No More Learning

I am not speaking now of Americanisms properly so called, that is, of
words or phrases which have grown into use here either through
necessity, invention, or accident, such as a _carry_, a _one-horse
affair_, a _prairie_, to _vamose_. Even these are fewer than is
sometimes taken for granted. But I think some fair defence may be made
against the charge of vulgarity. Properly speaking, vulgarity is in the
thought, and not in the word or the way of pronouncing it. Modern
French, the most polite of languages, is barbarously vulgar if compared
with the Latin out of which it has been corrupted, or even with Italian.
There is a wider gap, and one implying greater boorishness, between
_ministerium_ and _metier_, or _sapiens_ and _sachant_, than between
_druv_ and _drove_ or _agin_ and _against_, which last is plainly an
arrant superlative. Our rustic _coverlid_ is nearer its French original
than the diminutive cover_let_, into which it has been ignorantly
corrupted in politer speech. I obtained from three cultivated Englishmen
at different times three diverse pronunciations of a single
word,--_cowcumber_, _coocumber_, and _cucumber_. Of these the first,
which is Yankee also, comes nearest to the nasality of _concombre_. Lord
Ossory assures us that Voltaire saw the best society in England, and
Voltaire tells his countrymen that _handkerchief_ was pronounced
_hankercher_. I find it so spelt in Hakluyt and elsewhere. This enormity
the Yankee still persists in, and as there is always a reason for such
deviations from the sound as represented by the spelling, may we not
suspect two sources of derivation, and find an ancestor for _kercher_
in _couverture_ rather than in _couvrechef_? And what greater phonetic
vagary (which Dryden, by the way, called _fegary_) in our _lingua
rustica_ than this _ker_ for _couvre_? I copy from the fly-leaves of my
books, where I have noted them from time to time, a few examples of
pronunciation and phrase which will show that the Yankee often has
antiquity and very respectable literary authority on his side. My list
might be largely increased by referring to glossaries, but to them eyery
one can go for himself, and I have gathered enough for my purpose.
I will take first those cases in which something like the French sound
has been preserved in certain single letters and diphthongs. And this
opens a curious question as to how long this Gallicism maintained itself
in England. Sometimes a divergence in pronunciation has given as two
words with different meanings, as in _genteel_ and _jaunty_, which I
find coming in toward the close of the seventeenth century, and wavering
between _genteel_ and _jantee_. It is usual in America to drop the _u_
in words ending in _our_--a very proper change recommended by Howell two
centuries ago, and carried out by him so far as his printers would
allow. This and the corresponding changes in _musique_, _musick_, and
the like, which he also advocated, show that in his time the French
accent indicated by the superfluous letters (for French had once nearly
as strong an accent as Italian) had gone out of use. There is plenty of
French accent down to the end of Elizabeth's reign. In Daniel we have
_riches'_ and _counsel'_, in Bishop Hall _comet'_, _chapelain_, in Donne
_pictures'_, _virtue'_, _presence'_, _mortal'_, _merit'_, _hainous'_,
_giant'_, with many more, and Marston's satires are full of them. The
two latter, however, are not to be relied on, as they may be suspected
of Chaucerizing. Herrick writes _baptime_. The tendency to throw the
accent backward began early. But the incongruities are perplexing, and
perhaps mark the period of transition. In Warner's 'Albion's England' we
have _creator'_ and _creature'_ side by side with the modern _creator_
and _creature_. _E'nvy_ and _e'nvying_ occur in Campion (1602), and yet
_envy'_ survived Milton. In some cases we have gone back again nearer to
the French, as in _rev'enue_ for _reven'ue_, I had been so used to
hearing _imbecile_ pronounced with the accent on the first syllable,
which is in accordance with the general tendency in such matters, that I
was surprised to find _imbec'ile_ in a verse of Wordsworth. The
dictionaries all give it so. I asked a highly cultivated Englishman, and
he declared for _imbeceel'_.