gm CORNELL 
 
 "^^ UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
^£l:-^iii^,s;> 
 
 UNIVERSITY BULLETIN 
 
 LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY 
 
 PubllHhed by the Louisiana State TTniTeTSity and Agricultural and Mechanical 
 College at Baton Rouee, Issued monthly except Novemher and December 
 
 VOL. I.— N.S. FEBRUARY, 1910 No. 2 
 
 THE SOUTHERN R 
 
 BY (t^*"^" 
 
 WILLIAM ALEXANDER READ, Ph. D. 
 
 Professor of English i'^'^ 
 
 In Louisiana State University 
 
 Reprinted from the Louisiana School Kevlew for February, 1910 
 
 BATON ROUGE, LA. 
 
 The Indefbndent Pbbss 
 
 1910 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026563415 
 
THE SOUTHERN R. 
 
 The distinguishefl scholar, Mr. A. J. Ellis, once remarked 
 that he doubted whether he had succeeded, even after more 
 than thirty years' study, in apprehending fully the complex 
 nature of r. Of all the English consonants r is, indeed, perhaps 
 the most interesting. At the inception of the English language, 
 r, playing hide-and-seek with s, gave rise to such pairs as survive 
 to this day in were and was, more and most; it exercised itself 
 at leap-frog with a neighboring vowel, as in Old English fersc, 
 forst, which are the modem fresh, frost; and, doubled or fol- 
 lowed by anotheu consonant, r broke certain simple vowels into 
 diphthongs, as in Old English feorr, heord, scearp, which are 
 now far, herd, sharp. 
 
 Since the Old English period, this consonant has changed 
 French laurier, marhre into laurel, marble; it has been partly 
 responsible for the insertion of d in some words like alder, thun- 
 der; and it has often brought about the development of ih from 
 an older d, as in father, mother, gather, hither, together, weather. 
 As early as the seventeenth century, r began, too, that remarkable 
 process which has resulted in the present leveling of several 
 vowels under one sound, as in first, learn, worth. Such are some 
 features that distinguished the history of r in the past; and 
 while those which attend the pronunciation of r in the nineteenth 
 and the twentieth century may not be so striking, they are at 
 least sufficiently important to merit serious attention. It may be, 
 then, worth while to consider the manner in which this conso- 
 nant is formed in the Southern States, to trace the influence 
 which it exerts there on adjacent sounds, and to note the circum- 
 stances uuder which it either becomes silent or passes into a vowel 
 in cultured speech. 
 
 If we examine, by the aid of a hand-glass, the articulation of 
 r, we shall find that this consonant is formed by the escape of the 
 breath between the point of the tongue and the roof of the mouth. 
 Sometimes the point is raised toward the extreme inner slope 
 of the upper gums ; or, again, the point may be turned up and 
 bent back toward the foremost part of the hard palate. In French 
 and German r is a trill ; but in unaffected Southern speech r is, 
 except after th, a perfectly smooth sound, uninterrupted by any 
 vibrations of the tongue. In this respect the Southern r resem- 
 bles that in use among cultured speakers of Southern England, 
 who seldom triU the r unless it appears betweea vowels, as in 
 merit, or foUows th, as in three; even here the trill is so fee&le 
 
THE SOUTHERN R. 
 
 that it produces a different effect from the vigorous roll of the 
 French and the German r. The Southern r generally has, how- 
 ever, a deeper, duller pitch than has the English r— a difference 
 in timbre which would seem to indicate that the point of the 
 tongue is not merely a little farther removed from the hard 
 palate, but also is more reverted for the Southern than for the 
 English r. 
 
