Society for Pure English Part 9

bin, bin = been.

broke (_v._ of _broke_), broke (fr. _break_).

broom, brume (_fog_).

darn, darn.

fizz, phiz.

few, feu.

forty, forte.

hay, heigh!

hem (_sew_), hem (_v._, _haw_).

hollow, hollo (_v._).

inn, in.

yawl (_boat_), yawl (_howl_).

coup, coo.

lamb, lam (_bang_).

loaf, loaf (_v. laufen_).

marry! marry (_v._).

nag (_pony_), nag (_to gnaw_), knag.

nap (_of cloth_), nap (_sleep_).

nay, neigh.

oh! owe.

ode, owed.

oxide, ox-eyed.

pax, packs.

pants, pants (fr. _pant_).

prose, pros (_and cons_).

sink (_var._), cinque.

swayed, suede (_kid_).

ternary, turnery.

tea, tee (_starting point_).

taw (_to dress skins_), taw (_game, marbles_), tore (fr. _tear_).

cheap, cheep.

tool, tulle, we! woe.

ho! hoe.

The facts of the case being now sufficiently supplied by the above list, I will put my att.i.tude towards those facts in a logical sequence under separate statements, which thus isolated will, if examined one by one, avoid the confusion that their interdependence might otherwise occasion. The sequence is thus:

1. h.o.m.ophones are a nuisance.

2. They are exceptionally frequent in English.

3. They are self-destructive, and tend to become obsolete.

4. This loss impoverishes the language.

5. This impoverishment is now proceeding owing to the prevalence of the Southern English standard of speech.

6. The mischief is being worsened and propagated by the phoneticians.

7. The Southern English dialect has no claim to exclusive preference.

1. _THAT h.o.m.oPHONES ARE A NUISANCE._

An objector who should plead that h.o.m.ophones are not a nuisance might allege the longevity of the Chinese language, composed, I believe, chiefly of h.o.m.ophones distinguished from each other by an accentuation which must be delicate difficult and precarious. I remember that Max Muller [1864] instanced a fict.i.tious sentence

ba ba ba ba,

'which (he wrote) is said to mean if properly accented _The three ladies gave a box on the ear to the favourite of the princess._' This suggests that the bleating of sheep may have a richer significance than we are accustomed to suppose; and it may perhaps ill.u.s.trate the origin as well as the decay of human speech. The only question that it raises for us is the possibility of distinguishing our own h.o.m.ophones by accentuation or by slight differentiation of vowels; and this may prove to be in some cases the practical solution, but it is not now the point in discussion, for no one will deny that such delicate distinctions are both inconvenient and dangerous, and should only be adopted if forced upon us. I shall a.s.sume that common sense and universal experience exonerate me from wasting words on the proof that h.o.m.ophones are mischievous, and I will give my one example in a note[8]; but it is a fit place for some general remarks.

[Footnote 8: The h.o.m.ophones sun = son. There is a Greek epigram on Homer, wherein, among other fine things, he is styled,

[Greek: Ellanon biotae deuteron aelion]

which Mackail translates 'a second sun on the life of Greece'. But _second son_ in English means the second male child of its parents. It is plain that the Greek is untranslatable into English because of the h.o.m.ophone. _The thing cannot be said._

Donne would take this bull by the horns, pretending or thinking that genuine feeling can be worthily carried in a pun. So that in his impa.s.sioned 'hymn to G.o.d the Father', deploring his own sinfulness, his climax is

But swear by thyself that at my death Thy Sonne Shall shine as he shines now,

the only poetic force of which seems to lie in a covert plea of pitiable imbecility.

Dr. Henry Bradley in 1913 informed the International Historical Congress that the word _son_ had ceased to be vernacular in the dialects of many parts of England. 'I would not venture to a.s.sert (he adds) that the ident.i.ty of sound with _sun_ is the only cause that has led to the widespread disuse of _son_ in dialect speech, but I think it has certainly contributed to the result.']

The objections to h.o.m.ophones are of two kinds, either scientific and utilitarian, or aesthetic. The utilitarian objections are manifest, and since confusion of words is not confined to h.o.m.ophones, the practical inconvenience that is sometimes occasioned by slight similarities may properly be alleged to ill.u.s.trate and enforce the argument. I will give only one example.

[Sidenote: Utilitarian objections not confined to h.o.m.ophones.]

The telephone, which seems to lower the value of differentiating consonants, has revealed unsuspected likenesses. For instance the ciphers, if written somewhat phonetically as usually p.r.o.nounced, are thus:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 nawt wun too three fawr faiv six sev'n eit nain

by which it will be seen that the ten names contain eight but only eight different vowels, 0 and 4 having the same vowel _aw_, while 5 and 9 have _ai_. Both these pairs caused confusion; the first of them was cured by subst.i.tuting the name of the letter O for the name of the zero cipher, which happens to be identical with it in form,[9] and this introduced a ninth vowel sound _ou_ (= owe), but the other pair remained such a constant source of error, that persons who had their house put on the general telephonic system would request the Post Office to give them a number that did not contain a 9 or a 5; and it is pretty certain that had not the system of automatic dialling, which was invented for quite another purpose, got rid of the trouble, one of these two ciphers would have changed its name at the Post Office.

[Footnote 9: There is a coincidence of accidents--that the Arabic sign for zero is the same with our letter O, and that the name of our letter O (= owe) is the same as the present tense of _ought_, which is the vulgar name (for nought) of the Arabic zero, and that its vowel does not occur in the name of any cipher.]

[Sidenote: aesthetic objections.]

In the effect of uniformity it may be said that utilitarian and aesthetic considerations are generally at one; and this blank statement must here suffice, for the principle could not be briefly dealt with: but it follows from it that the proper aesthetic objections to h.o.m.ophones are never clearly separable from the scientific. I submit the following considerations. Any one who seriously attempts to write well-sounding English will be aware how delicately sensitive our ear is to the repet.i.tion of sounds. He will often have found it necessary to change some unimportant word because its accented vowel recalled and jarred with another which was perhaps as far as two or three lines removed from it: nor does there seem to be any rule for this, since apparently similar repet.i.tions do not always offend, and may even be agreeable. The relation of the sound to the meaning is indefinable, but in h.o.m.ophones it is blatant; for instance the common expression _It is well_ could not be used in a paragraph where the word well (= well-spring) had occurred. Now, this being so, it is very inconvenient to find the omnipresent words _no_ and _know_ excluding each other: and the same is true of _sea_ and _see_; if you are writing of the _sea_ then the verb _to see_ is forbidden, or at least needs some handling.

I see the deep's untrampled floor With green and purple seaweeds strewn:

here _seaweeds_ is risky, but _I see the sea's untrampled floor_ would have been impossible: even the familiar

The sea saw that and fled

is almost comical, especially because 'sea saw' has a most compromising joint-tenant in the children's rocking game

See saw Margery daw.

The awkwardness of these English h.o.m.ophones is much increased by the absence of inflection, and I suppose it was the richness of their inflections which made the Greeks so indifferent (apparently) to syllabic recurrences that displease us: moreover, the likeness in sound between their similar syllables was much obscured by a verbal accent which respected the inflection and disregarded the stem, whereas our accent is generally faithful to the root.[10] This sensitiveness to the sound of syllables is of the essence of our best English, and where the effect is most magical in our great poets it is impossible to a.n.a.lyse.