Society for Pure English Tract 4 | Page 4

in
cancer. When it ended a word it had, if short, the sound of a short _i_,
as in _pro lege_, _rege_, _grege_, as also in unstressed syllables in
such words as precentor and regalia.
The letter i stood for 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 _æ_ 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 _[)Æ]schylus_ and _[)OE]dipus._
Dryden and many others usually wrote the _Æ_ 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
_Æschylus_?' 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_, _æ_, and oe was _s_, as in _census_,
_circus_, _Cyrus_, _Cæsar_, 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_, _cæspes_.
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