Dilation

“ There is always a rise of the voice before its fall in German, and a fall before its rise in English for each and every syllable. When a language is well spoken, this complete intonation is always heard. ”

“ Dialect, as is proven by Burns, Lowell, Riley, Dunbar, often gets nearer the heart than the language of the schools is able to do, and for home-spun philosophy, for mother-wit, for folk-lore, and for racial humor, for whatever is quaint and peculiar and native in any people, it is the only proper medium. ”

“ Joseph Wright, M.A., Ph.D., D.C.L., of the University of Oxford, compiled a work of many thousand words entitled “The English Dialect Dictionary, Being the Complete Vocabulary of all Dialect Words Still in use, or known to have been in use During the last Two Hundred Years.” The work is great, incomplete as it is. It is a kind of sacred book. It reveals the decrees of fate to the elect; that is to say, to those who think. To one wise enough to understand, it unfolds the Law; and therefore it discovers the wisdom of the prophets. It preserves for us “the tongue of those who sit in darkness.” ”

“ There are, it is true, dialect stories which we must all admire and enjoy,—many of them in spite of their strange language rather than because of it,—but none the less is the multiplicity of tales in dialect a visitation not unlike the Egyptian plague of swarming flies or of sprawling frogs. ”

“ In this way we may explain the adventitious dental that has attached itself to the end of a word like sound, Latin sonus, French son, or the aspirate which is inserted in the wrong place by persons who are conscious of a difficulty in pronouncing it in the right place. So, again, in talking to a foreigner we instinctively raise the voice and repeat our remarks in a louder tone should he fail to comprehend them. The more readily our thoughts are understood, the less need there is of our dwelling upon the sounds which express them. ”

“ After voiceless sounds, as in Tuesday, tube, [j] occasionally passes into the corresponding voiceless [ç] , which is the consonant sound in the German ich; and sometimes it even becomes [ʃ] , compare the careless pronunciation of don't you know [dountʃənou] , last year [lɑːs tʃiə] , he'll meet you [hijl mijtʃu] ; I shall hit you is in vulgar speech [ɑi ʃəl itʃə] . For this development in unstressed syllables, see § 45.
Back continuants.—When we utter the vowel sound of who the back of the tongue is raised; if we raise it a little higher, there is friction, and we obtain the back continuants. ”

“ POPULAR PHRASES AND SAYINGS To most people the details contained in the preceding chapter will seem but the dry bones of dialect speech; they would prefer the bones to be covered with sinews and flesh. Dialect speech as the embodiment of living, many-sided, human nature is perhaps nowhere so closely seen as in a collection of the figurative terms and phrases applied to people and things. ”

“ As a nation we do not talk so much too fast, as too loud. Tens of thousands twang and slur and shout and burr! Many of us drawl and many others of us race tongues and breath at full speed, but, as already said, the speed of our speech does not matter so much. Pitch of voice matters very much and so does pronunciation—enunciation is not so essential—except to one who speaks in public.
Enunciation means the articulation of whatever you have to say distinctly and clearly. Pronunciation is the proper sounding of consonants, vowels and the accentuation of each syllable. ”

“ There is something more at fault than the language when we turn from or flinch at it; and, as has been intimated, the wretched fault may be skulkingly hidden away in the ambush of ostensible dialect—that type of dialect so copiously produced by its sole manufacturers, who, utterly stark and bare of the vaguest idea of country life or country people, at once assume that all their "gifted pens" have to do is to stupidly misspell every word ”

“ Another peculiarity is that of joining the letter y at the end of some verbs in the infinitive mood, as well as to parts of different conjugations, thus, "I can't sewy, nursy, reapy, to sawy, to sewy, to nursy, &c. A further peculiarity is the love of vowel sound, and opening out monosyllables of our polished dialect into two or more syllables, thus:
ay-er, for air; boo-äth, for both; fay-er, for fair; vi-ër for fire; stay-ers for stairs; show-er for sure ”

“ In talk it is not correctness of grammar nor elegance of enunciation that charms us; it is spirit, VERVE, the sudden turn of humour, the keen, pungent taste of life. For this reason a touch of dialect, a flavour of brogue, is delightful. Any dialect is classic that has conveyed beautiful thoughts. ”

“ We can easily understand that the system of inflection, however useful in itself, prevents the possibility of one part of speech being used for another. In English, ‘love’ may be a noun or a verb; but in Latin or French, we must use ‘amare’ or ‘aimer’ for the verb, and ‘amor’ or ‘amour’ for the noun. This power of using one part of speech for another, exists to such an extent in English, that it may be almost said, that every word in the language may be applied in a variety of senses and grammatical constructions. ”

“ The Gesture-Language and Picture-Writing, however, insignificant as they are in practice in comparison with Speech and Phonetic Writing, have this great claim to consideration, that we can really understand them as thoroughly as perhaps we can understand anything, and by studying them we can realize to ourselves in some measure a condition of the human mind which underlies anything which has as yet been traced in even the lowest dialect of Language if taken as a whole. ”

“ Language in general includes the following parts:—Letter, Syllable, Connecting word, Noun, Verb, Inflexion or Case, Sentence or Phrase.
A Letter is an indivisible sound, yet not every such sound, but only one which can form part of a group of sounds. For even brutes utter indivisible sounds, none of which I call a letter. The sound I mean may be either a vowel, a semi-vowel, or a mute. A vowel is that which without impact of tongue or lip has an audible sound. ”

“ Their unpremeditated speech rolls like a torrent; every limb takes its part in the great work of persuasion, and the peculiar rhythm of their copious dialect, favourable to such displays of oratory, forms an effective combination. ”

