{"id":2522,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:11","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2522"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:42:11","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:11","slug":"50-remarks-on-english-pronunciation-vol-27-letters-on-poetry-and-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/27-letters-on-poetry-and-art\/50-remarks-on-english-pronunciation-vol-27-letters-on-poetry-and-art","title":{"rendered":"-50_Remarks on English Pronunciation.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"center\">\n<table border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellpadding=\"0\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\">\n<tr>\n<td>\n\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"> <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<b><font size=\"4\">Remarks on English Pronunciation<\/font> <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<b>Monosyllables and Dissyllables <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> I wonder why you find fault with the rhythm of &#8220;A vision<br \/>\nwhose God-delight embraces all.&#8221; &#8220;Vision&#8221; is really a monosyllable, and I don&#8217;t suppose the frequent poetic dissyllabification of it precludes the use of its original sound-length. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\nYou use your intellect too much and with too much ingenuity<br \/>\nwhere you should train your ear. Another line with the same scansion might very well make an extremely good rhythm; this<br \/>\none does not. Its rhythm is at once flat and jerky. How is &#8220;vision&#8221; a monosyllable? You might just as well say that &#8220;omnibus&#8221; is<br \/>\na monosyllable. At any rate I get no thrill, subtle or other, no surprise, no revelation. <\/p>\n<p align=\"right\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\"> <font size=\"2\">27 September 1934 <\/font> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n*<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> The Oxford dictionary seems to leave me no choice as regards the number of syllables in the word &#8220;vision&#8221;. I quote below<br \/>\nsome of the words explained as monosyllables in the same way as &#8220;Rhythm&#8221; and &#8220;Prism&#8221;, which are given as<br \/>\n\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%201.jpg\" align=\"texttop\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t(-dhm);<br \/>\n\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%202.jpg\" align=\"texttop\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t(-zm).<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:50pt\">\n\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%203.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> Chambers&#8217;s Dictionary makes &quot;vision&quot; a dissyllable, which<br \/>\n\tis quite sensible, but the monosyllabic pronunciation of it deserves to be<br \/>\n\tconsidered at least a legitimate variant when H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler<br \/>\n\t&#8213;the name of Fowler is looked upon as a synonym for authority on the English<br \/>\n\tlanguage &#8213;&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page-629<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> give no other. I don&#8217;t think I am mistaken in interpreting their intention.<sup><font size=\"2\">1<\/font><\/sup> Take &#8220;realm&#8221;, which they pronounce in brackets<br \/>\nas &#8220;<img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%204.jpg\" align=\"baseline\">&#8220;; now I see no difference as regards syllabification<br \/>\nbetween their intention here and in the instances above. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\nYou may not have a choice<br \/>\n\t&#8213;but I have a choice, which is<br \/>\nto pronounce and scan words like &#8220;vision&#8221; and &#8220;passion&#8221; and similar words as all the poets of the English language (those at<br \/>\nleast whom I know) have consistently pronounced and scanned them &#8213;as dissyllables. If you ask me to scan Shakespeare&#8217;s line<br \/>\nin the following way in order to please H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\">\n\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%205.