WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 54, 5 July 1940, Page 10

WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE

(Written for "The Listener" by Prof.

Arnold

Wall

LLIES" or "allies," that is the question. Are we, ought we, to stress the "all" or the "lies"? Listeners, we say, never hear good of themselves, but what about announcers? Everybody has a radio set now, and everybody, I suppose, listens to the broadcasts from Daventry at least once every day; many listen to them, or may do if they like, every time they come. And all those listeners who take an interest in the pronunciation of English must have noticed that the announcers of the BBC are not of one mind with respect to the stressing of "allies." Just now the man whose broadcast reaches us in the mornings usually stresses the word on " lies," but the one whom we hear in the evenings stresses the "all." Now this is greatly to be Tegretted, for many reasons, not the least weighty of which is the fact that the BEC provides its announcers with instructions as to the pronunciation of doubtful words, which instructions we

should expect them to observe and follow. One or other of the gentlemen mentioned is not doing this. Appeal to History Perhaps it will be best, in order to know how we stand in respect of this very "doubtful" word, to consider the historical evidence, noting first that the BBC recommends the stressed " -lies" in "allies"; the stressed "-ly" in both the noun and the verb "ally"; and the stressed "-lied" in "allied"; but prescribes the stressed "all-" in the expression "allied forces,’ so that it is, at the moment of writing, the morning (our morning) announcer, with his "allies,’ who is the good boy. The best eighteenth century authority, in my judgment, is John Walker, whose "Critical Pronouncing Dictionary" was published in 1791 and ran through more than fifty editions. Walker was not only a good authority but a very careful scholar, and he saves the inquirer a world of trouble in the case of words which are in doubt by quoting the opinions of all his predecessors in this field and balancing the account. Here is what he has to say upon "allies" and "ally" as pronounced in 1791: "a few years ago there was an affectation of pronouncing this word, when a noun, with the accent on the first syllable; and this had an appearance of precision from the general custom of accenting nouns in this manner, when the same word, as a verb, had the accent on the last: but a closer inspection into the analogies of the language showed this pronunciation to be improper as it interfered with a universal rule, which was, to pronounce

the y like e (he means short i as in "fully") in a final unaccented syllable. But whatever was the reason of this novelty, it now seems to have subsided; and this word is generally pronounced with the accent on the second syllable, as it is uniformly marked by all the orthoépists in our language." From this we learn that the recommendation of the BBC has tradition behind it, and that all the eighteenth century authorities were agreed upon the correctness of the stressed "-lies." When Speakers Rebel Now comes the question: what happens when the great majority of speakers insist upon some "new" or unorthodox pronunciation in spite of the prescriptions of authority? The answer is not easy. When, indeed, the majority is overwhelming, as has happened in very many cases, authority has to give in, and the "new" pronunciation becomes the standard. This has happened, for example, with " Rome," which we pronounce to rhyme with "home," whereas our ancestors called it "Room," and Walker, in 1791, thought that "Room" was "irrevocably fixed"; and with "satire," which was pronounced in four different ways, of which our way is not one. The difficulty arises when, as in the case under scrutiny, the two pronunciations, the traditional and the innovation, are more or less equally favoured by two parties of speakers. It is of no use to insist on the old if the new seems bound to be victorious, and I am regretfully compelled to admit that the stressed "all" in "allies" has now very strong backing, though the

BBC will not countenance it. I have noticed, as no doubt many others have done, that many public speakers in England now use the stressed "all-", so that the BBC Committee in seeking to discredit it is perhaps only leading a forlorn hope. Time will show. Insubordination in BBC I may add that this is by no means the only case in which the announcers of the BBC, or some of them, disregard their instructions or recommendations. Among these acts of insubordination, if that is not too strong a term, I have noted the following: "accomplish" as "accumplish"; "negotiation" as "negoss-" instead of "negosh-"; "bulletin" as " bulleteen," instead of "-in"; "threepence" as "thripp-" instead of "threpp-"; and "launch" as "lahnch" instead of "lawnch," which last is in much the same position as "allies" in that it was pronounced as "lahnch" by the late King George V. who perhaps gave the oldfashioned pronunciation a new lease of life. In all these examples the recommendations of the BBC have been disregarded by some of their own officers, who, by ignoring them, are making confusion worse confounded instead of giving the public a clear lead in such difficult circumstances. I am not suggesting that the announcer who says "lahnch" or "accumplish" should’ be sacked, but it does seem a pity that the desirable unanimity cannot be achieved by some milder means. A recorded talk by Professor Arnold Wall on "The Meaning of Words" will be heard from 4YA, Dunedin, on Friday, July 12, at 7.30 p.m.