Questions at Issue in Our English SpeechBroadway publishing Company, 1909 - 154 páginas |
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American English American spelling American usage Anglian dialect Anglo-Saxon authority Britain British English British usage Caxton Celtic Chaucer ciation corruption course Doctor Johnson Dryden early English early orthoepists eighteenth century Elizabethan Ellis employed England English dialects English language English orthography English pronunciation English speech English spelling English tongue example fact favor guage heard idiom illiterate influence Irish Johnson King Alfred Latin lect less lexicographers lips literary language locutions London mode of utterance modern native natural Norman French nunciation orthoepy patois pedants pedigree phonetic phrases polite slang Pope present preserved printers Professor Lounsbury pronouncing dictionary pronun propriety provincial purity received pronunciation recognized result rhyme rival Saxon scholars seventeenth century Shakespeare Sheridan sound speak spoken standard English standard of pronunciation standard speech survive teenth tion to-day tury uniformity variation vernacular vocabulary vowel vulgar West-Saxon words writing written
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Página 75 - ... catching and rendering the charm of nature in a wonderfully near and vivid way, — I should answer, with 10 some doubt, that it got much of its turn for style from a Celtic source; with less doubt, that it got much of its melancholy from a Celtic source; with no doubt at all, that from a Celtic source it got nearly all its natural magic.
Página 40 - Why, Sir, consider how much easier it is to learn a language by the ear^ than by any marks. Sheridan's Dictionary may do very well ; but you cannot always carry it about with you: and, when you want the word, you have not the Dictionary. It is like a man who has a sword that will not draw. It is an admirable sword, to be sure : but while your enemy is cutting your throat, you are unable to use it. Besides, Sir, what entitles Sheridan to fix the pronunciation of English? He has, in the first place,...
Página 80 - It must not be inferred, from what has been said, that the Scottish register may not be applied with security to many statistical inquiries into the public health.
Página 128 - There is death in the dictionary ; and, where language is too strictly limited by convention, the ground for expression to grow in is limited also ; and we get a potted literature, — Chinese dwarfs instead of healthy trees.
Página 144 - Sheffield, a mercer, came into a house and asked for meat, and especially he asked after eggs; and the good wife answered that she could speak no French, and the merchant was angry, for he also could speak no French, but would have had eggs, and she understood him not. And then at last another said, that he would have "eyren...
Página 40 - I remember an instance: when I published the Plan for my Dictionary, Lord Chesterfield told me that the word great should be pronounced so as to rhyme to state; and Sir William Yonge sent me word that it should be pronounced so as to rhyme to seat, and that none but an Irishman would pronounce it grait. Now here were two men of the highest rank, the one, the best speaker in the House of Lords, the other, the best speaker in the House of Commons, differing entirely.
Página 64 - ... come, tell us your reason : what sayest thou to this ? Poins. Come, your reason, Jack, your reason. Fal. What, upon compulsion ? 'Zounds, an I were at the strappado, or all the racks in the world, I would not tell you on compulsion. Give you a reason on compulsion ! if reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I.
Página 79 - Tears ! I have decomposed them ; they contain a little phosphate of lime, chloride of sodium, mucin, and water." The Hibernicism in question is the pronunciation of gyirl, so widespread and carefully cultivated by delicate mouths in Virginia as to be considered the shibboleth of those "to the manner born.
Página 114 - ... some of which are now struggling for the vogue, and others are in possession of it. I have done my utmost for some years past to stop the progress of mob and banter, but have been plainly borne down by numbers, and betrayed by those who promised to assist me.
Página 111 - Scott refers to certain cant words and ' thieves' Latin called slang'; and the great romancer seems to have been fully aware that he was using a rather unknown term which required a gloss. Sometime during the middle of the last century, so Professor Brander Matthews informs us, slang lost this narrow limitation and came to signify a word or phrase used with a meaning not recognized in polite letters, either because it had just been invented or because it had passed out of memory. If it is true that...