 The nearly complete absence of a trilled consonant in South- 
 em speech renders the acquisition of the r in other modern lan- 
 guages somewhat difficult for Southerners. The trilled r may 
 be learned, it is true, with a little steady practice ; but the smooth 
 variety of this consonant is so firmly entrenched in the pronun- 
 ciation of Southerners that not many are consistent in their usage 
 of the foreign sound. Yet the triUed r, with its peculiarly sono- 
 rous quality, arrests the attention as few other consonants can 
 do ; it is for a foreigner often the key to the right understanding 
 of a word or a sentence. If the r is clearly rolled in such a phrase, 
 for instance, as eAne rote Base, a German is not likely to be in 
 doubt about the meaning, however imperfect the utterance of the 
 other sounds in the phrase may be ; but if a smooth, untrilled r 
 is used, a German, hearing the words rather as eine wote wose, 
 is not infrequently quite at a loss as to the signification. The 
 Spanish r, also, is, under certain conditions, so long and forcibly 
 rolled — for example, in perro, rasgo — that one can well imagine 
 its serving the purpose of a good nut-cracker! Southerners 
 should take pains, therefore, to master the trilled r in their pur- 
 iOiit of modem languages,- while foreigners ought to be 
 equally careful, on the other hand, not to introduce this sound 
 into their pronunciation of Southern English; for the trilled r 
 in a red rose sounds just as artificial and disagreeable to a South- 
 erner as does the smooth r in eine rote Rose to a German, or in 
 une rose rouge to a Frenchman. 
 
 While the smooth r almost alone occurs in Southern speech, 
 there is another variety of r, let us remark in passing, which is 
 formed by vibrations of the uvula against the back part of the 
 tongue. This is the r that one usually hears in Paris and the 
 German cities, whereas the tongue-point r is far more common 
 in the country districts of France and Germany. The uvular r- 
 sound is extremely difficult to imitate; in fact, it is seldom or 
 never acquired by American students of French and German. 
 Perhaps Southerners would do well to heed the advice of Pm- 
 fessor Passy, and, while they are trying to learn the Parisian 
 accent, simply avoid the uvular r. " II y a des professeurs, ' ' says 
 this well-known authority — "surtout des Anglais et des Amer- 
 icains — qui se donnent beaucoup de mal pour prononcer eux- 
 
THE SOUTHERN R. 
 
 memes et ineulquer a leurs eleves le 'r parisien'; e'est un enfan- 
 tillage, ear lors meme qu' on reussirait, le resultat ne vaudrait 
 pas taut d' efforts; et le plus souvent on reussit tres mal." 
 
 "We have seen that the Southern r resembles the corresponding 
 English consonant in being a smooth sound ; and we may note as 
 a fact of even greater significance fhat the Southern r is lost in 
 precisely the same situations as the r is in the South of England. 
 The rule, which is very important, is usually stated as follows: 
 r is pronounced only when it is followed by a vowel, either in 
 the same or in the next word. Thus r is heard in red, Mary, far 
 aivay. Especially in slow, dignified utterance, however, r may 
 also become silent in a group like far away. In other cases r 
 regularly disappears, or is replaced by the same sound that the a 
 in sofa represents. The former change takes place after the a 
 of farther, as in carve, farm, star, as well as after the vowel sound 
 of words like clerk, fur, sir; while the latter change generally 
 occurs after other vowels, as in leggars, letter, fear, fears, player, 
 players, pour, poured, tour, tours, war, wars. Sometimes the loss 
 of the r has left two pronunciations of equal currency, as in 
 torn, corn, morn, warm, and similar words, which have either a 
 diphthong or a .-iingle vowel — the latter ending, however, often 
 in a slight glide, while the former almost invariably fails to ap- 
 pear before another syllable, as in order, quarter. Now and then 
 luar sounds like waw. Occasionally, too, the vowel in such words 
 as hurst, first gives way to a diphthong, the second element of 
 which is a kind of short i-sound, not unlike the i in sit; but the 
 first element of this diphthong has the quality of the vowel 
 usually heard in hurst * 
 
 The variation between university and varsity is an echo of a 
 conflict which, beginning in late Middle English, has not yet come 
 to an end. Many old-fashioned speakers, for instance, still make 
 hearth rime with earth. Whether sergeant, however, ever has 
 the vowel of earth is, I thing, very doubtful ; while the customary 
 English pronunciation of clerh appears in America only in the 
 proper name Clarh. When an Englishman by the name of Her- 
 hert settled in Virginia, he naturally continued to call himself 
 Earhert, just as he had been wont to do in England; hence Vir- 
 ginians, influenced by this pronunciation, began to spell his name 
 with an a in the first syllable. Both Earhert and Eerhert—fhe 
 latter with the pronunciation usual in America — are found, of 
 course, today as family names in the South. The fact is, fur- 
 thermore, not without interest that, during the struggle between 
 the two types of vowels represented by clerk and Clark, there 
 have arisen forms which, although they are now decidedly vulgar, 
 
 »See Grandgent, German and English Sounds, p. 17. 
 
