No More Learning

The
dictionaries all give it so. I asked a highly cultivated Englishman, and
he declared for _imbeceel'_. In general it may be assumed that accent
will finally settle on the syllable dictated by greater ease and
therefore quickness of utterance. _Blas'-phemous_, for example, is more
rapidly pronounced than _blasphem'ous_, to which our Yankee clings,
following in this the usage of many of the older poets. _Amer'ican_ is
easier than _Ameri'can_, and therefore the false quantity has carried
the day, though the true one may be found in George Herbert, and even so
late as Cowley.

To come back to the matter in hand. Our 'uplandish man' retains the soft
or thin sound of the _u_ in some words, such as _rule_, _truth_
(sometimes also pronounced _tr[)u]th_, not _trooth_), while he says
_noo_ for _new_, and gives to _view_ and _few_ so indescribable a
mixture of the two sounds with a slight nasal tincture that it may be
called the Yankee shibboleth. Voltaire says that the English pronounce
_true_ as if it rhymed with _view_, and this is the sound our rustics
give to it. Spenser writes _deow_ (_dew_) which can only be pronounced
with the Yankee nasality. In _rule_ the least sound of _a_ precedes the
_u_. I find _reule_ in Pecock's 'Repressor. ' He probably pronounced it
_rayoole_, as the old French word from which it is derived was very
likely to be sounded at first, with a reminiscence of its original
_regula_. Tindal has _reuler_, and the Coventry Plays have _preudent_.
In the 'Parlyament of Byrdes' I find _reule_. As for _noo_, may it not
claim some sanction in its derivation, whether from _nouveau_ or _neuf_,
the ancient sound of which may very well have been _noof_, as nearer
_novus_?
_Beef_ would seem more like to have come from _buffe_ than from
_boeuf_, unless the two were mere varieties of spelling. The Saxon _few_
may have caught enough from its French cousin _peu_ to claim the benefit
of the same doubt as to sound; and our slang phrase _a few_ (as 'I
licked him a few') may well appeal to _un peu_ for sense and authority.
Nay, might not _lick_ itself turn out to be the good old word _lam_ in
an English disguise, it the latter should claim descent as, perhaps, he
fairly might, from the Latin _lambere_? The New England _ferce_ for
_fierce_, and _perce_ for _pierce_ (sometimes heard as _fairce_ and
_pairce_), are also Norman. For its antiquity I cite the rhyme of _verse
and pierce_ in Chapman and Donne, and in some commendatory verses by a
Mr. Berkenhead before the poems of Francis Beaumont. Our _pairlous_ for
_perilous_ is of the same kind, and is nearer Shakespeare's _parlous_
than the modern pronunciation. One other Gallicism survives in our
pronunciation. Perhaps I should rather call it a semi-Gallicism, for it
is the result of a futile effort to reproduce a French sound with
English lips. Thus for _joint_, _employ_, _royal_, we have _jynt_,
_emply_, _r[)y]le_, the last differing only from _rile_ (_roil_) in a
prolongation of the _y_ sound. I find _royal_ so pronounced in the
'Mirror for Magistrates. ' In Walter de Biblesworth I find _solives_
Englished by _gistes_. This, it is true, may have been pronounced
_jeests_, but the pronunciation _jystes_ must have preceded the present
spelling, which was no doubt adopted after the radical meaning was
forgotten, as analogical with other words in _oi_. In the same way after
Norman-French influence had softened the _l_ out of _would_ (we already
find _woud_ for _veut_ in N. F. poems), _should_ followed the example,
and then an _l_ was foisted into _could_, where it does not belong, to
satisfy the logic of the eye, which has affected the pronunciation and
even the spelling of English more than is commonly supposed.