Society for Pure English Tract 4 | Page 4

the two long sounds heard in minor and in circus and for the short sound heard in premium and incubus.
The letter o stood for the two long sounds heard in odium and in _corpus_, for the short sound in _scrofula_, and for the obscure in extempore.
The two long sounds of u are heard in _rumor_, if that spelling may be allowed, and in the middle syllable of _laburnum_, the two short sounds in the first u of incubus and in the first u of _lustrum_, the obscure sound in the final syllables of these two words. Further the long sound was preceded except after l and r by a parasitic y as in albumen and incubus. This parasitic y is perhaps not of very long standing. In some old families the tradition still compels such pronunciations as moosic.
The diphthongs _?_ and oe were merely _e_, while au and eu were sounded as in our August and Euxine. The two latter diphthongs stood alone in never being shortened even when they were unstressed and followed by two consonants. Thus men said _[=Eu]stolia_ and _[=Au]gustus_, while they said _[)?]schylus_ and _[)OE]dipus._ Dryden and many others usually wrote the _?_ as E. Thus Garrick in a letter commends an adaptation of 'Eschylus', and although Boswell reports him as asking Harris 'Pray, Sir, have you read Potter's _?schylus_?' both the speaker and the reporter called the name Eschylus.
The letter y was treated as i.
The consonants were pronounced as in English words derived from Latin. Thus c before _e_, _i_, _y_, _?_, and oe was _s_, as in _census_, _circus_, _Cyrus_, _C?sar_, and _coelestial_, a spelling not classical and now out of use. Elsewhere c was k. Before the same vowels g was j (d[ezh]), as in _genus_, _gibbus_, gyrus. The sibilant was voiced or voiceless as in English words, the one in _rosaceus_, the other in saliva.
It will be seen that the Latin sounds were throughout frankly Anglicized. According to Burney a like principle was followed by Burke when he read French poetry aloud. He read it as though it were English. Thus on his lips the French word comment was pronounced as the English word comment.
The rule that overrode all others, though it has the exceptions given below, was that vowels and any other diphthongs than au and _eu_, if they were followed by two consonants, were pronounced short. Thus a in _magnus_, though long in classical Latin, was pronounced as in our 'magnitude', and e in _census_, in Greek transcription represented by [Greek: eta], was pronounced short, as it is when borrowed into English. So were the penultimate vowels in _villa_, _nullus_, _c?spes_.
This rule of shortening the vowel before two consonants held good even when in fact only one was pronounced, as in nullus and other words where a double consonant was written and in Italian pronounced.
Moreover, the parasitic y was treated as a consonant, hence our 'v[)a]cuum'.
In the penultima qu was treated as a single consonant, so that the vowel was pronounced long in _[=a]quam_, _[=e]quam_, _in[=i]quam_, _l[=o]quor_. So it was after _o_, hence our 'coll[=o]quial'; but in earlier syllables than the penultima qu was treated as a double consonant, hence our 'sub[)a]queous', 'equity', 'iniquity'.
EXCEPTIONS.
1. When the former of the two consonants was r and the latter another consonant than _r_, as in the series represented by _larva_, _verbum_, _circus_, _corpus_, _laburnum_, the vowels are a separate class of long vowels, though not really recognized as such. Of course our ancestors and the Gradus marked them long because in verse the vowel with the two consonants makes a long unit.
2. A fully stressed vowel before a mute and _r_, or before d or _pl_, was pronounced long in the penultima. Latin examples are _labrum_, _Hebrum_, _librum_, _probrum_, _rubrum_, _acrem_, _cedrum_, _vafrum_, _agrum_, _pigrum_, _aprum_, _veprem_, _patrem_, _citrum_, _utrum_, _triplus_, _duplex_, Cyclops. Moreover, in other syllables than the penultima the vowel in the same combinations was pronounced long if the two following vowels had no consonant between them, as _patria_, _Hadria_, acrius. (Our 'triple' comes from triplum and is a duplicate of '_treble_'. Perhaps the short vowel is due to its passage through French. Our 'citron' comes from _citronem_, in which i was short.)
3. The preposition and adverb post was pronounced with a long vowel both by itself and in composition with verbs, but its adjectives did not follow suit. Hence we say in English 'p[=o]stpone', but 'p[)o]sterior' and 'p[)o]sthumous'.
Monosyllables ending in a vowel were pronounced long, those ending in a consonant short. Enclitics like que were no real exception as they formed part of the preceding word. There were, however, some real exceptions.
1. Pronouns ending in _-os_, as _hos_, quos. These followed eos and illos.
2. Words ending in _-es_, as _pes_, res.
3. Words ending in _r_, as _par_, _fer_, _vir_, _cor_,