Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 107, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1916 — Queer Thing About July, [ARTICLE]

Queer Thing About July,

How we came to pronounce July as we do now, with the accent on the second syllable, is one of the unsolved mysteries of speech. Named, of course, after Julius Caesar, it should really be pronounced to rhyme with "duly,” and so our forefathers actually did pronounce it. Spenser, for instance, has the. line, “Then came hot July boiling like to fire,” and even so late as Johnson’s time the accent was still on the “Ju.” It is one of many Words which would startle those ancestors of our* spoken as we apeak them now.