Society for Pure English Tract 4 | Page 2

in French, and afterwards as in English, but in the fourteenth century this made little difference.
In Chaucer's time, the other nations of Europe, no less than England, pronounced Latin after the fashion of their own vernaculars. When, subsequently, the phonetic values of the letters in the vernacular gradually changed, the Latin pronunciation altered likewise. Hence, in the end, the pronunciation of Latin has become different in different countries. A scholar born in Italy has great difficulty in following a Frenchman speaking Latin. He has greater difficulty in understanding an Englishman's Latin, because in English the changes in the sounds of the letters have been greater than in any other language. Every vowel-letter has several sounds, and the normal long sound of every vowel-letter has no resemblance whatever to its normal short sound. As in England the pronunciation of Latin developed insensibly along with that of the native tongue, it eventually became so peculiar that by comparison the 'continental pronunciation' may be regarded as uniform.
It is sometimes imagined that the modern English way of pronouncing Latin was a deliberate invention of the Protestant reformers. For this view there is no foundation in fact. It may be conceded that English ecclesiastics and scholars who had frequent occasion to converse in Latin with Italians would learn to pronounce it in the Italian way; and no doubt the Reformation must have operated to arrest the growing tendency to the Italianization of English Latin. But there is no evidence that before the Reformation the un-English pronunciation was taught in the schools. The grammar-school pronunciation of the early nineteenth century was the lineal descendant of the grammar-school pronunciation of the fourteenth century.
This traditional system of pronunciation is now rapidly becoming obsolete, and for very good reasons. But it is the basis of the pronunciation of the many classical derivatives in English; and therefore it is highly important that we should understand precisely what it was before it began to be sophisticated (as in our own early days) by sporadic and inconsistent attempts to restore the classical quantities. In the following paper Mr. Sargeaunt describes, with a minuteness not before attempted, the genuine English tradition of Latin pronunciation, and points out its significance as a factor in the development of modern English.
H.B.]
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It seems not to be generally known that there is a real principle in the English pronunciation of words borrowed from Latin and Greek, whether directly or through French. In this matter the very knowledge of classical Latin, of its stresses and its quantities, still more perhaps an acquaintance with Greek, is apt to mislead. Some speakers seem to think that their scholarship will be doubted unless they say 'doctrínal' and 'scriptúral' and 'cinéma'. The object of this paper is to show by setting forth the principles consciously or unconsciously followed by our ancestors that such pronunciations are as erroneous as in the case of the ordinary man they are unnatural and pedantic. An exception for which there is a reason must of course be accepted, but an exception for which reason is unsound is on every ground to be deprecated. Among other motives for preserving the traditional pronunciation must be reckoned the claim of poetry. Mark Pattison notes how a passage of Pope which deals with the Barrier Treaty loses much of its effect because we no longer stress the second syllable of 'barrier'. Pope's word is gone beyond recovery, but others which are threatened by false theories may yet be preserved.
The _New English Dictionary_, whose business it is to record facts, shows that in not a few common words there is at present much confusion and uncertainty concerning the right pronunciation. This applies mostly to the position of the stress or, as some prefer to call it, the accent, but in many cases it is true also of the quantity of the vowels. It is desirable to show that there is a principle in this matter, rules which have been naturally and unconsciously obeyed, because they harmonize with the genius of the English tongue.
For nearly three centuries from the Reformation to the Victorian era there was in this country a uniform pronunciation of Latin. It had its own definite principles, involving in some cases a disregard of the classical quantities though not of the classical stress or accent. It survives in borrowed words such as _[=a]li[)a]s_ and _st[)a]mina_, in naturalized legal phrases, such as _N[=i]s[=i] Prius_ and _[=o]nus probandi_, and with some few changes in the Westminster Play. This pronunciation is now out of fashion, but, since its supersession does not justify a change in the pronunciation of words which have become part of our language, it will be well to begin with a formulation of its rules.
The rule of Latin stress was observed as it obtained in the time