RULES to be observed by the NATIVES of SCOTLAND for attaining a just Pronunciation of English
That pronunciation which distinguishes the inhabitants of Scotland is of a very different kind from that of Ireland, and may be divided into the quantity, quality, and accentuation of the vowels. With respect to quantity, it may be observed, that the Scotch pronounce almost all their accented vowels long. Thus, if I am not mistaken, they would pronounce habit, hay-bit; tepid, tee-pid; sinner, see-ner; conscious, cone-shus; and subject, soob-ject:[1] it is not pretended, however, that every accented vowel is so pronounced, but that such a pronunciation is very general, and particularly of the i. This vowel is short in English pronunciation, where the other vowels are long; thus evasion, adhesion, emotion, confusion, have the a, e, o, and u, long; and in these instances the Scotch would pronounce them like the English: but in vision, decision, etc. where the English pronounce the i short, the Scotch lengthen this letter by pronouncing it like ee, as if the words were written vee-sion, decee-sion, etc. and this peculiarity is universal. The best way, therefore, to correct this, will be to make a collection of the most usual words which have the vowel short, and to pronounce them daily till a habit is formed. See Principles, No. 507.
With respect to the quality of the vowels, it may be observed, that the inhabitants of Scotland are apt to pronounce the a like aw, where the English give it the slender sound: thus Satan is pronounced Sawtan, and fatal, fawtal. It may be remarked too, that the Scotch give this sound to the a preceded by w, according to the general rule, without attending to the exceptions. Principles, No. 88; and thus, instead of making wax, waft, and twang, rhyme with tax, shaft, and hang, they pronounce them so as to rhyme with box, soft, and song. The short e in bed, fed, red, etc. borders too much upon the English sound of a in bad, lad, mad, etc. and the short i in bid, lid, rid, too much on the English sound of e in bed, led, red. To correct this error, it would be useful to collect the long and short sounds of these vowels, and to pronounce the long ones first, and to shorten them by degrees till they are perfectly short; at the same time preserving the radical sound of the vowel in both. Thus the correspondent long sounds to the e in bed, fed, red, are bade, fade, rade; and that of the short i in bid, lid, rid, and bead, lead, reed; and the former of these classes will naturally lead the ear to the true sound of the latter, the only difference lying in the quantity. The short o in not, lodge, got, etc. is apt to slide into the short u, as if the words were written nut, ludge, gut, etc. To rectify this, it should be remembered, that this is o is the short sound of aw, and ought to have the radical sound of the deep a in ball. Thus the radical sound corresponding to the o in not, cot, sot, is found in naught, caught, sought, etc. and these long sounds, like the former, should be abbreviated into the short ones. But what will tend greatly to clear the difficulty will be, to remember that only those words which are collected in the Principles, No. 165, have the o sounded like short u when the accent is upon it: and with respect to u in bull, full, pull, etc. it may be observed, that the pronunciation peculiar to the English is only found in the words enumerated, Principles, No. 174.
In addition to what has been said, it may be observed, that oo in food, mood, moon, soon, etc. which ought always to have a long sound, is generally shortened in Scotland to that middle sound of the u in bull: and it must be remembered, that wool, wood, good, hood, stood, foot, are the only words where this sound of oo ought to take place.
The accentuation, both in Scotland and Ireland, (if by accentuation we mean the stress, and not the kind of stress) is so much the same as that of England, that I cannot recollect many words in which they differ. Indeed, if it were not so, the versification of each country would be different: for as English verse is formed by accent or stress, if this accent or stress were upon different syllables in different countries, what is verse in England would not be verse in Scotland or Ireland; and this sufficiently shows how very indefinitely the word accent is generally used.
Mr. Elphinston, who must be allowed to be a competent judge in this case, tells us, that in Scotland they pronounce silénce, biás, canvás, senténce, triúmph, comfórt, soláce, constrúe, rescúe, respíte, govérn, haráss, ransáck, cancél, with the accent on the last syllable instead of the first. To this list may be added the word menace, which they pronounce
- ↑ That this is the general mode of pronouncing these words in Scotland, is indisputable: and it is highly probable that the Scotch have preserved the old English pronunciation, from which the English themselves have insensibly departed. Dr. Hicks observed long ago, that the Scotch Saxonised in their language much more than the English; and it is scarcely to be doubted that a situation nearer to the Continent, and a greater commercial intercourse with other nations, mode the English admit of numberless changes which never extended to Scotland. About the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when the Greek and Latin languages were cultivated, and the pedantry of showing an acquaintance with them became fashionable, it is not improbable that an alteration in the quantity of many words took place; for as in Latin almost every vowel before a single consonant is short, so in English almost every vowel in the same situation was supposed to be long, or our ancestors would not have doubled the consonant in the participles of verbs, to prevent the preceding vowel from lengthening. But when once this affectation of Latinity was adopted, it is no wonder it should extend beyond its principles, and shorten several vowels in English, because they were short in the original Latin; and in this manner, perhaps, might the diversity between the quantity of the English and the Scotch pronunciation arise. (542) (543) See Drama.
