An Outline of English Speech-craft

William Barnes

An Outline of English Speech-craft

FORE-SAY

This little book was not written to win prize or praise; but it is put forth as one small trial, weak though it may be, towards the upholding of our own strong old Anglo-Saxon speech, and the ready teaching of it to purely English minds by their own tongue.

Speech was shapen of the breath-sounds of speakers, for the ears of hearers, and not from speech-tokens (letters) in books, for men’s eyes, though it is a great happiness that the words of man can be long holden and given over to the sight; and therefore I have shapen my teaching as that of a speech of breath-sounded words, and not of lettered ones; and though I have, of course, given my thoughts in a book, for those whom my voice cannot reach, I believe that the teaching matter of it may all be put forth to a learner’s mind, and readily understood by him, without book or letters. So, for consonants and vowels, as letters, I put breath-pennings and free-breathings, and these names would be good for any speech, of the lettering of which a learner might know nothing. On the grounds here given, I have not begun with orthography, the writing or spelling of our speech, or of any other, while as yet the teaching or learning of the speech itself is unbegun.

I have tried to teach English by English, and so have given English words for most of the lore-words (scientific terms), as I believe they would be more readily and more clearly understood, and, since we can better keep in mind what we do than what we do not understand, they would be better remembered. There is, in the learning of that charmingly simple and yet clear speech, pure Persian, now much mingled with Arabic, a saddening check; for no sooner does a learner come to the time-words than he is told that he should learn, what is then put before him, an outline of Arabic Grammar. And there are tokens that, ere long, the English youth will want an outline of the Greek and Latin tongues ere he can well understand his own speech.

The word grammar itself seems a misused word, for grapho is to write, and graphma, worn into gramma, means a writing, and the word grammatikē meant, with the Greeks, booklore or literature in the main, and not speech-teaching alone.

Whether my lore-words are well-chosen is a question for the reader’s mind. I have, for better or worse, treated the time-words, and nearly all the parts of speech, in a new way. I have clustered up the time-words as weak or strong on their endings, rather than on their headings, which had nothing to do with their forshapening or conjugation. Case I have taken as in the thing, and not in the name of it, as case is the case into which a thing falls with a time-taking, and case-words (prepositions) and case-endings are the tokens of their cases. The word preposition means a foreputting, or word put before; but then from and to, in herefrom, and therefrom, and hitherto, and thereto, are postpositions.

I have tried, as I have given some so-thought truths of English speech, to give the causes of them, and hope that the little book may afford a few glimpses of new insight into our fine old Anglo-Saxon tongue.

To any friend who has ever asked me whether I do not know some other tongues beside English, my answer has been ‘No; I do not know English itself.’ How many men do? And how should I know all of the older English, and the mighty wealth of English words which the English Dialect Society have begun to bring forth; words that are not all of them other shapes of our words of book-English, or words of their very meanings, but words of meanings which dictionaries of book-English should, but cannot give, and words which should be taken in hundreds (by careful choice) into our Queen’s English? If a man would walk with me through our village, I could show him many things of which we want to speak every day, and for which we have words of which Johnson knew nothing.

Some have spoken of cultivated languages as differing from uncultivated ones, and of the reducing of a speech to a grammatical form.

What is the meaning of ‘cultivate’ as a time word about a speech? The Latin dictionary does not help us to its meaning, and it might be that of the French cultiver, from which we should have, by the wonted changes, to cultive. The Romans said colere deum and colere agrum, but not agrum cultivare; and we may believe that colo, with deus or ager, bore the same meaning, ‘to keep or hold (with good care),’ and a speech is cultivated by the speaking as well as by the writing of it, and a speech which is sounding over a whole folkland every moment of the day cannot be uncultivated. ‘Not with good care,’ it may be said. Yes; most people speak as well as they can, as they write as well as they can, from the utterer of a fine rede-speech (oration), and the clergyman who gives unwritten sermons, down to the lowly maiden who dresses as finely as she can; and to try to dress herself well is a token that she will try to express herself well.

King Finow, of the Tonga Islands, gave a fine speech, as Mr. Mariner tells us, at his coming to the throne; and it may be well said that he made it, as he had made it in thought, ere he came to the meeting.

What is meant by the reducing of a speech to a grammatical form, or to grammar, is not very clear. If a man would write a grammar of a speech, of which there is yet none, what could he do but show it forth as it is in the shape which its best speakers over the land hold to be its best? To hold that a tongue had no shape, or a bad one, ere a grammar of it was written, seems much like saying that a man had no face, or a bad one, till his likeness was taken.

