Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1879 — Giving Words a Twist. [ARTICLE]

Giving Words a Twist.

An old-fashioned citizen objects to the new-fangled twist whieh many school teachers are endeavoring to impart to the pronunciation of certain words. He says it is -“agin natur ami sense.” Hear him: “My youngest darter said to me, the other day: ‘Pa, is Bostong as large as Philadelphia?’’ ‘Boston, my child,’ said I—‘B-o-s-t-o-n is not.’ Then I laughed. ‘What are youloffing at, pa?’ said she. Then I began to rile right up. Says I: ‘Sarev, who told you to call it Bostong, and who taught you to say loss for laughing?’ ‘My schulemoster,’ says she. Then I heaved out a w ord that they don’t teach children in school, and began to cross-examine her. ‘Why, sir,’ —and here the old gentleman began to w’ipe up the oozings from his corrugated brow, ‘why, sir, she called Baltimore Baltmore; half as though it was hos; and went over a string of words that would have made an old-time teacher boom around a school house with a rattan ill a manner not appreciated in these days of fancy kinks. The members of the Board of Education can talk till the crack of doom, and no doubt they will, but they couldn’t beat it into my head, or any other fellow’s who went to school forty years ago, that Boston is Bostong, or laugh is lot. 1 * Having said this, and punched a score of imaginary holes in the floor with his cane, the outraged father braced up his ' collar and climbed down the stairs again.”