6. THE SOUTHERN R. 
 
 point to prommeiations once current in the speech of the edu- 
 cated. ' ' Thirty years ago, ' ' says Walker, writing in 1791, ' ' every 
 one pronounced the first syllable of merchant like the monosyl- 
 lable march." Other examples are clargy, desart, lam, sarvant, 
 instead of the present clergy, desert, learn, servant.* 
 
 A few other changes should be observed here. Thus, in the 
 word girl the usual vowel is that of earth ; but in Eastern Vir- 
 ginia, and perhaps in other parts of the South, this vowel is 
 sometimes replaced by a sound like the e in men, followed by the 
 regular vowel glide that represents the lost r. A similar pronun- 
 ciation of girl is not unknown also in England. A discussion of 
 the palatalized g in girl, a consonant that is heard particularly 
 in Eastern Virginia and South Carolina, does not come within 
 the scope of this article. As for the vowel in such words as hurry, 
 worry, it is usually that of sun, but now and then may approach 
 the sound of the vowel in fur.] The first syllable of sirup gen- 
 erally has the vowel of sun, less often that of fur or of sit. The 
 substitution, however, of the vowel in fur or in sun for the short « 
 in such words as America, very, is wholly vulgar. 
 
 Among other words that are pronounced in different ways, 
 pretty is conspicuous on account of the peculiar character of its 
 changes. The e in pretty, like that in England, English, is gen- 
 erally accepted as being equivalent to i; the pronunciation with e 
 instead of i is rare and sounds affected. But many persons, by 
 retracting the tongue in the formation of the i, modify the quality 
 of this vowel to a perceptible degree. Such is the i-sound that is 
 sometimes heard also in the word Bristol. Pretty, however, shows 
 a more interesting variation still; for this word is the only one 
 in which, so far as I can now recall, r may be pronounced in the 
 South before a consonant. In the colloquial speech of not a few 
 cultivated Southerners, the e of pretty sometimes disappears, 
 while the r becomes syllabic ; that is, r is so sonorous that it takes 
 the place of a vowel, giving to pretty a pronunciation which may 
 be roughly indicated by prty. Many persons avoid prty alto- 
 gether; and those who use it are well aware that it is a mark 
 distinctively of easy, careless conversation. What I would empha- 
 size with regard to prty is, that it seems to be a uninue exam- 
 ple of the use of r before a consonant; that this pronunciation 
 actually occurs in the speech of educated people ;and that prty 
 is by no means to be confounded with the vulgar pronunciations 
 which are usuallly represented by such spellings as putty, purty, 
 perty. 
 
 Much diversity of pronunciation also prevails in a class of 
 
 ♦Compare Koeppel, St)elIing-Pronunolatlons, pp. 36-40. 
 tGrandgent, as before, p. IB. 
 
THE SOUTHERN E. 
 
 words of whieli cure, pure, and sure are lypical examples. In 
 these eases r is vocalized, according to the usual rule, into the a 
 of sofa, whereas the u is soimded either as oo in moon or as u in 
 full, or carelessly as o in shore. Similar variations are common 
 in Southern England, where the u is, in truth, generally lowered 
 even as far as the aw of law — a stage of development that has not 
 yet been reached in the Southern States. 
 
