hospee, Hoolethlocco, Hoolethloces, Hoolethloco and Hootethlocco are worthy of its learning and authority.[1]
The American tendency to pronounce all the syllables of a word more distinctly than the English shows itself in geographical names. White, in 1880, [2] recorded the increasing habit of giving full value to the syllables of such borrowed English names as Worcester and Warwick. I have frequently noted the same thing. In Worcester county, Maryland, the name is usually pronounced Wooster, but on the Western Shore of the state one hears Worcest-'r.[3] Norwich is another such name; one hears Nor-wich quite as often as Norrich[4] Yet another is Delhi; one often hears Del-high. White said that in his youth the name of the Shawangunk mountains, in New York, was pronounced Shongo, but that the custom of pronouncing it as spelled had arisen during his manhood. So with Winnipiseogee, the name of a lake ; once Winipisaukie, it gradually came to be pronounced as spelled. There is frequently a considerable difference be- tween the pronunciation of a name by natives of a place and its pronunciation by those who are familiar with it only in print. Baltimore offers an example. The natives always drop the medial i and so reduce the name to two syllables ; the habit iden- tifies them. Anne Arundel, the name of a county in Maryland,
- ↑ The Geographic Board is composed of representatives of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Geological Survey, the General Land Office, the Post Office, the Forest Service, the Smithsonian Institution, the Biological Survey, the Government Printing Office, the Census and Lighthouse Bureaus, the General Staff of the Army, the Hydrographic Office, Library and War Records Office of the Navy, the Treasury and the Department of State. It was created by executive order Sept. 4, 1890, and its decisions are binding upon all federal officials. It has made, to date, about 15,000 decisons. They are recorded in reports issued at irregular intervals and in more frequent bulletins.
- ↑ Every-Day English, p. 100.
- ↑ I have often noted that Americans, in speaking of the familiar Worcestershire sauce, commonly pronounce every syllable and enunciated shire distinctly. In England it is always Woostersh'r.
- ↑ The English have a great number of such decayed pronunciations, e. g., Maudlin for Magdalen College, Sister for Cirencester, Merrybone for Marylebone. Their geographical nomenclature shows many corruptions due to faulty pronunciation and the law of Hobson-Jobson, e. g., Leighton Buzzard for the Norman French Leiton Beau Desart.
