]
II
It is not to be expected that an extremely English intonation should
ever be agreeable to Americans, or an extremely American intonation to
Englishmen. We ourselves laugh at a "haw-haw" intonation in English;
why, then, should we forbid Americans to do so? If "an accent like a
banjo" is recognised as undesirable in America (and assuredly it is),
there is no reason why we in England should pretend to admire it. But a
vulgar or affected intonation is clearly distinguishable, and ought to
be clearly distinguished, from a national habit in the pronunciation of
a given letter, or accentuation of a particular word, or class of words.
For instance, take the pronunciation of the indefinite article. The
American habitually says "[=a] man" (_a_ as in "game"); the Englishman,
unless he wants to be emphatic, says, "[)a] man."[T] Neither is right,
neither wrong; it is purely a matter of habit; and to consider either
habit ridiculous is merely to exhibit that childishness or provincialism
of mind which is moved to laughter by whatever is unfamiliar. Again,
when I first read the works of the sagacious Mr. Dooley, I thought it a
curiously far-fetched idea on the part of that philosopher to talk of
Admiral Dewey as his "Cousin George," and assert that "Dewey" and
"Dooley" were practically the same name.
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