 In still another respect England shows a more advanced treat- 
 ment of r than does the South; that is, Southern Englishmen, 
 discarding the vowel that has arisen from final r, often make no 
 distinction between pour and paw, sore and saw, and similar 
 groups. One must admit, however, that Southerners of high cul- 
 ture may sometimes be heard to pronounce such words as door, 
 floor respectively like doe, flow. The brilliant orator. Senator 
 Daniel of Virginia, is said to have asked on one occasion whether 
 Senator Hoar (hoe) was on the floor (flow). "No," replied one 
 of Daniel's colleagues, laughing at the Southerner's pronuncia- 
 tion, "Senator Hoar (hoe) will not return to the floor {fhnv) 
 until half-past four" (foe). 
 
 Again, there is a tendency, less marked in the South than in 
 England, so to shift the stress from the first vowel to the vocal- 
 ized r, that a word, for instance, like hear is pronounced as if the 
 h were followed by a j/ plus the vowel of sir or, at any rate in 
 the South, of hum. This pronunciation I had the opportunity of 
 observing repeatedly last winter during the progress of a formal 
 debate held by the Oxford Union Society; and London curates 
 8 re alleged on excellent authority not seldom to read the sen- 
 tence, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear," as " 'ee that 
 'ath yahs to hyah, let 'im hyah" ! In order to find a parallel to 
 the London curate's hyah in which ah indicates practically the 
 sound of a in father, one would have to go to the negro dialect in 
 the South ; nor are Southerners prone to place the accent on the 
 final vowel of hear, except in easy, conversational style. In care- 
 ful speech the majority of them prefer to stress the first vowel 
 of hear, fear, and similar words — a vowel that wavers, by the 
 way, a good deal, now approaching the i m machine, and again 
 being nearly or quite identical with that in chin. 
 
 The South also lags behind the London dialect in the influ- 
 ence that r exerts on a preceding long o. Thus, whereas the South 
 has an open o in such words as horn, horse, morn, but retains a 
 close in home, hoarse, mourn, London and Southern England 
 now have only the open vowel in all these words, making no dis- 
 tinction between horn and home, horse and hoarse, morn and 
 mourn. Consequently Southerners have much less trouble than 
 do many Englishmen in pronoimcing the close o in a word like 
 German Ohr or Italian giorno. 
 
THE SOUTHERN E. 
 
 Throughout the North of England, it is true, the close, as well 
 as the open o, is found before a written r; while the distribution 
 of the two vowels is there, in almost every case, still the same as 
 in the Southern States. In this part of England, as in our South 
 — to state the situation more accurately — the close vowel is gen- 
 erally used in words which contained a long, open o in Middle 
 English, or a long u in early modern English, as before, borne, 
 force, more, porch, pork; but the open vowel appears in those 
 forms which originally had a short o before r and r plus conso- 
 nant, as born, for, fork, horn, short, thorn. Although Northern 
 England, in the allotment of the close and the open long o, sel- 
 dom parts company with the Southern States, yet at least one 
 conspicuous example of divergence occurs: in the word cord the 
 contrast between the close o of Northern England and our open o 
 is noteworthy. 
 
 In Northern England there is a class of vowels, known as 
 coronal, which have a distinct r-timbre, owing to the fact that 
 they are formed with the point of the tongue raised almost to 
 the full r-position. In the Southern States the only vowels that 
 seem to me ever to become coronal are those in words like 
 part, sort. The coronal quality of these vowels is extremely faint, 
 much fainter than that of the corresponding English vowels; it 
 may be detected in the speech of but few Southerners, and is by 
 no means invariably apparent in the pronunciation of any indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 In a considerable number of words, the South uses a vowel 
 which, if one may trust the testimony of Lloyd and Sweet, has 
 practically disappeared before r from the speech of educated 
 Englishmen. Neither in the North nor in the South of England 
 does one find a simple, close vowel in Canary, dairy, Mary, ma- 
 laria, Sarah, vary and similar words. Of this close vowel before r, 
 the sole examples from Lloyd's Northern English seem to occur 
 in the word they're; and at least once in they're Lloyd has an 
 open vowel. Sw^et in his transcription of the London dialect, 
 very properly assigns to the London they're, as well as to words 
 like dairy, various, an open vowel before the r. 
 