SPEECH-CRAFT

Speech-craft (Grammar), called by our Saxon fore-fathers Staef-craeft or Letter-craft, is the knowledge or skill of a speech.

The science of speech in the main, as offmarked from any one speech (Philology), may be called Speech-lore.

Speech is the speaking or bewording of thoughts, and is of sundry kinds of words.

Speech is of breath-sounds with sundry breathings, hard or mild, and breath-pennings, which become words.

(1) A freely open breathing through the throat, unpent by tongue or lips, as in the sounds A, E, O, OO, which are pure voicing. The main ones in English are —

1. ee, in meet.

2. e, in Dorset speech.

3. a, in mate.

4. ea, in earth.

5. a, in father.

6. aw, in awe.

7. o, in bone.

8. oo, in fool.

Besides this open speech-breathing there are two kinds of breath-penning.

(2) The dead breath-penning, as in the sounds AK, AP, AT, AG, AB, AD, which end with a dead penning of the sounding breath.

In AK and AG it is pent in the throat.

In AP and AB with the lips.

In AT and AD on the roof.

K, P, T are hard pennings; G, B, D are mild pennings, the breathing being harder in the former and softer in the latter.

Then there are half-pennings of the sounding breath, which is more or less but not wholly pent, but allowed to flow on as through the nose in

AMH,

ANH,

AM,

AN,

ANG;

as in the half-pent sounds —

half-pent by the tongue and mouth-roof.

For a hard breathing the mark is H, as and, hand; art, hart.

Words are of breath-sounds, and some words are one-sounded, as man; and others are tway-sounded, as manly; and others many-sounded, as unmanliness.

There is word-strain and speech-strain.

The high word-strain (accent) is the rising or strengthening of the voice on one sound of a word, as man´ly.

The high speech-strain (emphasis) is the rising or strengthening of the voice on a word of a thought-wording.

The voice may both rise and fall on the same sounds, as nō.

In English and its Teutonic sister speeches the strain keeps on the root or stem-word, as man, man´ly, man´liness; though in clustered words, with their first breath-sounds the same, the strain may shift for the sake of clearness, as ‘Give me the tea´pot’ – the teakettle is given, and thereupon the bidder may say ‘the teaPOT´,’ not the teaKETTLE.

In Greek the accent shifts in word-building, and likes mainly to settle at about two times or short breath-sounds from the end of the word; and in Welsh it settles mostly on the last breath-sound but one, as eis´tedd, a sitting; eistedd´fod, a sitting-stead; eisteddfod´an, sitting-steads, or bardic sessions.

Besides the word-strain (accent) and the speech-strain (emphasis), there is a speech-tuning (modulation) of the voice (voice-winding), which winds up or down with sundry feelings of the mind, and with question and answers and changes of the matter of speech.

Things may be matterly (concrete) or bodies of matter, as a man, a tree, a stone; or

Things may be unmatterly (abstract), not bodies of matter, as faith, hope, love, shape, speed, emptiness.

It is not altogether good that a matterly and unmatterly thing should be named by the very same word, as youth, a young man, and youth, youngness.

THINGS AND THING-NAMES

Things are of many kinds, as a man, a bird, a fish; an oyster, a sponge, a pebble; water, air, earth; honey, gold, salt.

The names of things may be called Thing-names.

But there are one-head thing-names (proper names), the names each of some one thing of its kind; as John, the miller; Toby, the dog; Moti, the lady’s Persian cat.

With Christian names may be ranked the so-called patronymics, or sire-names, taken from a father’s name, as William Johnson, Thomas Richardson; or in Welsh, Enid Verch Edeyrn; or in Hebrew Jeroboam Ben-nebat.

Thing Sundriness and Thing Mark-words.

☛ Mark is here to be taken in its old Saxon meaning, mearc– what bounds, defines, describes, distinguishes.

The Welsh call the adjective the weak name or noun, enw gwan.

Sundriness of Sex, Kindred, Youngness, and Smallness.

Marked by sundry names or mark-words, or mark endings.

Sex.

The stronger or carl sex, as a man; the weaker or quean sex, as a girl; the unsexly things, as a stone.

In Saxon the sexes in mankind were called halves or sides, the spear-half and the spindle-half.

Kindred, Youngness, or Smallness.

Small Things.

