Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1905-10-10
THE OLD YANKEE ACCENT.
New England Prcvincialisms Are Not
Quite So Often Heard as
Formerly.

We hate to believe our Green noun
tain friend, the Burlington News,
when it assures us that "the Yam
kee accent is dying out" says the
New York Sun. Even in that New
England world of French Canadians,
Italians and other foreign stocks we
hope that "Haow air ye?' still glad
dens the ear. Yet the Burlingtonian
is sure that "even in remCtest parts
Of Vermont the long drawn 'caow' and
1naow' and kindred words are rarely
heard" So much the worse. The
stamp of speech, are welcome to all
but pedantic and priggish long ears
The final "a" sounded as ''i'' in 'piE,"
"Ameriky," "Africy," "Cuby;" "Eu-
ropean" with the accent on the ante
penultimate, a pronunciation that even
Mr.. Seward is said to have used the
sloughing off of final "g" In 'ing;;"
the adding of ''h' to height, thus pro-
nouncing it as Milton spelled it; the
little "vulgarisms" like "git," proba-
bly, "reminiscences Of the speech of our
ancestors; they have their charm,
especially as one grows older and re-
turns to his first love-
If we may judge by books, dialect
never 1ourished more than in these
days of trolleys and cheap travel and
citified country. Mrs. Wukins-Free-
man hears dialect enough in New Eng
land Probably Mr.. Kipling detected
strange intonations and lingo in Yer
mont, though nothing approaching the
unintelligible hash in which he is
pleased to compose. In Maine, lovely
Maine, there are pronunciations which
an Outlander envies but can scarcely
reproduce. "Coat," ''boat," even
"state," "stet O. Name have their
interesting variations of sound.
"Surry," "cluset," ''culerny," "Puca-
huntas" should everybody pro-
nounce like everybody else?
The truth is that no universal uni
| formity prevails. The southerner, the
westerner, the middle slater, the in
habitant of each several state, have
their little peculiarities. The country
Is full Of local dialects. Many of the
peculiarities ascribed to the Yankee"
speech may be heard more or less over
much Of the country. Certain noun
| tain dialects of the south may be more
| limited in their geographical distribu-
ton, but the Yankee of parts of Indi-
| ana and of the south will preserve the
good old Yankee speech, even if it be
true-which we decline to admit-that
Hosea Biglow Is 'as extinct as the
dodo." The other day we picked some
good words out of the dictionary of
| ''Terms Used in Forestry and Log
ging," mere drops out of the great
ocean Of special yet in the main es-
sent1ally popular vocabularies. That
| strange and gifted speech, "Pennsyl-
vania Dutch is still too little known.
| We see no reason why a man shouldn't
be eager and proud to possess and
treasure every particle of his native
dialect, be it Floridian, Oregonian,
Kansan. Even if he is not, if he loves
| that cheap plated "cosmopolitanism
| which scorns the vernacular of the
soil, he may be guiltily sure that his
speech, and especially his vowels, be-
trays him. Keep your ears open in
car, ferryboat or in the street and
you will catch many shades of "pro-
vincial"-and therefore thrice blessed
information and pronunciation.
Finally, even the snob will drop the
prunes and prisms out of his mouth
when he gets old.
| Well bet there's plenty of Yankee
accent in Vermont still. If there isn't,
our Burlington friend should visit,
| say, the Jerseys. In good, fiat, nasal,
| twanging genuine Yankee speech the
Jerseys outshine many of their neigh
| bors. Scene and landscape seem to
| have affected the vocal organs.