 In aU these words the South preserves the pure close vowel 
 which was common in the English of the early eighteenth century. 
 In the Southern States there is, it is true, sometimes hesitation 
 with regard to the quality of the vowel; mayor rimes perhaps 
 more frequently with player than with fair; fairy and parent 
 have likewise occasionally a close vowel. One may observe that 
 Sir James Murray gives, in the New English Dictionary, two pro- 
 nunciations of mayor as current in standard English; but in 
 neither case does he indicate the close monophthong that' is often 
 
THE SOUTHEEN R. 
 
 heard in the South. Just at this point a word of caution may be 
 necessary : the South has an open vowel, slightly more open than 
 that in French faire, in such words as lare, lear, dare, hare, mare, 
 pear, share, snare, square, stare, swear, there, wear. Tlie influ- 
 ence of they, however, has so far prevented the first vowel of 
 they're from becoming open. 
 
 B is, it is worth while to repeat, always sounded before a 
 vowel in the same word; for the occasional pronunciation of 
 every as evy is merely ludicrous. But the question whether one 
 inserts a vowel glide before medial r is not, in every instance, 
 easily answered. In Southern England a slight glide appears 
 before the r in words like Europe, Lowry, Mary, parent, pirate, 
 serious; in the South the glide is here, as a rule, suppressed. In 
 such formations as fairest, hiring, pouring, sourest, storage, tour- 
 ist, the glide is very faint in the South, and may disappear in 
 rapid speech. No glide appears in starry, warring, except that 
 the ah and aw sounds have, if they are prolonged, a natural ten- 
 dency to become slightly diphthongal. Gory, in spite of its con- 
 nection with gore, frequently has no glide ; while words like glory, 
 story, are always without the glide. In dreary, weary, the glide 
 seems to be often, though not invariably, heard ; in fairy the glide 
 disappears if the word rimes with Mary, and is perhaps more 
 frequently silent even when fairy has the vowel of fair. Words 
 like fearing, hearing have the glide unless they are pronounced 
 with a j/-sound in the place of the first vowel. 
 
 The loss of r has brought about a striking change in the pro- 
 nunciation of a few words, among which the most familiar is 
 excursion. To the si in this word the dictionaries assign the sound 
 of sh, whereas most Southerners pronounce zh in the final syllable. 
 "Whence comes the zh? In order to answer this question accurate- 
 ly, we must first have a clear idea of the difference between 
 voiceless and voiced sounds. Situated in the head of the larynx 
 are two horizontal lips, called the vocal cords. These cords may 
 narrow or close the space between them ; they are capable of in- 
 numerable degrees of tension, and of vibrating either in part 
 or as wholes. The opening between the cords is known as the 
 glottis; and through the glottis the breath has to pass in the 
 formation of speech-sounds. Now, sounds th<)t are produced with- 
 out vibration of the vocal cords are said to be voiceless. Here 
 the cords are so far apart that they permit the breath to pass 
 without audible friction. Some examples are p, t, k, f, s, sh. 
 Sounds, on the other hand, which are produced while the vocal 
 cords are vibrating are said to be voiced. In this case the vocal 
 cords touch each other, either in part or along their entire edges, 
 and hence are set in vibration by the stream of breath from the 
 lungs. Examples are h, d, g, v, z, zh. If the ears are firmly 
 
10 THE SOUTHERN R. 
 
 stopped during the formation of a loud, prolonged z, the vibra- 
 tions of the cords can be distinctly heard as a buzzing sound 
 in the larynx. This sound is absent during the utterance of the 
 corresponding voiceless consonant s. , 
 
