The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-01-19

for deepo (which Webster authorizes). or
mat-tron or PATRON, and so on. 1t may
not be as easy to put theaeeent on the last
syllable in romance, but it is Just as easy
to accent the last syllable as the first
in 'pretense.' Some persons call bomb
boom instead of bum because the
spelling seems TO warrant it, but when
they call tedious 'te-ius' they have no
such apparent warrant. In the west and
south the IL in isolate is made
long, and nearly everywhere educated
persons say truck-u-lent for true-cu-lent,
a-men-able for a-meen-able, ley-ver for
lee-ver, and give the sound of su' in up in
stead of II in 1t in such words as sauir-
rel, stirrup and strip. There are many
words in which the accent is persistently
misplaced by persons who know better
1t is common to put the accent on the sec
ond syllable of peremptOry instead of
on the first, on the first instead of the
second syllable of coquetry on the second
instead of the first syllable of exemplary,
etc. Many persons place the accent on
the first instead of the second syllable of
inquiry and do not give the II its proper
length. The accent in gladiolus should
be on the second syllable, with a long
81 but many place it on the third ;
they say hy-meen-e-al with the accent on
'meen,' when ii should be hy-me-nee-al
with the accent on the Nee
The exasperating thing about it is
that some of these persons who are so
careless about common words take the
utmost pains to learn how to pronounce
Bouguereau and are convulsed when they
hear anybody mispronounce Chopin and
Beethoven. Recently they broke out
with vawz for vase, though the weight of
authority is against it. Knowles alone
allows it. Webster authorizes only one
pronunciation, the long'a' and kissing S. ,
Worcester prefers the y sound, but not
the 'aw.' The improper use of the sounds
of "a is most serious. Those who have
the courage to use the Italian or the mod
flied Italian "a often use it unlawfully, as
in cawnt and rawther The proper
sounds of o. particularly in God, dog and
some other words, are widely ignored
The common usage is wrong in the case
of the terminal inc in the name Of chem
icals, as morphine, chlorine. iodine,
aniline, benzine, etc, all of which should
be pronounced as though there were no
final e. 1t is morphin, not morpheen
The long Il is now commonly used in the
termination tits Nearly everybody has
ceased to say 'broncheetis'
Certainly there is no good reason for
many of the forms of pronunciation now
in authority, and they have been estab-
lished by irrational usage; yet at some
point the reckless disregard of all au-
thority must stop. We have no more
right to hold the dictionary in contempt
in pronunciation than in Specification. In
the case of words about which there is a
weight of authority in favor of peculiar
pronunciation we, the trustees of the
English tongue, have no right to allow
pure carelessness and Incidence to perpet-
uate atrocities. ,sI5sts...
The carelessness of teachers has at
tracted the attention of Mr., Brookheld
an English psychologist. He discovers
that children have little sense of the
meaning of many of the things they com
nit to memory, because the sounds are
slurred by the teachers. Two children
aged about IL years, wis did their read
ing and arithmetic fairly, were asked to
white down the answers of the church
catechism to two questions. The chill
dren had been used to repeat the cate
chism during half an hour of each day. in
day school and Sunday school, for four or
five years. The first wrote thus:
My duty toads God is to bleed in him
to fering and to loaf Withhold your arts
Withhold mine Withhold my sold and with
my sernth to whirchp and to give thinks
to put my old trust in him to call upon
him to onner his old name and his world
and to save him truly all the days of my
hfe's end" l-aof:6 Ns4g 5 -
Repeated rapidly this bears a, ridiou-
lous likeness to the sound of the real an
swer. The answer of the second child
was equally absurd and meaningless and
just as like in sound to the genuine an
swer."