Society for Pure English Tract 4 | Page 6

teachers could not really have given them. The teachers did not understand that each vowel represented not two sounds only, a long and a short, but many more. This fact was no more understood by John Walker, the actor and lexicographer, who in 1798 published a Key to the Classical Pronunciation of Greek and Latin proper names. His general rule was wrong as a general rule, and so far as it agreed with facts it was useless. He says that when a vowel ends a syllable it is long, and when it does not it is short. Apart from the confusion of cause and effect there is the error of identifying for instance the e in beatus and the e in habebat. Moreover, Walker confounds the u in 'curfew', really long, with the short and otherwise different u in 'but'. The rule was useless as a guide, for it did not say whether moneo for instance was to be read as _ino-neo_ or as _mon-eo_, and therefore whether the o was to be long or short. Even Walker's list is no exact guide. He gives for instance _M[=o]-na_, which is right, and _M[=o]-n?ses_, which is not. Now without going into the difference between long vowels and ordinary vowels, of which latter some are long in scansion and some short, it is clear that there is no identity. In fact _Mona_, has the long o of 'moan' and _Mon?ses_ the ordinary o of 'monaster'. A boy at school was not troubled by these matters. He had only two things to learn, first the quantity of the penultimate unit, second the fact that a final vowel was pronounced. When he knew these two things he gave the Latin word the sounds which it would have if it were an English word imported from the Latin. Thus he finds the word civilitate. I am not sure that he could find it, but that does not matter. He would know 'civility', and he learns that the penultima of the Latin word is long. Therefore he says _c[)i]v[)i]l[)i]t[=a]t[)e]_. Again he knows '[)i]nf[)i]n[)i]t' (I must be allowed to spell the word as it is pronounced except in corrupt quires). He finds that the penultima of infinitivus is long, and he therefore says _[)i]nf[)i]n[)i]t[=i]v[)u]s_. Again he knows 'irradiate', and finding that the penultima of irradiabitur is short he says _[)i]rr[=a]d[)i][)a]b[)i]t[)u]r_. It is true that some of these verb forms under the influence of their congeners came to have an exceptional pronunciation. Thus _irradi[=a]bit_ led at last to _irradi[=a]bitur_, but I doubt whether this occurred before the nineteenth century. The word _dabitur_, almost naturalized by Luther's adage of _date et dabitur_, kept its short a down to the time when it regained it, in a slightly different form, by its Roman right; and _am[)a]mini_ and _mon[)e]mini_ were unwavering in their use. Old people said _v[=a]ri[)a]bilis_ long after the true quantities had asserted themselves, and the word as the specific name of a plant may be heard even now. Its first syllable of course follows what I shall call the 'alias' rule. We may still see this rule in other instances. All men say 'hippopót[)a]mus', and even those who know that this a is short in Greek can say nothing but 'Mesopot[=a]mia', unless indeed the word lose its blessed and comforting powers in a disyllabic abbreviation. When a country was named after Cecil Rhodes, where the e in the surname is mute, we all called it 'Rhod[=e]sia'. Had it been named after a Newman, where the a is short or rather obscure, we should all have called it 'Newm[=a]nia ', while, named after a Davis, it would certainly have been 'Dav[)i]sia'. The process of thought would in each case have been unconscious. A new example is 'aviation', whose first vowel has been instinctively lengthened.
Again, when the word 'telegram' was coined, some scholars objected to its formation and insisted upon 'telegrapheme', but the most obdurate Grecian did not propose to keep the long Greek vowel in the first syllable. When only the other day 'cinematograph' made its not wholly desirable appearance, it made no claim to a long vowel in either of its two first syllables. Not till it was reasonably shortened into 'c[)i]n[)e]ma' did a Judge from the Bench make a lawless decree for a long second vowel, and even he left the i short though it is long in Greek.
Of course with the manner of speech the quantities had to be learnt separately. The task was not as difficult as some may think. To boys with a taste for making verses the thumbing of a Gradus (I hope that no one calls it a Gr[)a]dus) was always a delightful occupation, and a quantity once learnt was seldom forgotten. It must be admitted that, as boys were forced to