H. L. Mencken

Name: The American Language — Vulgar Pronunciation
Author: H. L. Mencken

The American Language — Vulgar Pronunciation (1919)

Summary

“The American Language — Vulgar Pronunciation”, published in 1919, is a work by H. L. Mencken. It explores elements such as vowels, pronunciation and American phonologists.

Quotes from The American Language — Vulgar Pronunciation (H. L. Mencken)

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — Vulgar Pronunciation (1919)

“ No single investigator can examine the speech of the whole country; for that business a pooling of forces is necessary. But meanwhile it may be of interest to set forth a few provisional ideas.
At the start two streams of influence upon vulgar American pronunciation may be noted, the one an inheritance from the English of the colonists, and the other arising spontaneously within the country, and apparently much colored by immigration. The first influence, it goes without saying, is gradually dying out. Consider, for example, the pronunciation of the diphthong oi. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — Vulgar Pronunciation (1919)

“ England has gone back to the broad a, but in America the flat a persists, and many Americans who use sassy every day would scarcely recognize saucy if they heard it. Yet again, there is quoit. Originally, the English pronounced it quate, but now they pronounce the diphthong as in doily. In the United States the quate pronunciation remains. Finally, there is deaf. Its proper pronunciation, in the England that the colonists left, was deef, but it now rhymes with Jeff. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — Vulgar Pronunciation (1919)

“ An unlearned American, wishing to say that he was enraged, never says that he was roiled, but always that he was riled. Desiring to examine the hoof of his horse, he never orders the animal to hoist but always to hist. In the form of booze-hister the latter is almost in good usage. I have seen booze-hister thus spelled and obviously to be thus pronounced, in an editorial article in the American Issue, organ of the Anti-Saloon League of America. [2]
Various similar misplaced vowels were brought from England by the colonists and have persisted in America, while dying out of good English usage. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — Vulgar Pronunciation (1919)

“ The same movement also affects standard English, as appears by Robert Bridges’ “Tract on the Present State of English Pronunciation,” but I believe that it is stronger in America, and will go farther, at least with the common speech, if only because of our unparalleled immigration. Standard English has 19 separate vowel sounds. No other living tongue of Europe, save Portuguese, has so many; most of the others have a good many less; Modern Greek has but five. The immigrant, facing all these vowels, finds some of them quite impossible ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — Vulgar Pronunciation (1919)

“ Before anything approaching a thorough and profitable study of the sounds of the American common speech is possible, there must be a careful assembling of the materials, and this, unfortunately, still awaits a phonologist of sufficient enterprise and equipment. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — Vulgar Pronunciation (1919)

“ An excrescent b, as in chimbley and fambly, seems to be native. Whole syllables are dropped out of words, paralleling the English butchery of extraordinary; for example, in boundry, probition, tarnal (=eternal) , complected, histry, libry and probly. Ordinary, like extraordinary, is commonly enunciated clearly, but it has bred a degenerated form, onry or onery, differentiated in meaning. [7] Consonants are misplaced by metathesis, as in prespiration, hunderd, brethern, childern, libery, interduce, apern, calvary, govrenment, modren and wosterd (for worsted) . ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — Vulgar Pronunciation (1919)

“ An analogue of stomp, accepted in correct English, is strop (e. g., razor-strop) , from strap. In American champ (chomp) and tramp (tromp) tend to diverge in the same way. A horse chomps its bit, but champ (=champion) retains the flat a. A cow tromps her fodder, but a tramp remains a tramp.↑ But not all words in -g. Lardner calls my attention to the fact that anything and everything are almost always excepted. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — Vulgar Pronunciation (1919)

“ Such words, when they come in verbally, by actual contact with immigrants, commonly retain some measure of their correct native pronunciation. Spiel, kosher, ganof and matzoth are examples; their vowels remain un-American. But words that come in visually, say through street-signs and the newspapers, are immediately overhauled and have thoroughly Americanized vowels and consonants thereafter. School-teachers have been trying to establish various pseudo-French pronunciations of vase for fifty years past, but it still rhymes with face in the vulgate. Vaudeville is vawd-vill ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — Vulgar Pronunciation (1919)

“ Krapp says that “in conventional cultivated use in America” a spelling pronunciation has arisen, making the word rhyme with oil. I have never encountered this pronunciation. All Americans, when they use roiled at all, seem to make it riled.↑ Maryland edition, July 18, 1914, p. 1.↑ Here a distinction shows itself: a farmer thrashes his boy, but threshes his wheat.↑ Cf. Lounsbury: The Standard of Pronunciation in English, p. 172 ff.↑ Stomp is used only in the sense of to stamp with the foot. One always stamps a letter. ”

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Source: Wikisource

H. L. Mencken, The American Language — Vulgar Pronunciation (1919)

“ Divorcée is divorcey, and has all the rakishness of the adjectives in -y. The first syllable of mayonnaise rhymes with hay. Crème de menthe is cream de mint. Schweizer is swite-ser. Roquefort is roke-fort. ”

H. L. Mencken

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