Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1893 — Pronunciation. [ARTICLE]

Pronunciation.

Linguists tell us that the pronunciation is slowly but steadily changing. Sdmetimes it is going further and further away from the orthography; for example, either and neither are getting to have in their first syllable the long i sound intead of the long e sound which they had once. Sometimes it is being modified to agree with the orthograpny; for example, the older pronunciation of again to rhyme with men, and of been to rhyme with pin, in which I was carefully trained as a boy, seemed to me to. be giving way before a pronunciation in exact accord with the spelling, again to rhyme with pain, and been to rhyme with seen. These two illustrations are from the necessarily circumscribed experience of a single observer, and the observation of others may not bear me out in my opinion; but though the illustrations fall to the ground, the main assertion, that pronunciation is changing, is indisputable.