By forlessening mark-endings:

By mark-words:

A wee house, a little boy.

For bigness the English tongue wants name-shapes.

We have bul, horse, and tom, which are mark-words of bigness or coarseness.

Bulfinch.

Bullfrog.

Bulhead (the Miller’s Thumb. Pen-bwll, Welsh).

Bulrush.

Bulstang (the Dragonfly).

Bullspink.

Bulltrout.

Horse.

Horse-bramble.

Horse-chesnut.

Horse-laugh.

Horse-leech.

Horse-mushroom.

Horse-mussel.

Horse-tinger.

Horse-radish.

Tom.

Tomboy.

Tomcat.

Tomfool.

Tomnoddy.

Tomtit.

The words bul and horse are not taken from the animals.

Sundriness in Tale.

By tale mark-words, as one, five, ten, and others onward.

Sundriness in Rank.

By rank-word, as first, fifth, tenth, last.

An, a, the so-called indefinite article, is simply the tale mark-word an, one.

We use a before a consonant, and an before a vowel, as a man, an awl. But it is not that we have put on the n to a against the yawning, but it is that the n has been worn off from an.

The Frieses and Holsteiners now say ien man and en mann.

The mark-word an, a is of use to offmark a common one-head name, as ‘I have been to a white church’ (common); or, without the mark-word, ‘I have been to Whitechurch’ (one-head), the name of a village so called. ‘He lives by a pool’; ‘he lives by Pool’ (a town in Dorset). ‘He works in a broad mead’; ‘he works in Broadmead’ (in Bristol).

As the Welsh has no such mark-word, it might be thought that it cannot give these two sundry meanings; and the way in which it can offmark them shows how idle it is to try one tongue only by another, or to talk of the unmeaningness or uselessness of the Welsh word moulding.

Llan-Tydno would mean a church of Tydno, but the parish called ‘The Church of Tydno’ is in Welsh Llandydno, which, as a welding of two words, hints to the Welsh mind that Llandydno is a proper name, and so that of a parish.

Hoel da would mean a good Hoel; but to Hoel, the good king, the Welsh gives as a welded proper name Hoel dda; and to Julius Cæsar the Welsh gives, as one welded proper name, Iolo-voel, Julius-bald, whereas Iolo-moel would mean some bald Julius.

One sundriness of tale, the marking of things under speech – as onely (singular) or somely (plural) – is by an onputting to the thing-name for someliness a mark-ending, or by a moulding of the name into another shape or sound.

By mark-endings, -es, -s, -en, -n.

By for-moulding, as foot, feet—tooth, teeth; or by both word-moulding or sound-moulding and an ending, as brother, brethren.

When the singular shape ends in -sh, -ss, or -x, -ks, it takes on -es for the somely, as lash, lashes; kiss, kisses; box, boxes.

And surely, when the singular shape ends in -st, our Universities or some high school of speech ought to give us leave to make it somely by the old ending -en or -es instead of -s—fist, fisten, fistes; nest, nesten, nestes.

What in the world of speech can be harsher than fists, lists, nests?

It is unhappy that the old ending in -en, which is yet the main one in West Friesic, should have given way to the hissing s.

Where common names with the definite mark-word become names of places they are wont to lose the article, as The Bath, in Somerset, is now Bath; The Wells, in Somerset, Wells; Sevenoaks, not The Seven Oaks, in Kent.

In our version of Acts xxvii. 8, we have a place which is called The Fair Havens, instead of Fairhavens without the mark-word, as the Greek gives the name.

Other thing mark-words offmark all of the things of a name or set from others of another name or set.

All birds, or all the birds in the wood; or all taken singly, as each or every bird; or somely, as set or share; some few or a few; many or a many birds.

Another or others beyond one or some under speech.

Any one or more of a some, either apple or any apples.

Both, for the two without others; or

Much or little grass.

Many mark-words were at first thing-names.

Many was a menge, a main or upmingled set; and a great many men would mean a great set or gathering of men.

Few was feo, which seems to have meant at first a cluster or herd; and a few men was a few (cluster) of men.

Some was a sam or som, a set or upmingled mass; and some men was a sam or som of men.

Now if the speech is about the set, it may be onely, as ‘There is a great many,’ ‘there is a small few,’ or ‘a few’; but if the speech is about the bemarked things, the mark-word may well be somely – ‘many men are’; ‘few men are’; ‘some men are.’