“ From a more theoretical point of view phonetics is, in the first place, the science of linguistic observation. Without phonetic training the dialectologist, and the missionary who is confronted with a hitherto unwritten language, can neither observe fully nor record accurately the phenomena with which they have to deal. These investigations have greatly widened the scope of the science of language. The modern philologist no longer despises colloquial and illiterate forms of speech. ”

“ If i does not appear in the written syllable the sound is a or ao in most dialects. When i stands along with a broad vowel the sound is in some cases a, in some ao, and in some i. When i stands alone it has of course its own sound. ”

“ It is obvious that in speech the articulations (which are represented by consonants in writing) are the least liable to variation. Vowel sounds are continually varying. In this variety chiefly consists that diversity of tone and dialect which is found in the speech of different districts of the same country, where the same words are spoken. The changes, too, which are introduced by time fall with greater effect on the vowel sounds than on the articulations. ”

“ As already intimated, dialect must not be so extreme that the audience cannot easily understand what the reader is saying. All true art is clear; it is not a puzzle. On account of its theme, and its appeal to the higher faculties, its comprehension may at times require long continued contemplation and earnest endeavor; but an accidental element, such as dialect, must never prevent immediate understanding of the words spoken or thoughts expressed. Dialect must be perfectly transparent. Its whole charm will be lost if it does not give a simple, quaint suggestion of character. ”

“ It must be remembered, that unlettered races are subject to far greater and more rapid changes of dialect [85] than those who preserve in sacred books or popular poetry fixed standards of correct speech; add to this, the chances of error when a traveller, communicating with a native through an interpreter, and contending with sounds unusual to his ear, attempts to form a vocabulary. These causes, acting together, tend to increase the difficulty of recognizing linguistic affinities that really exist. ”

“ Talking—especially in one’s mother tongue—may serve as a last example. We find it impossible to follow the muscular action of the mouth and tongue in framing every letter or syllable we utter. We have probably spoken for years and years before we became aware that the letter h is a labial sound, and until we have to utter a word which is difficult from its unfamiliarity we speak “trippingly on the tongue” with no attention except to the substance of what we wish to say. ”

“ And when you have experienced this warcry 'what? what?' oftener than you like, you will raise the standard of your pronunciation (just [pg 40] as you would raise your voice to a deaf listener) merely to save yourself trouble, even though you were insensible to the shame of the affront.
In asseveration.
And this more careful articulation obtains also in all asseveration. A speaker who wishes to provoke attention to any particular statement or sentiment will speak the words by which he would convey it more slowly and with more careful articulation than the rest of his utterance. ”

“ And the first and most important principle which we have to notice, the one which lies at the bottom of nearly all phonetic change in language, is the tendency, already alluded to and briefly illustrated in our first lecture, to make the work of utterance easier to the speaker, to put a more facile in the stead of a more difficult sound or combination of sounds, and to get rid altogether of what is unnecessary in the words we use. All articulate sounds are produced by effort, by expenditure of muscular energy, in the lungs, throat, and mouth. ”

“ Poetic Words in Dialect Use Another feature of the dialect vocabulary which is worth a passing notice, is the existence therein of words which we are wont to regard as too poetical, or too literary for everyday use. We should fear to be considered affected, and given to a habit of interlarding our conversation with quotations from books, if we called a song-thrush a mavis, or a throstle, and spoke of a merle or an ousel instead of saying blackbird, yet all these four are extremely common dialect terms. ”

“ Go on whispering; that is, continue to use your voice in the same mechanical manner, but instead of for whispering, use it for speaking aloud, and you will have the exact mode of the other tongue. An Anglo-Saxon, in so doing, will be able to speak German aloud, but not English; a German will be able to speak English, but not German.
Thinking and speaking are of one and the same order. Thought makes the impression of which speech is the expression. ”

“ To speak in a metaphor, words like sang and fell are comparatively independent. Be this as it may, the German grammarians call the tenses formed by a change of vowel the strong tenses, the strong verbs, the strong conjugation, or the strong order; and those formed by the addition of d or t, the weak tenses, the weak verbs, the weak conjugation, or the weak order. Bound, spoke, gave, lay, &c., are strong; moved, favoured, instructed, &c., are weak. For the proof that the division of verbs into weak and strong is a natural division, see the Chapter on Conjugation. ”

“ That i has a liquid sound, like y, in many words in our language, is not disputed; but the classes of words which will admit this sound, ought to be ascertained. It appears to me that common practice has determined this point. If we attend to the pronunciation of the body of people, who are led by their own ease rather than by a nice regard to fashion, we shall find that they [Pg 143] make i liquid, or give it the sound of y consonant, after those consonants only, which admit that sound without any change of their own powers. ”

“ I shall now add some quotations from Colonel Mallery on the same subject.
“The reader will understand without explanation that there is in sign-language no organized sentence such as is in the language of civilization, and that he must not look for articles or particles, or passive voice or case or grammatic gender, or even what appears in those languages as a substantive or a verb, as a subject or a predicate, or as qualifiers or inflexions. The sign radicals, without being specifically any of our parts of speech, may be all of them in turn. ”

“ For lore-house we say school; for dim-house, prison; for again-coming, return, O.E. lār-hūs, dim-hūs, eft-cyme. In the spoken dialects we have the natural development of a living tongue, practically untouched by what are [Pg 19] called the learned influences; hence, where in the literary language we should use a word of Latin origin, we frequently find a homespun compound used by dialect-speakers. We shall see in a later chapter to what a large extent these compounds are figurative and metaphorical; the few here quoted belong only to the simplest type: beet-need (n.Cy. Yks. Lan.) ”