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\nI shall decline without thanks. Shakespeare wrote, if I remember right, &#8220;<img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%206.jpg\" align=\"middle\"><br \/>\n, strategems and spoils&#8221;; Shelley, Tennyson, any<br \/>\npoet of the English language, I believe, would do the same &#8213;though I have no books with me to give chapter and verse. I<br \/>\nlived in both northern and southern England, but I never heard vision pronounced &#8220;vizhn&#8221;, it was always &#8220;vizhun&#8221;; &#8220;treason&#8221;,<br \/>\nof course, is pronounced &#8220;trez&#8217;n&#8221;, but that does not make it a monosyllable in scansion because there is in these words a<br \/>\nvery perceptible slurred vowel sound in pronunciation which I represent by the &#8216;<br \/>\n\t&#8213;in &#8220;poison&#8221; also. If &#8220;realm&#8221;, &#8220;helm&#8221;<br \/>\netc. are taken as monosyllables, that is quite reasonable, for there is no vowel between &#8220;l&#8221; and &#8220;m&#8221; and none is heard,<br \/>\nslurred or otherwise in pronunciation. The words &#8220;rhythm&#8221; and &#8220;prism&#8221; are technically monosyllables, because they are so<br \/>\npronounced in French (i.e. that part of the word, for there is a mute e in French): but in fact most Englishmen take the help of<br \/>\na slurred vowel sound in pronouncing &#8220;rhythms&#8221; and it would be quite permissible to write in English as a blank verse line,<br \/>\n&#8220;The unheard rhythms that sustain the world&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">This is my conviction and not all the Fowlers in the world <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">1 <i>In fact, the correspondent was mistaken. The six words he listed, as well as &#8220;rhythm&#8221;<\/i><br \/>\n<i>and &#8220;prism&#8221;, were marked in the third edition of <\/i>The Concise Oxford Dictionary of<br \/>\nCurrent English <i>(H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler, eds., 1934) to be pronounced as<\/i><br \/>\n<i>dissyllables. &#8213;Ed.<\/i><br \/>\n &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/font> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page-630<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\twill take it away from me. I only hope the future lexicographers will not<br \/>\n\tfowl the language any more in that direction; otherwise we shall have to<br \/>\n\twrite lines like this &#8213;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> O vizhn! O pashn! O fashn! m&#8217;d&#8217;tashn! h&#8217;rr&#8217;p&#8217;lashn!<br \/>\nWhy did the infern&#8217;l Etern&#8217;l und&#8217;take creash&#8217;n? Or else, creat&#8217;ng, could he not have afford&#8217;d<br \/>\nNot to allow the Engl&#8217;sh tongue to be Oxford&#8217;d? <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\nP.S. I remember a book (Hamer&#8217;s? someone else&#8217;s? I don&#8217;t re<br \/>\nmember) in which the contrast was drawn between the English and French languages, that the English tongue tended to throw<br \/>\nall the weight on the first or earliest possible syllable and slurred the others, the French did the opposite<br \/>\n\t&#8213;so that when an Englishman pretends to say &#8220;strawberries&#8221;, what he really says is &#8220;strawb&#8217;s&#8221;. That is the exaggeration of a truth<br \/>\n\t&#8213;but all the<br \/>\nsame there is a limit! <\/p>\n<p align=\"right\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\"> <font size=\"2\">27 September 1934 <\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">*<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> I should like to ask you a few questions suggested by your<br \/>\nfalling foul of the Fowlers. The poetic pronunciation of words cannot be accepted as a standard for current speech<br \/>\n\t&#8213;can<br \/>\nit? On your own showing, &#8220;treason&#8221; and &#8220;poison&#8221; which are monosyllables in prose or current speech are scanned as<br \/>\ndissyllables in verse; Shelley makes &#8220;evening&#8221; three syllables and Harin has used even &#8220;realm&#8221; as a dissyllable, while the<br \/>\npractice of taking &#8220;precious&#8221; and &#8220;conscious&#8221; to be three syllables is not even noticeable, I believe. All the same, current<br \/>\nspeech, if your favourite Chambers&#8217;s Dictionary as well as my dear Oxford Concise is to be believed, insists on &#8220;evening&#8221;,<br \/>\n&#8220;precious&#8221; and &#8220;conscious&#8221; being dissyllabic and &#8220;realm&#8221; monosyllabic. I am mentioning this disparity between poetic<br \/>\nand current usages not because I wish &#8220;meditation&#8221; to be robbed of its full length or &#8220;vision&#8221; to lose half its effect<br \/>\nbut because it seems to me that Shelley&#8217;s or Tennyson&#8217;s or any poet&#8217;s practice does not in itself prove anything definitely<br \/>\nfor English as it is spoken. And spoken English, very much more than written English, undergoes change; even the line<br \/>\nyou quote from Shakespeare was perhaps not scanned in his time as you would do it now, for &#8220;meditation&#8221;<br \/>\n\t&#8213;as surely<br \/>\n &nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page-631<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\">\n&quot;passion&quot; and &quot;fashion&quot; also and most probably &quot;vision&quot; as well &#8213;was often if<br \/>\nnot always given its full vowel-value and the fourth foot of the line in<br \/>\nquestion might to an Elizabethan ear have been very naturally an anapaest: <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:50pt\">\n\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%207.jpg\" width=\"232\" height=\"24\"><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:50pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> When, however, you say that your personal experience in<br \/>\nEngland, both north and south, never recorded a monosyllabic &#8220;vision&#8221;, we are on more solid ground, but the Concise<br \/>\nOxford Dictionary is specially stated to be in its very title as &#8220;of Current English&#8221;: is all its claim to be set at nought?<br \/>\nIt is after all a responsible compilation and, so far as my impression goes, not unesteemed. If its errors were so glaring<br \/>\nas you think, would there not have been a general protest? Or is it that English has changed so much in &#8220;word of mouth&#8221;<br \/>\nsince your departure from England? This is not an ironical query &#8213;I am just wondering. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> P.S. Your exclamatory-interrogatory elegiacs illustrating the predicament we should fall into if the Fowlers were allowed<br \/>\nto spread their nets with impunity were very enjoyable. But I am afraid the tendency of the English language is towards con<br \/>\ntraction of vowel sounds, at least terminal ones; and perhaps the Oxford Dictionary has felt the need to monumentalise<br \/>\n\t&#8213;clearly and authoritatively &#8213;the degree to which this tendency has, in some cases more definitely, in others less but<br \/>\nstill perceptibly enough, advanced? The vocalised &#8220;e&#8221; of the suffix&#8221;-ed&#8221; of the Spenserian days is now often mute; the<br \/>\ntrisyllabic suffix &#8220;-ation&#8221; of the &#8220;spacious times&#8221; has shrunk by one syllable, and &#8220;treason&#8221; and &#8220;poison&#8221; and &#8220;prison&#8221;, all<br \/>\nhaving the same terminal sound if fully vowelised as &#8220;-ation&#8221;, are already monosyllables in speech<br \/>\n\t&#8213;so, if &#8220;passion&#8221; and<br \/>\n&#8220;fashion&#8221; which too have lost their Elizabethan characteristic like &#8220;meditation&#8221; should contract by a natural analogy,<br \/>\ncarrying all &#8220;ation&#8221;-suffixed words as well as &#8220;vision&#8221; and &#8220;scission&#8221; and the like with them, it would be quite as one<br \/>\nmight expect. And if current speech once fixes these contractions, they will not always keep outside the pale of poetry.<br \/>\nWhat do you think? <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\nWhere the devil have I admitted that &#8220;treason&#8221; and &#8220;poison&#8221;<br \/>\n &nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page-632<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\nare monosyllables or that their use as dissyllables is a poetic licence? Will you please quote the words in which I have made<br \/>\nthat astounding and imbecile admission? I have said distinctly that they are dissyllables,<br \/>\n\t&#8213;like risen, dozen, maiden, garden,<br \/>\nladen, and a thousand others which nobody (at least before the world went mad) ever dreamed of taking as monosyllables. On<br \/>\nmy own showing, indeed! After I had even gone to the trouble of explaining at length about the slurred syllable &#8220;e&#8221; in these<br \/>\nwords, 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&#8217;n. But for that to dub maiden a monosyllable and assert that Shakespeare, Shelley and every other poet who scans<br \/>\nmaiden as a dissyllable was a born fool who did not know the &#8220;current&#8221; pronunciation or was indulging in a constant poetic<br \/>\nlicence whenever he used the words garden, maiden, widen, sadden etc. is a long flight of imagination. I say that these words<br \/>\nare dissyllables and the poets in so scanning them (not as an occasional licence but normally and every time) are much better<br \/>\nauthorities than any owl &#8213;or fowl &#8213;of a dictionary-maker in the universe. Of course the poets use licences in lengthening out<br \/>\nwords occasionally, but these are exceptions; to explain away their normal use of words as a perpetually repeated licence<br \/>\nwould be a wild wooden-headedness (5 syllables, please). That these words are dissyllables is proved farther by the fact that<br \/>\n&#8220;saddened&#8221;, &#8220;maidenhood&#8221; cannot possibly be anything but respectively dissyllabic and trisyllabic, yet &#8220;saddened&#8221; could I<br \/>\nsuppose be correctly indicated in a dictionary as pronounced &#8220;saddnd&#8221;. A dictionary indication or a dictionary theory cannot<br \/>\ndestroy the living facts of the language. