Society for Pure English Tract 4 | Page 2

make English the vehicle of
instruction. In reading Latin, the rhythmically-determined
vowel-quantities of post-classical times were used; and the Roman
letters were pronounced, first as they were in French, and afterwards as
in English, but in the fourteenth century this made little difference.
In Chaucer's time, the other nations of Europe, no less than England,
pronounced Latin after the fashion of their own vernaculars. When,
subsequently, the phonetic values of the letters in the vernacular

gradually changed, the Latin pronunciation altered likewise. Hence, in
the end, the pronunciation of Latin has become different in different
countries. A scholar born in Italy has great difficulty in following a
Frenchman speaking Latin. He has greater difficulty in understanding
an Englishman's Latin, because in English the changes in the sounds of
the letters have been greater than in any other language. Every
vowel-letter has several sounds, and the normal long sound of every
vowel-letter has no resemblance whatever to its normal short sound. As
in England the pronunciation of Latin developed insensibly along with
that of the native tongue, it eventually became so peculiar that by
comparison the 'continental pronunciation' may be regarded as uniform.
It is sometimes imagined that the modern English way of pronouncing
Latin was a deliberate invention of the Protestant reformers. For this
view there is no foundation in fact. It may be conceded that English
ecclesiastics and scholars who had frequent occasion to converse in
Latin with Italians would learn to pronounce it in the Italian way; and
no doubt the Reformation must have operated to arrest the growing
tendency to the Italianization of English Latin. But there is no evidence
that before the Reformation the un-English pronunciation was taught in
the schools. The grammar-school pronunciation of the early nineteenth
century was the lineal descendant of the grammar-school pronunciation
of the fourteenth century.
This traditional system of pronunciation is now rapidly becoming
obsolete, and for very good reasons. But it is the basis of the
pronunciation of the many classical derivatives in English; and
therefore it is highly important that we should understand precisely
what it was before it began to be sophisticated (as in our own early
days) by sporadic and inconsistent attempts to restore the classical
quantities. In the following paper Mr. Sargeaunt describes, with a
minuteness not before attempted, the genuine English tradition of Latin
pronunciation, and points out its significance as a factor in the
development of modern English.
H.B.]
* * * * *
It seems not to be generally known that there is a real principle in the
English pronunciation of words borrowed from Latin and Greek,
whether directly or through French. In this matter the very knowledge

of classical Latin, of its stresses and its quantities, still more perhaps an
acquaintance with Greek, is apt to mislead. Some speakers seem to
think that their scholarship will be doubted unless they say 'doctrínal'
and 'scriptúral' and 'cinéma'. The object of this paper is to show by
setting forth the principles consciously or unconsciously followed by
our ancestors that such pronunciations are as erroneous as in the case of
the ordinary man they are unnatural and pedantic. An exception for
which there is a reason must of course be accepted, but an exception for
which reason is unsound is on every ground to be deprecated. Among
other motives for preserving the traditional pronunciation must be
reckoned the claim of poetry. Mark Pattison notes how a passage of
Pope which deals with the Barrier Treaty loses much of its effect
because we no longer stress the second syllable of 'barrier'. Pope's word
is gone beyond recovery, but others which are threatened by false
theories may yet be preserved.
The _New English Dictionary_, whose business it is to record facts,
shows that in not a few common words there is at present much
confusion and uncertainty concerning the right pronunciation. This
applies mostly to the position of the stress or, as some prefer to call it,
the accent, but in many cases it is true also of the quantity of the vowels.
It is desirable to show that there is a principle in this matter, rules
which have been naturally and unconsciously obeyed, because they
harmonize with the genius of the English tongue.
For nearly three centuries from the Reformation to the Victorian era
there was in this country a uniform pronunciation of Latin. It had its
own definite principles, involving in some cases a disregard of the
classical quantities though not of the classical stress or accent. It
survives in borrowed words such as _[=a]li[)a]s_ and _st[)a]mina_, in
naturalized legal phrases, such as _N[=i]s[=i] Prius_ and _[=o]nus
probandi_, and with some few changes in the Westminster Play. This
pronunciation is now out of fashion, but, since its supersession does not
justify a change in the pronunciation