sound of any word. " "Only the voice," he goes on, "is capable of that; for the moment a sign is used the question arises, What is the value of that sign? The sounds of words are the most deli- cate, fleeting and inapprehensible things in nature.… More- over, the question arises as to the capability to apprehend and distinguish sounds on the part of the person whose evidence is given."[1] Certain German orthoepists, despairing of the printed page, have turned to the phonograph, and there is a Deutsche Grammophon-Gesellschaft in Berlin which offers records of speci- men speeches in a great many languages and dialects, including English. The phonograph has also been put to successful use in language teaching by various American correspondence schools.
In view of all this it would be hopeless to attempt to exhibit in print the numerous small differences between English and Ameri- can pronunciation, for many of them are extremely delicate and subtle, and only their aggregation makes them plain. According to a recent and very careful observer,[2] the most important of them do not lie in pronunciation at all, properly so called, but in intonation. In this direction, he says, one must look for the true characters "of the English accent." I incline to agree with White,[3] that the pitch of the English voice is somewhat higher than that of the American, and that it is thus more penetrating. The nasal twang which Englishmen observe in the vox Ameri- cana, though it has high overtones, is itself not high pitched, but rather low pitched, as all constrained and muffled tones are apt to be. The causes of that twang have long engaged phonologists, and in the main they agree that there is a physical basis for it that our generally dry climate and rapid changes of temperature produce an actual thickening of the membranes concerned in the production of sound.[4] We are, in brief, a somewhat snuffling
- ↑ Every-Day English, p. 29.
- ↑ Robert J. Menner: The Pronunciation of English in America, Atlantic Monthly, March, 1915, p. 366.
- ↑ Words and Their Uses, p. 58.
- ↑ The following passage from Kipling's American Notes, ch. i, will be recalled: "Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the Yankee schoolmarm, the cider and the salt codfish of the Eastern states are responsible for what
