Society for Pure English Tract 4

Society for Pure English Tract 4

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Title: Society for Pure English Tract 4 The Pronunciation of English
Words Derived from the Latin
Author: John Sargeaunt
Annotator: H. Bradley
Release Date: March 15, 2005 [EBook #15364]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Produced by David Starner, William Flis, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.

Transcriber's Note: Phonetic characters are represented by the
following symbols: [^1] = raised "1", etc. [e] = inverted "e" or schwa
[oe] = oe ligature character ['x] = any letter "x" with acute accent [=x] =
any letter "x" with macron [)x] = any letter "x" with breve [=xy] = any
pair of letters "xy" with joining macron, except [=OE], [=ae] = OE, ae

ligature characters with macron ['oe], ['ae] = oe, ae ligature characters
with acute accent and [)xy] = any pair of letters "xy" with joining breve,
except [)AE], [)ae], [)OE], [)oe] = AE, ae, OE, oe ligature characters
with breve

_S.P.E. TRACT NO. IV_
THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH WORDS DERIVED FROM
THE LATIN
BY JOHN SARGEAUNT
WITH PREFACE AND NOTES BY H. BRADLEY
CORRESPONDENCE & MISCELLANEOUS NOTES BY H.B., R.B.,
W.H.F., AND EDITORIAL
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS MDCCCCXX

ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH WORDS DERIVED
FROM LATIN
[This paper may perhaps need a few words of introduction concerning
the history of the pronunciation of Latin in England.
The Latin taught by Pope Gregory's missionaries to their English
converts at the beginning of the seventh century was a living language.
Its pronunciation, in the mouths of educated people when they spoke
carefully, was still practically what it had been in the first century, with
the following important exceptions. 1. The consonantal u was sounded
like the v of modern English, 2. The c before front vowels (_e_, _i_,
_o_, _æ_, _oe_), and the combinations _t[)i]_, _c[)i]_ before vowels,
were pronounced ts. 3. The g before front vowels had a sound closely
resembling that of the Latin consonantal i. 4. The s between vowels
was pronounced like our s. 5. The combinations _æ_, oe were no
longer pronounced as diphthongs, but like the simple e. 6. The ancient
vowel-quantities were preserved only in the penultima of polysyllables
(where they determined the stress); in all other positions the original
system of quantities had given place to a new system based mainly on
rhythm. Of this system in detail we have little certain knowledge; but
one of its features was that the vowel which ended the first syllable of a
disyllabic was always long: _p[=a]ter_, _p[=a]trem_, _D[=e]us_,
_p[=i]us_, _[=i]ter_, _[=o]vis_, _h[=u]mus_.

Even so early as the beginning of the fifth century, St. Augustine tells
us that the vowel-quantities, which it was necessary to learn in order to
write verse correctly, were not observed in speech. The Latin-speaking
schoolboy had to learn them in much the same fashion as did the
English schoolboy of the nineteenth century.
It is interesting to observe that, while the English scholars of the tenth
century pronounced their Latin in the manner which their ancestors had
learned from the continental missionaries, the tradition of the ancient
vowel-quantities still survived (to some extent at least) among their
British neighbours, whose knowledge of Latin was an inheritance from
the days of Roman rule. On this point the following passage from the
preface to Ælfric's Latin Grammar (written for English schoolboys
about A.D. 1000) is instructive:--
Miror ualde quare multi corripiunt sillabas in prosa quae in metro
breues sunt, cum prosa absoluta sit a lege metri; sicut pronuntiant pater
brittonice et malus et similia, quae in metro habentur breues. Mihi
tamen uidetur melius inuocare Deum Patrem honorifice producta
sillaba quam brittonice corripere, quia nec Deus arti grammaticae
subiciendus est.
The British contagion of which Ælfric here complains had no
permanent effect. For after the Norman Conquest English boys learned
their Latin from teachers whose ordinary language was French. For a
time, they were not usually taught to write or read English, but only
French and Latin; so that the Englishmen who attempted to write their
native language did so in a phonetic orthography on a French basis.
The higher classes in England, all through the thirteenth century, had
two native languages, English and French.
In the grammar schools, the Latin lessons were given in French; it was
not till the middle of the fourteenth century that a bold educational
reformer, John Cornwall, could venture to