Up until the late eighteenth century, Brits spoke with an American accent.<\/p>\n
So says the noted language scholar Patricia T. O\u2019Conner.<\/p>\n
The \u201cEnglish\u201d accent as we know it didn\u2019t develop until the late 1700s. That\u2019s when British snobs started doing things like dropping\u00a0r<\/em>\u2019s, adding and subtracting\u00a0h<\/em>\u2019s, saying \u201cpahst\u201d instead of \u201cpast,\u201d and \u201csec-ra-tree\u201d and \u201cmill-a-tree\u201d instead of\u00a0secretary<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0military<\/em>. Before that, the English said most words the way Americans did.<\/p>\n When this faddish new way of speaking swept Britain, a lot of people over there, including prominent linguists, decried it.<\/p>\n So much for all those claims that Americans corrupted the English language. In 1770, a British customs official called American English \u201cperfectly uniform, and unadulterated.\u201d An Englishman visiting a few years later wrote, \u201cThey in general speak better English than the English do.\u201d<\/p>\n So begins a breezy, fascinating, sometimes exasperating book that will leave a lot of self-styled language mavens muttering to themselves.<\/p>\n Origins of the Specious<\/em>, written by O\u2019Conner with her husband, Stewart Kellerman, takes an impeccably researched look at our language\u2019s snares and, in the process, challenges the validity of some of the most persistent misconceptions about English.<\/p>\n Origins<\/em>\u00a0even makes a case for the ignoble double negative.\u00a0I didn\u2019t see nothing<\/em>\u00a0would be correct in French, Russian, and several other languages, and used to be OK in English, too. It still is in special cases:\u00a0I can\u2019t not buy those shoes<\/em>.<\/p>\n Did you know? \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2022 In the fourteenth century, a\u00a0girl<\/em>\u00a0was a child of either sex.<\/p>\n \u2022 Thomas Jefferson gave the world\u00a0belittle<\/em>,\u00a0public relations<\/em>, and\u00a0pedicure<\/em>. Abraham Lincoln was the source of\u00a0relocate<\/em>. Theodore Roosevelt introduced\u00a0lunatic fringe<\/em>. Franklin D. Roosevelt coined\u00a0cheerleader<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u2022 Julius Caesar was not born by caesarian section.<\/p>\n \u2022 The plural of\u00a0octopus<\/em>\u00a0is not\u00a0octopi<\/em>; it\u2019s\u00a0octopuses.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2022 The word\u00a0ain\u2019t\u00a0<\/em>\u201cwas routinely used by the upper classes \u2026 in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. The word, or variations of it, can be found in the letters and diaries of Swift, Lamb, Byron, Tennyson, and Henry Adams.\u201d<\/p>\n Origins<\/em>\u00a0takes a bold stand on \u201cfacts\u201d that are sacred to traditionalists. O\u2019Conner makes a convincing case that\u00a0forte\u00a0<\/em>(meaning one\u2019s specialty) can be pronounced \u201cfor-tay,\u201d which is a controversial position, to say the least. Diligent speakers make a point of pronouncing it \u201cfort,\u201d especially since the musical term\u00a0forte<\/em>\u00a0(loudly) is already pronounced \u201cfor-tay.\u201d<\/p>\n The author\u2019s claim that\u00a0media<\/em>\u00a0can be singular or plural is unacceptable and offensive to many sticklers\u2014not just because the word is the plural of\u00a0medium<\/em>, but because it\u2019s important that people think of \u201cthe media\u201d as many voices, opinions, and perspectives, rather than one monolithic entity.<\/p>\n And nitpickers will squirm at O\u2019Conner\u2019s defense of ignorant or careless pronunciations like \u201cflassid\u201d for\u00a0flaccid<\/em>\u00a0(should be \u201cflaxid\u201d) or \u201cneesh\u201d for\u00a0niche<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cnitch\u201d). That\u2019s why purists are so crabby, because ultimately, \u201ccorrectness is determined by common practice,\u201d and \u201cdemocracy can be exasperating when you\u2019re on the losing side.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014a book report by our late writer and editor Tom Stern<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Up until the late eighteenth century, Brits spoke with an American accent. So says the noted language scholar Patricia T. O\u2019Conner. The \u201cEnglish\u201d accent as we know it didn\u2019t develop until the late 1700s. That\u2019s when British snobs started doing things like dropping\u00a0r\u2019s, adding and subtracting\u00a0h\u2019s, saying \u201cpahst\u201d instead of \u201cpast,\u201d and \u201csec-ra-tree\u201d and \u201cmill-a-tree\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12,49,26,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-definitions","category-effective-writing","category-pronunciation","category-singular-vs-plural","category-vocabulary"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3020"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}