some time after Englishmen had abandoned it." The sensitive ear of Henry James detected an unpleasant r-sound in the speech of Americans, long ago got rid of by the English, so late as 1905; he even charged that it was inserted gratuitously in innocent words.[1] The obvious slurring of the consonants by Southerners is explained by a recent investigator [2] on the ground that it began in England during the reign of Charles II, and that most of the Southern colonists came to the New World at that time. The court of Charles, it is argued, was under French influence, due to the king's long residence in France and his marriage to Henrietta Marie. Charles "objected to the inharmonious contractions will'nt (or wolln't) and wasn't and weren't…and set the fashion of using the softly euphonius won't and wan't, which are used in speaking to this day by the best class of Southerners." A more direct French influence upon Southern pronunciation is also pointed out. "With full knowledge of his g's and his r's,…[the Southerner] sees fit to glide over them,… and he carries over the consonant ending one word to the vowel beginning the next, just as the Frenchman does." The political importance of the South, in the years between the Mecklenburg Declaration and the adoption of the Constitution, tended to force its provincialisms upon the common language. Many of the acknowledged leaders of the ascent nation were Southerners, and their pronunciation, as well as their phrases, must have become familiar everywhere. Pickering gives us a hint, indeed, at the process whereby their usage influenced that of the rest of the people.[3]
The Americans early dropped the h-sound in such words as when and where, but so far as I can determine they never elided it at the beginning of words, save in the case of herb, and a few others. This elision is commonly spoken of as a cockney vulgarism, but it has extended to the orthodox English speech. In ostler the initial h is openly left off; in hotel and hospital it is
- ↑ The Question of Our Speech; Boston and New York, 1906, pp. 27-29.
- ↑ Elizabeth H. Hancock: Southern Speech, Neale's Monthly, Nov., 1913, pp. 606-7.
- ↑ Vide his remarks on balance in his Vocabulary. See also Marsh, p. 671.
