Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 3. Practical Guidance for Aspiring Writers
Remarks on English Pronunciation

Monosyllables and Dissyllables [3]

I should like to ask you a few questions suggested by your falling foul of the Fowlers. The poetic pronunciation of words cannot be accepted as a standard for current speech — can it? On your own showing, “treason” and “poison” which are monosyllables in prose or current speech are scanned as dissyllables in verse; Shelley makes “evening” three syllables and Harin has used even “realm” as a dissyllable, while the practice of taking “precious” and “conscious” to be three syllables is not even noticeable, I believe. All the same, current speech, if your favourite Chambers’s Dictionary as well as my dear Oxford Concise is to be believed, insists on “evening”, “precious” and “conscious” being dissyllabic and “realm” monosyllabic. I am mentioning this disparity between poetic and current usages not because I wish “meditation” to be robbed of its full length or “vision” to lose half its effect but because it seems to me that Shelley’s or Tennyson’s or any poet’s practice does not in itself prove anything definitely for English as it is spoken. And spoken English, very much more than written English, undergoes change; even the line you quote from Shakespeare was perhaps not scanned in his time as you would do it now, for “meditation” — as surely “passion” and “fashion” also and most probably “vision” as well — was often if not always given its full vowel-value and the fourth foot of the line in question might to an Elizabethan ear have been very naturally an anapaest:

In mai|den me|dita|tion fan|cy free.

When, however, you say that your personal experience in England, both north and south, never recorded a monosyllabic “vision”, we are on more solid ground, but the Concise Oxford Dictionary is specially stated to be in its very title as “of Current English”: is all its claim to be set at nought? It is after all a responsible compilation and, so far as my impression goes, not unesteemed. If its errors were so glaring as you think, would there not have been a general protest? Or is it that English has changed so much in “word of mouth” since your departure from England? This is not an ironical query — I am just wondering.

P.S. Your exclamatory-interrogatory elegiacs illustrating the predicament we should fall into if the Fowlers were allowed to spread their nets with impunity were very enjoyable. But I am afraid the tendency of the English language is towards contraction of vowel sounds, at least terminal ones; and perhaps the Oxford Dictionary has felt the need to monumentalise — clearly and authoritatively — the degree to which this tendency has, in some cases more definitely, in others less but still perceptibly enough, advanced? The vocalised “e” of the suffix“-ed” of the Spenserian days is now often mute; the trisyllabic suffix “-ation” of the “spacious times” has shrunk by one syllable, and “treason” and “poison” and “prison”, all having the same terminal sound if fully vowelised as “-ation”, are already monosyllables in speech — so, if “passion” and “fashion” which too have lost their Elizabethan characteristic like “meditation” should contract by a natural analogy, carrying all “ation”-suffixed words as well as “vision” and “scission” and the like with them, it would be quite as one might expect. And if current speech once fixes these contractions, they will not always keep outside the pale of poetry. What do you think?

Where the devil have I admitted that “treason” and “poison” are monosyllables or that their use as dissyllables is a poetic licence? Will you please quote the words in which I have made that astounding and imbecile admission? I have said distinctly that they are dissyllables,— like risen, dozen, maiden, garden, laden, and a thousand others which nobody (at least before the world went mad) ever dreamed of taking as monosyllables. On my own showing, indeed! After I had even gone to the trouble of explaining at length about the slurred syllable “e” in these words, for the full sound is not given, so that you cannot put it down as pronounced maid-en, you have to indicate the pronunciation as maid’n. But for that to dub maiden a monosyllable and assert that Shakespeare, Shelley and every other poet who scans maiden as a dissyllable was a born fool who did not know the “current” pronunciation or was indulging in a constant poetic licence whenever he used the words garden, maiden, widen, sadden etc. is a long flight of imagination. I say that these words are dissyllables and the poets in so scanning them (not as an occasional licence but normally and every time) are much better authorities than any owl — or fowl — of a dictionary-maker in the universe. Of course the poets use licences in lengthening out words occasionally, but these are exceptions; to explain away their normal use of words as a perpetually repeated licence would be a wild wooden-headedness (5 syllables, please). That these words are dissyllables is proved farther by the fact that “saddened”, “maidenhood” cannot possibly be anything but respectively dissyllabic and trisyllabic, yet “saddened” could I suppose be correctly indicated in a dictionary as pronounced “saddnd”. A dictionary indication or a dictionary theory cannot destroy the living facts of the language.

I do not know why you speak of my “favourite” Chambers. Your attachment to Oxford is not balanced by any attachment of mine to Chambers or any other lexicographer. I am not inclined to swear by any particular dictionary as an immaculate virgin authority for pronunciation or a papal Infallible. It was you who quoted Chambers as differing from Oxford, not I. You seem indeed to think that the Fowlers are a sort of double-headed Pope to the British public in all linguistic matters and nobody could dare question their dictates or ukases — only I do so because I am antiquated and am living in India. I take leave to point out to you that this is not yet a universally admitted catholic dogma. The Fowlers indeed seem to claim something of the kind, they make their enunciations with a haughty papal arrogance, condemning those who differ from them as outcasts and brushing them aside in a few words or without a mention. But it is not quite like that. What is current English? As far as pronunciation goes, every Englishman knows that for an immense number of words there is no such thing — Englishmen of equal education pronounce them in different ways, sometimes in more than two different ways. “Either” “neither” is a current pronunciation, so is “eether” “neether”. In some words the “th” is pronounced variably as a soft “d” or a soft “t” or as “th” — and so on. If the Oxford pronunciation of “vision” and “meditation” is correct current English, then the confusion has much increased since my time, for then at least everybody pronounced “vizhun”, “meditashun”, as I do still and shall go on doing so. Or if the other existed, it must have been confined to uneducated people. But you suggest that my pronunciation is antiquated, English has changed since then as since Shakespeare. But I must point out that you yourself quote Chambers for “vizhun” and following your example — not out of favouritism — I may quote him for “summation” = “summashun” — not “shn”. The latest edition of Chambers is dated 1931, and the editors have not thought themselves bound by the decisive change of the English language to change “shun” into “shn”. Has the decisive change taken place since 1931? Moreover in the recent dispute about the standard Broadcast pronunciation, the decisions of Bernard Shaw’s committee were furiously disputed — if Fowler and Oxford were “papal authorities” in England for current speech — it is current speech the Committee was trying to fix through the broadcasts — would it not have been sufficient simply to quote the Oxford in order to produce an awed and crushed silence?

So your P.S. has no solid ground to stand on since there is no “fixed” current speech and Fowler is not its Pope and there is no universal currency of his vizhn of things. Language is not bound by analogy and because “meditation” has become “meditashun” it does not follow that it must become “meditashn” and that “tation” is now a monosyllable contrary to all common sense and the privilege of the ear. It might just as well be argued that it will necessarily be clipped farther until the whole word becomes a monosyllable. Language is neither made nor developed in that way — if the English language were so to deprive itself of all beauty and by turning vision into vizn and then into vzn and all other words into similar horrors, I would hasten to abandon it for Sanskrit or French or Bengali — or even Swahili.

P.S. By the way, one point. Does the Oxford pronounce in cold blood and so many set words that vision, passion (and by logical extension treason, maiden, madden, garden etc.) are monosyllables? Or is it your inference from “realm” and “prism”? If the latter, I would only say, Beware of too rigidly logical inferences. If the former, I can only say that Oxford needs some gas from Hitler to save the English mind from its pedants. This is quite apart from the currency of vizhns.

29 September 1934