Conversation: Its Faults and Its Graces

by Unknown

VI.

It is affected, and contrary to authority, to deprive the s of its sharp hissing sound in the words precise, desolate, design, and their derivatives.

VII.

There is one peculiarity which we feel bound to notice, because it has infected English speakers,—that of corrupting the e and the i into the sound of a or u, in the words ability, humility, charity, &c.; for how often is the ear wrung by such barbarisms as, humilutty, civilutty, qualaty, quantaty, crualty, charaty, humanaty, barbaraty, horruble, terruble, and so on, ad infinitum!—an uncouth practice, to which nothing is comparable, except pronouncing yalla for yellow.

VIII.

There is in some quarters a bad mode prevalent of pronouncing the plural of such words as face, place, &c., fazes, plazes, whilst the plural of price seems everywhere subject to the same strange mutation. The words should be faces, places, prices, without any softening of the c into z. There is, too, an ugly fashion of pronouncing the ng, when terminating a word or syllable, as we pronounce the same combination of letters in the word finger, and making such words as "singer," "ringer," &c., rhyme with linger. Sometimes the double o is elongated into the sound which we give to that dipthong in "room," "fool," "moon," &c., which has a very bad effect in such words as book, look, nook, took, &c.; and sometimes it is contracted into the sound of short u, making "foot," and some other words, rhyme with but.

IX.

And having remarked on the lingering pronunciation, it is but fair to notice a defect, the reverse of this, namely, that of omitting the final g in such words as saying, going, shilling, &c., and pronouncing them "sayin," "goin," "shillin." This is so common an error that it generally escapes notice, but is a greater blemish, where we have a right to look for perfection, than the peculiarities of the provinces in those who reside there.

X.

It is also a common fault to add a gratuitous r to words ending with a vowel, such as Emmar, Louisar, Juliar, and to make draw, law, saw, flaw, with all others of the same class, rhyme with war; to omit the r in such words as corks, forks, curtains, morsel, &c.; in the word perhaps, when they conscientiously pronounce the h; and sometimes in Paris; or to convert it into the sound of a y when it comes between two vowels, as in the name Harriet, and in the words superior, interior, &c., frequently pronounced Aah-yet, su-pe-yor, in-te-yor, &c.