In the queer wording, ‘many a man,’ ‘many a flow’r is born to blush unseen,’ it is not at all likely that a is the article. It is rather a worn shape, like a in a-mong (an-menge), or a-hunting (an-huntunge), of the Saxon case-word an or on, meaning in; and it is not unlikely that man has, by the mistaking of a for an article, taken the stead of men– ‘an maeng an men,’ a many or mass in men; as we say ‘a herd in sheep,’ ‘a horde in gold.’ So far as this is true the mark-word may be somely – ‘many a man or men,’ ‘a main in men are.’

None (Saxon na-an, no one) should have a singular verb – ‘None is (not are) always happy.’

Some mark-words are for a clear outmarking (as single or somely) of things outshown from among others.

Outshowing Mark-words.

The so-called definite article the is a mark-word of the same kind as this, that, these, and those.

The word the in ‘the more the merrier’ is not the article the– to a name-word. It is an old Saxon outshowing mark-word meaning with that (mid þy). ‘The more the merrier’; þy (with that measure), they are more; þy (with that measure), they are merrier.

In the wording ‘the man who’ or ‘the bird which was in the garden,’ who and which are not the names, but are tokens or mark-words of the things —who of the man, and which of the bird.

A thing may be marked by many mark-words, as ‘the (never to be forgotten) day,’ ‘the (having to me shown so many kindnesses) man is yet alive.’

A long string of mark-words may, however, be found awkward, and so we may take a name-token who for the man, and, instead of the words ‘having to me shown so many kindnesses,’ say, ‘who showed me so many kindnesses.’

Who or that is the name-token for menkind, and which or that for beings of lower life or of no life, as ‘the man who’ or ‘the bird or flower which was in the garden.’

Who and which are used in the asking of questions – ‘Who is he?’ ‘What is that?’

The name-token should follow close on the forename for the sake of clearness. ‘Alfred sold, for a shilling, the bat which William gave him,’ not ‘Alfred sold the bat for a shilling which William gave him,’ if it was the bat that was given to him by William.

These mark-words take the stead of thing-names, and are Name-stead words, and clear the speech of repetitions of the names. The baby may say ‘Baby wants the doll,’ but at length learns to say ‘I want the doll’; or ‘Papa, take baby,’ and afterwards ‘You take me’; or ‘Give baby the whip– the whip is baby’s,’ for ‘It is mine.’

A man may be beholden to the speech in three ways: —

(1) He may be the speaker, called the First Person;

(2) He may be spoken to, the Second Person (the to-spoken thing);

(3) He may be spoken of, the Third Person (the of-spoken thing);

Here the sex is marked.

It is sometimes put for an unforeset thing-name of an unbodily cause or might, as ‘it rains’; ‘it freezes.’

For a child or an animal of unknown sex we may take the neuter (or sexless) mark-word it. ‘It (the child) cries.’

SUCHNESS OR QUALITIES,

and mark-words or mark-wording of suchness, as good, bad, long, heavy.

Suchness may be marked by one word, as ‘a white lily,’ or by a some or many of words, as ‘a very white lily,’ or ‘a most dazzlingly white lily,’ or ‘a lily as white as snow.’

Things are marked as having much of something, as hilly, stony, watery; or made of something, as golden, wooden, woollen; or having some things, as two-legged, three-cornered, long-eared, or loved or hated; of the same set or likeness of something, as lovely, quarrelsome, manly, childish; wanting of something, as beardless, friendless.

Pitches of Suchness.

The Suchnesses of Things are of sundry pitches, which are marked by sundry shapes or endings or bye-words of the mark-words, as ‘My ash is tall, the elm is taller, and the Lombardy poplar is the tallest of the three trees’; or ‘Snow is whiter than chalk,’ or ‘Chalk is less white than snow,’ or ‘John is the tallest or least tall of the three brothers.’

These Pitch-marks offmark sundry things by their sundry suchnesses, as ‘The taller or less tall man of the two is my friend,’ or ‘The tallest man is less tall than the tree,’ or ‘The least tall man is taller than the girl.’

The three Pitches may be called the Common Pitch, the Higher Pitch, and the Highest Pitch.

The Welsh has a fourth Pitch-word, called the Even Pitch, as pell, far; pellach, farther; pellaf, farthest; pelled, as far (as something else).

Younger may mean younger reckoned from young, or younger reckoned from old; as ‘Alfred at 80 is younger than Edward at 85.’ In this case we may well say less old.