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">I do not know why you speak of my &#8220;favourite&#8221; Chambers.<br \/>\nYour attachment to Oxford is not balanced by any attachment of mine to Chambers or any other lexicographer. I am not inclined<br \/>\nto swear by any particular dictionary as an immaculate virgin authority for pronunciation or a papal Infallible. It was you who<br \/>\nquoted Chambers as differing from Oxford, not I. You seem indeed to think that the Fowlers are a sort of double-headed Pope<br \/>\nto the British public in all linguistic matters and nobody could &nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page-633<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p>dare question their dictates or ukases &#8213;only I do so because I am antiquated and am living in India. I take leave to point out<br \/>\nto you that this is not yet a universally admitted catholic dogma. The Fowlers indeed seem to claim something of the kind, they<br \/>\nmake their enunciations with a haughty papal arrogance, condemning those who differ from them as outcasts and brushing<br \/>\nthem aside in a few words or without a mention. But it is not quite like that. What is current English? As far as pronunciation<br \/>\ngoes, every Englishman knows that for an immense number of words there is no such thing<br \/>\n\t&#8213;Englishmen of equal education<br \/>\npronounce them in different ways, sometimes in more than two different ways. &#8220;Either&#8221; &#8220;neither&#8221; is a current pronunciation,<br \/>\nso is &#8220;eether&#8221; &#8220;neether&#8221;. In some words the &#8220;th&#8221; is pronounced variably as a soft &#8220;d&#8221; or a soft &#8220;t&#8221; or as &#8220;th&#8221;<br \/>\n\t&#8213;and so on.<br \/>\nIf the Oxford pronunciation of &#8220;vision&#8221; and &#8220;meditation&#8221; is correct current English, then the confusion has much increased<br \/>\nsince my time, for then at least everybody pronounced &#8220;vizhun&#8221;, &#8220;meditashun&#8221;, as I do still and shall go on doing so. Or if the<br \/>\nother existed, it must have been confined to uneducated people. But you suggest that my pronunciation is antiquated, English<br \/>\nhas changed since then as since Shakespeare. But I must point out that you yourself quote Chambers for &#8220;vizhun&#8221; and following your example &#8213;not out of favouritism &#8213;I may quote him for &#8220;summation&#8221; = &#8220;summashun&#8221;<br \/>\n\t&#8213;not &#8220;shn&#8221;. The latest<br \/>\nedition of Chambers is dated 1931, and the editors have not thought themselves bound by the decisive change of the English<br \/>\nlanguage to change &#8220;shun&#8221; into &#8220;shn&#8221;. Has the decisive change taken place since 1931? Moreover in the recent dispute about<br \/>\nthe standard Broadcast pronunciation, the decisions of Bernard Shaw&#8217;s committee were furiously disputed<br \/>\n\t&#8213;if Fowler and Ox<br \/>\nford were &#8220;papal authorities&#8221; in England for current speech &#8213;it is current speech the Committee was trying to fix through the<br \/>\nbroadcasts &#8213;would it not have been sufficient simply to quote the Oxford in order to produce an awed and crushed silence? <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;text-indent: 25pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">So your P.S. has no solid ground to stand on since there is no &#8220;fixed&#8221; current speech and Fowler is not its Pope and there is no<br \/>\nuniversal currency of his vizhn of things. Language is not bound &nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page-634<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\tby analogy and because<br \/>\n\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%208.jpg\" width=\"96\" height=\"18\" align=\"texttop\"> has become &#8220;meditashun&#8221;<br \/>\n\tit does not follow that it must become &#8220;meditashn&#8221; and that<br \/>\n&#8220;tation&#8221; is now a monosyllable contrary to all common sense and the privilege of the ear. It might just as well be argued that it<br \/>\nwill necessarily be clipped farther until the whole word becomes a monosyllable. Language is neither made nor developed in that<br \/>\nway &#8213;if the English language were so to deprive itself of all beauty and by turning vision into vizn and then into vzn and all<br \/>\nother words into similar horrors, I would hasten to abandon it for Sanskrit or French or Bengali<br \/>\n\t&#8213;or even Swahili. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n 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<br \/>\nextension treason, maiden, madden, garden etc.) are monosyllables? Or is it your inference from &#8220;realm&#8221; and &#8220;prism&#8221;? If the<br \/>\nlatter, I would only say, Beware of too rigidly logical inferences. If the former, I can only say that Oxford needs some gas from<br \/>\nHitler to save the English mind from its pedants. This is quite apart from the currency of vizhns. <\/p>\n<p align=\"right\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n <font size=\"2\">29 September 1934 <\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n *<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> I am sincerely sorry for mistaking you on an important point. But before my argumentative wooden-headedness gives up<br \/>\nthe ghost under your sledge-hammer it is bursting to cry a Themistoclean &#8220;Strike, but hear&#8221;. Please try to understand<br \/>\nmy misunderstanding. What you wrote was: &#8220;`Treason&#8217;, of course, is pronounced `trez&#8217;n&#8217;, but that does not make it a<br \/>\nmonosyllable in scansion because there is in these words a very perceptible slurred vowel sound in pronunciation which<br \/>\nI represent by the &#8216; &#8213;in `poison&#8217; also.&#8221; I think it must have been the word &#8220;scansion&#8221; which led me astray<br \/>\n&#8213;as if you had<br \/>\nmeant that these words were non-monosyllabic in poetry only. But am I really misjudging Chambers as well as the Fowlers<br \/>\nwhen I draw the logical inference that, since a dictionary is no dictionary if it does not follow a coherent system and since<br \/>\nthese people absolutely omit to make any distinction between the indicated scansion of &#8220;prism&#8221;, &#8220;realm&#8221;, &#8220;rhythm&#8221; etc.,<br \/>\nand that of &#8220;treason&#8221; and &#8220;poison&#8221;, they definitely mean us to take all these words as monosyllables? If Chambers who<br \/>\n &nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page-635<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> writes &#8220;vizhun&#8221; but &#8220;trezn&#8221; and &#8220;poizn&#8221; just as he writes &#8220;relm&#8221; and &#8220;rithm&#8221;, intends us to understand that there is<br \/>\nsome difference between the scansions of the latter pairs he, in my opinion, completely de-dictionaries his work by so illogical an expectation. He and the Fowlers may not say in cold blood and so many set words that &#8220;treason&#8221; and &#8220;poison&#8221;<br \/>\nare monosyllables but it is their design, in most freezing blood and more eloquently than words can express, that they fall into<br \/>\nthe same category as &#8220;realm&#8221; and &#8220;rhythm&#8221;. Else, what could have prevented them from inventing some such sign as your &#8216;<br \/>\nto mark the dissimilarity? My sin was to have loved logic not wisely but too well where logicality had been obstreperously<br \/>\nannounced in flaring capitals on the title page and throughout the whole book by a fixed system of spelling and pronunciation. My Othello-like extremity of love plunged me into abysmal errors, but oh the Iagoistic &#8220;motiveless malignity&#8221; of<br \/>\nlexicographers! <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\nIt seemed to me impossible that even the reckless Fowler &#8213;reckless in the excess of his learning &#8213;should be so audacious as to announce that this large class of words accepted as dissyllables<br \/>\nfrom the beginning of (English) time were really monosyllables. After all the lexicographers do not set out to give the number of<br \/>\nsyllables in a word. Pronunciation is a different matter. &#8220;Realm&#8221; cannot be a dissyllable unless you violently make it so, because<br \/>\n&#8220;l&#8221; is a liquid like &#8220;r&#8221; and you cannot make a dissyllable of words like &#8220;charm&#8221;, unless you Scotchify the English language<br \/>\nand make it &#8220;char&#8217;r&#8217;r&#8217;m&#8221; or vulgarise it and make it &#8220;charrum&#8221; &#8213;and even &#8220;char&#8217;r&#8217;r&#8217;m&#8221; is after all a monosyllable. &#8220;Prism&#8221;,<br \/>\nthe &#8220;ism&#8221; in &#8220;Socialism&#8221;, &#8220;pessimism&#8221;, &#8220;rhythm&#8221; can be made dissyllabic, but by convention (convention has much to do with<br \/>\nthese things) the &#8220;ism&#8221;, &#8220;rhythm&#8221; are treated as a single syllable, because of the etymology. But there is absolutely no reason to<br \/>\nbring in this convention with &#8220;treason&#8221;, &#8220;poison&#8221;, &#8220;garden&#8221; or &#8220;maiden&#8221; (coming from French<br \/>\n<i>trahison, poison <\/i>and some O.E.