 If we note now the fact that all vowels are voiced, we shall 
 readily discover a cause for the appearance of the zh in the 
 Southern excursion. The disappearance of the r-sound from 
 this word brings the voiceless sk between two vowels; conse- 
 quently, the speaker, keeping the glottis closed as a matter of 
 economy of effort, converts the sh into zh with the vibrations of 
 the vocal cords. The same substitution often takes place in Fer- 
 sia{n); less frequently, however, in version, which, on account 
 of its literary character, tends to resist the influence perceptible 
 in the more popular words excursion and Persia (n). When a 
 consonant precedes the sh, as in dimension, expulsion, then the 
 sh remains; for a liquid or a nasal is itself rendered partly voice- 
 less by contact with a following sh sound. Thus, in the word 
 expulsion the vocal cords, which have been closed for the Z-vibra- 
 tions, begin to open and gradually cease to vibrate before the end 
 of the I, anticipating the position of the cords necessary for the 
 subsequent sk. A similar explanation holds good for the main- 
 tenance of the sh in dimension. If Southerners pronounced an r 
 in excursion, they would simply make the end of the r voiceless, 
 and retain the sh sound. One should remember, however, that 
 the change of the sh to zh indicates merely a natural tendency, 
 not a physiological necessity, in Southern speech ; many persons, 
 chiefly under the influence of the schools or the dictionaries, 
 preserve the sh in words, for example, like Asia, Asiatic. 
 
 Parallel with the development of zh from sh may be found 
 examples of a similar tendency on the part of intervocalic s to 
 shift to z. A Southerner usually betrays himself by the manner in 
 which he pronounces the abbreviation Mrs. "Miziz," he says, not 
 taking the trouble to open the vocal cords for the medial s, and 
 hence changing this s to z. "Misiz," pronounces the Northerner, 
 opening the vocal cords for the s, and then closing them for the 
 final vowel. The Southerner also frequently pronounces a z in 
 designate, as well as in the final syllables of such words as. con- 
 clusive, exclusive, persuasive; and that he should prefer 2 to s 
 in such words as parse, persist, persistent, is, therefore, perfectly 
 natural. In the word parse the g-sound is, of course, due to 
 analogy of such forms as parses, parsing, where, in consequence 
 of the loss of the r, s became intervocalic, and then could more 
 readily pass into z. As to persist and persistent, in which z is 
 frequently heard, the alteration of s to z has been rendered 
 
THE SOUTHERN R. 11 
 
 easier by the fact that the s here precedes the accented syllable.* 
 The tendency, by the way, of intervocalic s to become voiced when 
 this consonant is followed by the chief stress is, according to Jes- 
 persen, Phonetische Grundfragen, p. 162, characteristic also of 
 modern Danish. 
 
 It may be well to state that those persons who brand the 
 Southern practice of dropping the r as slovenly or incorrect not 
 only are ill-informed with regard to the history of English 
 sounds, but display also a gross misconception of the criterion 
 by which alone correctness in the matter of pronunciation should 
 be estimated. For r is, in the first place, merely one among the 
 numerous other consonants that have disappeared from English 
 speech during the progress of the centuries. Who thinks now 
 of pronouncing the t in such words as castle, Christmas, hasten, 
 soften? or the d in handkerchief? or the w in answer, sword, 
 two, write? or the b in climb, comb, dumb? or the k and g re- 
 spectively in know, gnaw? From such examples as these it is 
 evident that the disappearance of r in the Southern States, as 
 well as in England, is a natural development in the life of the 
 English language; and that the efforts of those who, actuated 
 by doubtless excellent motives, would restore to r what they con- 
 sider its full rights in Southern English, are nothing more than 
 illustrations of misdirected energy. In the speech of cultivated 
 Englishmen r is today silent under certain cbnditions; in the 
 speech of cultivated Southerners r is silent under precisely simi- 
 lar conditions. A South Carolinian once said to me that she had 
 been trying to learn, under the guidance of Northern teachers, 
 the correct pronunciation of r; but that on her arrival in Oxford, 
 she was surprised to find that Englishmen seemed not to regret 
 having given up the r-sound in the very situations from which 
 it had disappeared in her own pronunciation. 
 
