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
'doctr['i]nal' and 'script['u]ral' and 'cin['e]ma'. 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.
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