of the pronunciation of the signs employed to represent it may be further exemplified in the case of the noun route. Unlike wound, which is a pure native word, this is of French extraction. Following the analogy of most of the words so derived, it ought to have the second sound given here to the digraph. Yet it not unfrequently receives that of the first. Thus Walker graciously tells us that it is often pronounced so as to ryme with doubt “by respectable speakers.” A far more interesting case is that of pour. The majority of eighteenth century orthoepists—Johnston, Kenrick, Perry, Smith, and Walker—pronounced the word so as to ryme with power. Spenser so employed it. So did Pope, more than a century later. In the only two instances he uses the word in his regular poetry at the end of a line it has this sound. In his Messiah occurs the following couplet:
Ye Heavens! from high the dewy nectar pour:
And in soft silence shed the kindly shower.
Walker, indeed, declared unreservedly that the best pronunciation of it is “that similar to power.” Nares alone among eighteenth century orthoepists seems to have upheld what is now the customary pronunciation; yet even here the authority of some of the greatest of modern poets has been occasionally cast in favor of the once accepted sound. In his poem of The Poet’s Mind, Tennyson, for instance, writes:
Holy water will I pour
Into every spicy flower.
The digraph is far from being limited to the sounds heard respectively in thou and you. Another one is that of long o, found, for illustration, in dough, soul, mould. There is still another sound—that of the so-called “broad a”—which is heard in brought, ought, and wrought. A fifth sound represented is that of the regular short u seen in would, could, and should. In cough and trough, as pronounced by many, there is a sixth sound represented. In the course of its travels through the vowel sounds the sign reaches that which we commonly call “short u.” There is no small number of words in which this pronunciation of it appears. Country, journey, trouble, flourish may be given as examples. Ou, in truth, has a remarkable record, not so much by the number of sounds it represents—in this it is approached by two or three other digraphs—but by the comparative largeness of the body of words in which several of these different sounds appear. In the latter respect, but not at all in the former, is it rivalled by the analogous ow. This, common as it is, has but two sounds. The first and most frequent is that heard in brown, down, and vowel; the second is the long o sound heard in such words as blow, grow, and below.