 Many people, in the second place, are prone to think that 
 pronunciations which they do not use themselves must be either 
 careless or absolutely wrong. When natives of Chicago sound 
 the r in a word like fair, they have a right to regard the pro- 
 nunciation of r here as correct. I, toe_ agree with them that this 
 usage of r is correct ; for r final is pronounced by a large number 
 of cultivated Americans. But I consider the Southern habit of 
 vocalizing the r in fair to be equally correct, and in no sense 
 inferior to the Chicago pronunciation; for r final is converted 
 into a vowel by a large number of cultivated Americans. A 
 pronunciation, in short, is justly said to be correct when it is of 
 wide occurrence among educated people. Professor Wyld, in 
 his Historical Study of the Mother Tongue, observes that Lord 
 
 •Compare Sweet, New English GHrammar, §863. 
 
THE SOUTHERN R. 
 
 Chesterfield's definition of correct speaking can hardly be im- 
 proved upon. ''A man of fashion," says Chesterfield, "takes 
 great care to speak very correctly and granunatically — that is, 
 according to the usage of the best companies." 
 
 I cannot refrain from commenting, in conclusion, upon an 
 error which is prevalent in the minds of Americans ; namely, that 
 certain features of Southern English, prominent among which 
 is the loss of r, are to be ascribed to the influence of the negro 
 dialect, "^et r disappears, as has been clearly shown, in the 
 speech of the educated classes in England, a country in which 
 there can be no question of negro influence ; nay, even the vowel 
 murmur resulting from the loss of r final is in England more 
 frequently silent than it is in the Southern States. For, while 
 some persons in the South may not distinguish floor from flow, 
 this pronunciation of floor is still held by most Southerners to be 
 quite negligent ; whereas the younger generation in England, ac- 
 cording to Professor Wyld, "pronounce pour like paw, floor 
 like flaw, core like caw, sore and soar like saw, and so on. ' ' That 
 the Southern white man should imitate the speech of the negro 
 seems to some critics perfectly natural; that the negro should 
 imitate the speech of the Southern white man is an idea that 
 these critics are utterly incapable of grasping. If one will listen, 
 however, to the negro dialect in a Western city, for instance, 
 Chicago, one wiU perceive that the negro is imitating there, to 
 the best of his ability, the speech of the white natives of Chi- 
 cago. Now, a conspicuous feature of Chicago English is the 
 preservation of the r-sound; and so r is distinctly heard in 
 the dialect of the Chicago negro. A negro, on the other hand, 
 born and reared in the South, tries to acquire those sounds of 
 English with which he is familiar; consequently he does not 
 pronounce an r in situations from which it has disappeared in the 
 speech of the Southern white man. Linguistic history shows, 
 moreover, conclusively that men do not imitate a language or 
 dialect which they think is inferior to their own. The number 
 of ancient Celtic words in English is surprisingly small; and a 
 plausible explanation of this phenomenon is to be found in the 
 fact that the conquering Saxon felt no inclination to learn the 
 language of the conquered Celt. During the reign of Frederick 
 the Great, on the contrary, the Germans of the upper classes 
 did their best to acquire a certain foreign language, namely, 
 French, because French was then universally considered to be a 
 more elegant language than German.* But the theory that 
 educated Southern gentlemen have adopted, consciously 
 
 ♦Compare Jespersen, Growth and Structure of the English L.an> 
 guage, p. 39. 
 
THE SOUTHERN R. 13 
 
 ov unconsciously, vulgar pronunciations used by ignorant 
 negroes is not supported by the slightest bit of evidence. 
 Over against the assertion, with its covert sneer, that Southern- 
 ers talk like negroes, I would place the testimony of the noted 
 Norwegian scholar. Professor Johan Storm: "In the speech of 
 cultivated Americans," he says, "especially of Southerners, it is 
 difficult at times even for Englishmen to detect the foreign ac- 
 cent." I do not believe, finally, that the language of educated 
 Southerners has, under the influence of the negro dialect, either 
 changed or gained or lost a single sound; and if I, for many 
 years, have been mistaken in respect to this matter, I should be 
 glad to have those whose knowledge is wider than mine point out 
 definitely wherein I have been cherishing an erroneous opinion. 
 
JPAM PHIET binder' 
 
 — Syracuse, N.Y. 
 ^S Stockton, Calif. 
 
 PE 2923.R28 " ""'"""^ '""'"^ 
 
 Southern R, 
 
 3 1924 026 563 415