A History of English Language

A history of the english language 352
Webster quotes Sheridan with approval to the effect that “A good articulation consists in
giving every letter in a syllable its due proportion of sound, according to the most
approved custom of pronouncing it; and in making such a distinction, between syllables,
of which words are composed, that the ear shall without difficulty acknowledge their
number.” And he adds the specific injunction, “Let words be divided as they ought to be
pronounced clus-ter, hab-it, nos-tril, bish-op, and the smallest child cannot mistake a just
pronunciation.” In the light of such precept and evidence of its practice, and considering
the popularity of spelling bees among those of a former generation, it seems certain that
not a little influence on American pronunciation is to be traced to the old blue-backed
spelling book.
249. Pronunciation.
The earliest changes in the English language in America, distinguishing it from the
language of the mother country, were in the vocabulary. These have already been
mentioned. From the time when the early colonists came, however, divergence in
pronunciation began gradually to develop. This has been due in part to changes that have
occurred here but has resulted still more from the fact that the pronunciation of England
has undergone further change and that a variety of southern English has come to be
recognized as the English received standard. At the present time American pronunciation
shows certain well-marked differences from English use. 25
Perhaps the most noticeable of these differences is in the vowel sound in such words
as fast, path, grass, dance, can’t, half. At the end of the eighteenth century southern
England began to change from what is called a flat a to a broad a in these words, that is
from a sound like the a in man to one like the a in father. The change affected words in
which the vowel occurred before f, sk, sp, st, ss, th, and n followed by certain consonants.
In parts of New England the same change took place, but in most other parts of the
country the old sound was preserved, and fast, path, etc., are pronounced with the vowel
of pan. In some speakers there is a tendency to employ an intermediate vowel, halfway
between the a of pan and father, but the “flat a” must be regarded as the typical
American pronunciation.
Next to the retention of the flat a, the most noticeable difference between English and
American pronunciation is in the treatment of the r. In the received pronunciation of
England this sound has disappeared except before vowels. It is not heard when it occurs
before another consonant or at the end of a word unless the next word begins with a
vowel. In America, eastern New England and some of the South follow the English
practice, but in the Middle
25
See Eilert Ekwall, American and British Pronunciation (Uppsala, Sweden, 1946), and J.C. Wells,
Accents of English (3 vols., Cambridge, UK, 1982).