H. W. FOWLER.”

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‘SPELLING PRONUNCIATIONS’

Many writers on English pronunciation are accustomed to pour undiscriminating censure on the growing practice of substituting for the traditional mode of pronouncing certain words an ‘artificial’ pronunciation which is an interpretation of the written form of the words in accordance with the general rules relating to the ‘powers’ of the letters.  This practice is especially common among imperfectly educated people who are ambitious of speaking correctly, and have unfortunately no better standard of ‘correctness’ than that of conformity with the spelling.  I remember hearing a highly-intelligent working-class orator repeatedly pronounce the word suggest as ‘sug jest’.  Such vagaries as this are not likely ever to be generally adopted.  But a good many ‘spelling-pronunciations’ have found their way into general educated use, and others which are now condemned as vulgar or affected will probably at some future time be universally adopted.  I do not share the sentimental regret with which some philologists regard this tendency of the language.  It seems to me that each case ought to be judged on its own merits, and by a strictly utilitarian standard.  When a ‘spelling-pronunciation’ is a mere useless pedantry, it is well that we should resist it as long as we can; if it gets itself accepted, we must acquiesce; and unless the change is not only useless but harmful, we should do so without regret, because the influence of the written on the spoken form of language is in itself no more condemnable than any other of the natural processes that affect the development of speech.  There are, however, some ‘spelling-pronunciations’ that are positively mischievous.  Many people, though hardly among those who are commonly reckoned good speakers, pronounce forehead as it is written.  To do so is irrelevantly to call attention to the etymology of a word that has no longer precisely its etymological sense.  When the thing to be denoted is familiar, we require an identifying, not a descriptive word for it; and we obey a sound instinct in disguising by a contracted pronunciation the disturbing fact that forehead is a compound.

On the other hand, a ‘spelling-pronunciation’ may conduce to clearness, and then it ought to be encouraged.  I have elsewhere advocated the sounding of the initial p in learned (not in popular) words beginning with ps; and many other similar reforms might with advantage be adopted.  There are also other reasons besides clearness which sometimes justify the assimilation of sound to spelling.  Thus the modern pronunciation of cucumber (instead of ‘cowcumber’) gets rid of the ridiculous association with the word cow; and only a fanatical adherent of the principle ‘Whatever was is right’ would desire to revive the obsolete form.

H.B.