<br \/>\n<i>\u00a8<\/i> equivalent of the German <i>Garten, Madchen<\/i>). The dictionaries<br \/>\ngive the same mark of pronunciation for &#8220;thm&#8221;, &#8220;sm&#8221; and the &#8220;den&#8221; (dn) of maiden and son (sn) of treason because they<br \/>\nare practically the same. The French pronounce &#8220;rhythme&#8221; = &nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page-636<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&#8220;reethm&#8221; (I use the English sound indications) without anything to help them out in passing from &#8220;th&#8221; to &#8220;m&#8221;, but the English<br \/>\ntongue can&#8217;t do that, there is a very perceptible quarter vowel sound or one-eighth vowel sound between &#8220;th&#8221; and &#8220;m&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8213;if it<br \/>\nwere not so the plural &#8220;rhythms&#8221; would be unpronounceable. I remember in my French class at St. Paul&#8217;s our teacher (a French<br \/>\nman) insisted on our pronouncing <i>ordre <\/i>in the French way &#8213;in his mouth &#8220;orrdrr&#8221;; I was the only one who succeeded, the<br \/>\nothers all made it <i>auder<\/i>, <i>orrder<\/i>, <i>audrer<\/i>, or some such variation. There is the same difference of habit with words like &#8220;rhythm&#8221;,<br \/>\nand yet conventionally the French treatment is accepted so far as to impose rhythm as a monosyllable. Realm on the other hand<br \/>\nis pronounced truly as a monosyllable without the help of any fraction of a vowel. <\/p>\n<p align=\"right\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n <font size=\"2\">30 September 1934 <\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n <b>Some Problems of Stress Accent<br \/>\n` <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> Why have you bucked at my &#8220;azure&#8221; as a line-ending? And<br \/>\nwhy so late in the day? Twice before I have used the same inversion and it caused no alarm. Simple poetic licence, Sir. If<br \/>\nWordsworth could write<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:50pt\"> What awful p<font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u00e9<\/font>rspective! while from our sight . . . <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:50pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> and leave no reverberation of &#8220;awful&#8221; in the reader&#8217;s mind,<br \/>\nand if Abercrombie boldly come out with <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:50pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:50pt\"> To smite the horny eyes of men <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:50pt\"> With the renown of our Heaven, <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:50pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> and our horny eyes remain unsmitten<br \/>\n\t\t\tby his topsy-turvy &quot;Heaven&quot; &#8213;why, then, Amal need not feel too shy<br \/>\n\t\t\tto shift the accent of &quot;azure&quot; just because the poor chap happens to<br \/>\n\t\t\tbe an Indian. Not that an alternative line getting rid of that word<br \/>\n\t\t\tis not possible &#8213;quite a fine one can be written with &quot;obscure&quot;. But<br \/>\n\t\t\thow does this particular inversion shock you? There is nothing<br \/>\n\t\t\tun-English or unpoetic about it &#8213;so far as I can see, though of<br \/>\n\t\t\tcourse such things should not be done often. What do you say? <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\nI can swallow &#8220;p<font face=\"Times New Roman\">\u00e9<\/font>rspective&#8221; with some difficulty, but if anybody<br \/>\n &nbsp; <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page-637<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p>tried to justify by it a line like this (let us say in a poem to Miss Mayo):<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\">\n\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%209.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"26\"><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\nI would buck. I disapprove totally of Abercrombie&#8217;s bold wriggle<br \/>\nwith Heaven, but even he surely never meant to put the accent on the second<br \/>\nsyllable and pronounce it<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%2010.jpg\" align=\"texttop\">. I absolutely<br \/>\nrefuse to pronounce &quot;azure&quot; as<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%2011.jpg\">. &#8220;Perspective&#8221; can just be managed by making it practically atonal or unaccented or<br \/>\nevenly accented, which comes to the same thing. &#8220;Sapphire&#8221; can be managed at the<br \/>\nend of a line, e.g.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%2012.jpg\" align=\"texttop\"> sapphire&#8221;, because &#8220;phire&#8221; is long and the voice trails over it, but the &#8220;ure&#8221;<br \/>\nof &#8220;azure&#8221; is more slurred into shortness than trailed out into length as if it were &#8220;azyoore&#8221;. In any case, even if the somersault<br \/>\nis admitted the line won&#8217;t do. