The Portland daily press., 1862-11-01

1t is well known that the initials j. N, over
which an article on the Common Mispronun-
citation Of English Words" appears in this
weeks Transcript, conceal bad Latin joke,
and are not to be referred to any one of our
distinguished citizens Strangers sometimes
make that mistake. 1t is well therefore to say,
that J. N. means simply Josua Nouus, the
New Joshua, who finds the world much less
inclined to stand still ut his command than at
that of his ancient predecessor.
OF course, men chose their poets, as they
choose their wives, in youth; and no reasona-
BILE man will require another to discard the
friends OF days gone by for new favorites. But
why need j. n. try, as he did some months
since, to convince us that Tennyson and
Browning are not to be named with Scott and
Byron? Tennyson writes for this as Scott for
that, and as some coming poet will write for a
future generation The world does not and
will not stand still, whoever cries Whoa =
and its languages suffer change with it, and
that is just what j. n. failed to observe in sea-
son to suppress his last communication to the
Transcript.
Thus he pronounces yeast, yest, forgetting
for the moment that the present orthography
of the word was deliberately adopted in prefer
ence to yest, which in sound and form was quite
extinct in Smart's time. He gives scath, Ia as
in uat,) which both as a noun and a verb has
been replaced in speech and writing by seattle.
He gives artisan, with an accent on the last
syllable (arti-sdn which came over from
France in the train OF William the Conqueror,
somewhere about the eleventh century; and
decorous with an intonation (de-co-rous) IA
mliar enough to Roman ears but rarely heard
on this continent. He adheres to the ancient
and vulgar pronunciation of cony, which he
spells coney and calls cunny; and Of clothes,
which he calls cloze, losing sight altogether of
the relation between cloth and clothes.
The traditional orthoepy of words related as
in the last instance, cannot easily be overrid-
den by the whole troop of grammarians and
photographers. We shall never call chicdlyy,
tchirdlT'y with j. n and Others until the mem
ory of the French cheralarie, has faded out Of
the word. We shall never miscal hoacitzer,
HO-Wtt%tF, 50 IoiIS ds tile EHSiisH HOU- TeprO-
duces precisely the hau- in the original Ger
man hdutitze. Still less shall we name heath
er, hetLer with J. n. as the sole existing au-
thority, Willie heath remains in the mother
tongue; or scenic, scenic, while scene retains
its present sound.
We find revived that abominable attempt to
write hypoth-enuse and pronounce hypot-enuse
"a piece OF Quixotsm akin to Webster's
bridegroom and melasses. Neither of the
three words are fairly derived from The origin
al languages; nor is half the language for that
matter. The formation Of new from an old
language is process of melting down and re-
casting old vocables, and occasional distortion
must be expected. Hypothendse is not good
Greek: but it is, and will probably continue to
be, good English. Can any body tell US, why
j. n. chooses to call phase, facet
But this is growing tedious. There are hun
dred and fifty words, more or less, in ]. Ms
list. We assert, and are ready to prove if it
were worth the trouble, that one third of the
whole number are there mispronounced This
is no Common Mispronuncation of English
Words" 1t is too bad of j. n. to request his
confiding youthful readers" to cut it out and
hang it up for daily reference. To be sure it
,could be as well to cut it out, if they intend
to preserve this volume of the Transcript for
binding. R.W.