No More Learning

At the same time, by studying
uniformity I have sometimes been obliged to sacrifice minute exactness.
The emphasis often modifies the habitual sound. For example, _for_ is
commonly _fer_ (a shorter sound than _fur_ for _far_), but when emphatic
it always becomes _for_, as 'wut _for! _' So _too_ is pronounced like
_to_ (as it was anciently spelt), and _to_ like _ta_ (the sound as in
the _tou_ of _touch_), but _too_, when emphatic, changes into _tue_, and
_to_, sometimes, in similar cases, into _toe_, as 'I didn' hardly know
wut _toe_ du! ' Where vowels come together, or one precedes another
following an aspirate, the two melt together, as was common with the
older poets who formed their versification on French or Italian models.
Drayton is thoroughly Yankee when he says 'I 'xpect,' and Pope when he
says, 't' inspire. ' _With_ becomes sometimes _'ith_, _'[)u]th_, or
_'th_, or even disappears wholly where it comes before _the_, as, 'I
went along _th'_ Square' (along with the Squire), the _are_ sound being
an archaism which I have noticed also in _choir_, like the old Scottish
_quhair_. [33] (Herrick has, 'Of flowers ne'er sucked by th' theeving
bee. ') _Without_ becomes _athout_ and _'thout_. _Afterwards_ always
retains its locative _s_, and is pronounced always _ahterwurds'_, with a
strong accent on the last syllable. This oddity has some support in the
erratic _towards'_ instead of _to'wards_, which we find in the poets and
sometimes hear. The sound given to the first syllable of _to'wards_, I
may remark, sustains the Yankee lengthening of the _o_ in _to_. At the
beginning of a sentence, _ahterwurds_ has the accent on the first
syllable; at the end of one, on the last; as, '_ah'terwurds_ he tol'
me,' 'he tol' me _ahterwurds'_. ' The Yankee never makes a mistake in his
aspirates. _U_ changes in many words to _e_, always in _such, brush,
tush, hush, rush, blush_, seldom in _much_, oftener in _trust_ and
_crust_, never in _mush, gust, bust, tumble_, or (?
) _flush_, in the
latter case probably to avoid confusion with _flesh_. I have heard
_flush_ with the _e_ sound, however. For the same reason, I suspect,
never in _gush_ (at least, I never heard it), because we have already
one _gesh_ for _gash_. _A_ and _i_ short frequently become _e_ short.
_U_ always becomes _o_ in the prefix _un_ (except _unto_), and _o_ in
return changes to _u_ short in _uv_ for _of_, and in some words
beginning with _om_. _T_ and _d_, _b_ and _p_, _v_ and _w_, remain
intact. So much occurs to me in addition to what I said on this head in
the preface to the former volume.



Of course in what I have said I wish to be understood as keeping in mind
the difference between provincialisms properly so called and _slang_.
_Slang_ is always vulgar, because it is not a natural but an affected
way of talking, and all mere tricks of speech or writing are offensive.
I do not think that Mr. Biglow can be fairly charged with vulgarity, and
I should have entirely failed in my design, if I had not made it appear
that high and even refined sentiment may coexist with the shrewder and
more comic elements of the Yankee character. I believe that what is
essentially vulgar and mean-spirited in politics seldom has its source
in the body of the people, but much rather among those who are made
timid by their wealth or selfish by their love of power. A democracy can
_afford_ much better than an aristocracy to follow out its convictions,
and is perhaps better qualified to build those convictions on plain
principles of right and wrong, rather than on the shifting sands of
expediency. I had always thought 'Sam Slick' a libel on the Yankee
character, and a complete falsification of Yankee modes of speech,
though, for aught I know, it may be true in both respects so far as the
British provinces are concerned. To me the dialect was native, was
spoken all about me when a boy, at a time when an Irish day-laborer was
as rare as an American one now. Since then I have made a study of it so
far as opportunity allowed.