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\nP.S. It is not to the use of &#8220;azure&#8221; in place of an iambic in the last<br \/>\nfoot that I object but to your blessed accent on the last syllable. I will even,<br \/>\nif you take that sign off, allow you to rhyme<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%2013.jpg\">&nbsp;<br \/>\nwith<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%2014.jpg\" align=\"texttop\"> and pass it off as an Abercrombiean acrobacy by way of fun. But not otherwise<br \/>\n&#8213;the accent mark must go. <\/p>\n<p align=\"right\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\"> <font size=\"2\">2 October 1936 <\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">*<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> In your sonnet <i>Man the Enigma <\/i>occurs the magnificent line: <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:50pt\"> His heart is a chaos and an empyrean. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:50pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> But I am very much saddened by the fact that the rhythm of these words gets spoiled at the end by a mis-stressing in<br \/>\n\t\t\t&quot;empyrean&quot;. &quot;Empyrean&quot; is stressed in the penultimate syllable,<br \/>\n\t\t\tthus:<br \/>\n\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%2015.jpg\" width=\"81\" height=\"18\" align=\"texttop\">. Your line puts the stress on the second syllable. It is in the adjective &#8220;empyreal&#8221; that the second syllable is stressed, but the noun is never stressed that way, so far as I know.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;margin-left:25pt\"> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\nFirst of all let me deal with your charge against my<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%2016.jpg\" width=\"89\" height=\"21\" align=\"texttop\">.<br \/>\nI find in the Chambers Dictionary the noun &quot;empyrean&quot; is given two alternative<br \/>\npronunciations, each with a different stress, &#8213; first,&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%2015.jpg\" width=\"81\" height=\"18\" align=\"texttop\"> and secondly,<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%2016.jpg\" width=\"89\" height=\"21\" align=\"texttop\">. Actually in the<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page-638<\/font><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p>book the accent seems to fall on the consonant &#8220;r&#8221; instead<br \/>\nof the vowel. That must be a mistake in printing; it is evident that it is meant to fall on the second vowel. If that is so, my<br \/>\nvariation is justified and needs no further defence. The adjective &#8220;empyreal&#8221; the dictionary gives as having the same alternative&nbsp; accentuation as the noun, that is to say, either<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%2017.jpg\" width=\"85\" height=\"21\" align=\"texttop\"> with&nbsp; the accent on the long &#8220;e&#8221; or<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%2018.jpg\" width=\"86\" height=\"22\" align=\"texttop\"> with the accent on<br \/>\nthe second syllable, but the &#8220;e&#8221; although unaccented still keeps its long pronunciation. Then? But even if I had no justification from the dictionary and the noun<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-27_Letters on Poetry And Art\/-images\/-50_Remarks%20on%20English%20Pronunciation%20-%2016.jpg\" width=\"89\" height=\"21\" align=\"texttop\"> were only an Aurobindonian freak and a wilful shifting of the accent, I would refuse to change it; for the rhythm here is an essential part of<br \/>\nwhatever beauty there is in the line. <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p>P.S. Your view is supported by the small Oxford Dictionary<br \/>\nwhich, I suppose, gives the present usage, Chambers being an older authority. But Chambers must represent a former usage<br \/>\nand I am entitled to revive even a past or archaic form if I choose to do so. <\/p>\n<p align=\"right\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p><font size=\"2\">4 August 1949 &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<font size=\"2\">Page-639<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remarks on English Pronunciation &nbsp; Monosyllables and Dissyllables &nbsp; I wonder why you find fault with the rhythm of &#8220;A vision whose God-delight embraces all.&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-27-letters-on-poetry-and-art","wpcat-51-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}