Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin by John Sargeaunt
page 16 of 67 (23%)
page 16 of 67 (23%)
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stress in
Laódamía, that at Jove's command-- nor Landor in Artémidóra, gods invisible-- though I hope that they did. * * * * * It is not to be thought that these rules were in any way arbitrary. So little was this so that, I believe, they were never even formulated. If examples with the quantities marked were ever given, they must have been for the use of foreigners settling in England. English boys did not want rules, and their teachers could not really have given them. The teachers did not understand that each vowel represented not two sounds only, a long and a short, but many more. This fact was no more understood by John Walker, the actor and lexicographer, who in 1798 published a Key to the Classical Pronunciation of Greek and Latin proper names. His general rule was wrong as a general rule, and so far as it agreed with facts it was useless. He says that when a vowel ends a syllable it is long, and when it does not it is short. Apart from the confusion of cause and effect there is the error of identifying for instance the _e_ in _beatus_ and the _e_ in _habebat_. Moreover, Walker confounds the _u_ in 'curfew', really long, with the short and otherwise different _u_ in 'but'. The rule was useless as a guide, for it did not say whether _moneo_ for instance was to be read as _ino-neo_ or as _mon-eo_, and therefore whether the _o_ was to be long |
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