5 FEBRUARY 1927, Page 18

" YEA " AND THE CORRUPTION OF SPOKEN ENGLISH

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]

SIR,—The answer to the statement in Mr. Donald Gullick's letter in your issue of Dec. 25th, 1926, saying that the Lancashire colliers all say " yah " for "yes," is contained in my letter which you published on December 4th, 1926. They do not say " yah " for " yes " ; but they are using the good old English word "yen," pronounced in old days as " yehah," an attenuated diphthong which is hardly distinguishable from" yah." The Elizabethan spelling of the word, which survives to this day, indicates that. They aimed more at phonetic spelling in those days than we quite give them credit for. The same diphthong is indicated in " sea," " leap," " dream," " appeal," " speak," &c.

After the Restoration, the " e " sound—a, pure vowel, equivalent to the French "é "—began to predominate over and finally absorbed the pure " a " vowel sound, the pro- nunciation being—to express it in modern spelling—" say;' " lape," " drame," " appale," " spake," &c.—which pro-

nunciation, by the way, still survives in Ireland. . -

Since that time the degradation has proceeded further, the pure "e ' sound in these words being further corrupted in London and southern England, about the middle of the eighteenth century, into the pure " i " sound, their present pronunciation—though "great," strangely enough, is still pronounced nearly as it was in the late seventeenth century. All this .has been a serious loss to the euphony and variety of the language. Voltaire found fault with us for having distorted and .confused the sounds of all the vowels of the alphabet. "Yea," however, in common parlance has not got beyond the late seventeenth century stage of degradation. It has been suggested, and it is likely enough, that this survival was due to the analogy of the word" nay," which, by the way, was in old English pronounced—to express it in modern spelling—" nigh."

The corruption of our spoken language is, indeed, still in progress. There are some people—Mr. Baldwin among them

who when they want to say "to my mind one might," &C.,

pronounce the words "to - maid mahind one mahight," almost "to moi moind one moight."

Nothing can preserve our language from still further cor- ruption except the adoption of a scientific, phonetic system of spelling, in which every vowel and diphthongal sound shall itave.its definite equivalent. The simplest way will be by new, additional letters, instead of any jumbling use of existing ones.