The Shift in the Value of English VowelsAuthor(s): George YoungSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Jul., 1918), p. 319Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3714232 .

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MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.

THE SHIFT IN THE VALUE OF ENGLISH VOWELS.

I HAVE read with interest Mr Allen Mawer's review of Dr Zachrisson's work on the shift in pronunciation of the English vowels. I do not doubt that the early date assigned for it is correct. Perhaps the most decisive of the few direct indications that have come down to us is to be found in a passage (not I gather quoted by Zachrisson) from Sir Thomas Smith's De restauratd et emendata linguse Girecaz pronuntiatione [p. 15, Paris, 1568]:

Recte etiam fortasse nunc Domine ne in furori per E Italicum, non quem- admodum diu per illud E Anglicum quod in Bee dicimus, aut me, cum /pe nostro more loquamur, observatur.

It appears from this passing observation that a special 'English' pronunciation of the long E, which it would be absurd to suppose was not in the direction of our modern pronunciation, had in mid-sixteenth

century been 'long' established, and so completely, as to have drawn with it a similar pronunciation of Church Latin. Smith is here ap- proving a recent reversion for Church purposes to the continental fashion; a change, he goes on to say, brought about since the time of Dean Colet, who would have been horrified to hear it. I believe I was the first to call attention to this passage, in a Cambridge Essay of mine df 1862, p. 93, n.

GEORGE YOUNG. FORMOSA FI?HERY, COOKHAM.

VERSES ON ' THE BEE.'

The above verses have often been attributed to the Earl of Essex, but Mr R. Warwick Bond has shown good reasons for assigning them to John Lyly. In his edition of Lyly's Works, vol. III, p. 445, he states those reasons, and at p. 494 he prints a version corresponding in the main with that which is here noted, but with an extra stanza following stanza 4. At p. 445 he gives in a note a list of all the MS. cdpies known to him, thirteen in number, to which we may now add another

THE SHIFT IN THE VALUE OF ENGLISH VOWELS.

I HAVE read with interest Mr Allen Mawer's review of Dr Zachrisson's work on the shift in pronunciation of the English vowels. I do not doubt that the early date assigned for it is correct. Perhaps the most decisive of the few direct indications that have come down to us is to be found in a passage (not I gather quoted by Zachrisson) from Sir Thomas Smith's De restauratd et emendata linguse Girecaz pronuntiatione [p. 15, Paris, 1568]:

Recte etiam fortasse nunc Domine ne in furori per E Italicum, non quem- admodum diu per illud E Anglicum quod in Bee dicimus, aut me, cum /pe nostro more loquamur, observatur.

It appears from this passing observation that a special 'English' pronunciation of the long E, which it would be absurd to suppose was not in the direction of our modern pronunciation, had in mid-sixteenth

century been 'long' established, and so completely, as to have drawn with it a similar pronunciation of Church Latin. Smith is here ap- proving a recent reversion for Church purposes to the continental fashion; a change, he goes on to say, brought about since the time of Dean Colet, who would have been horrified to hear it. I believe I was the first to call attention to this passage, in a Cambridge Essay of mine df 1862, p. 93, n.

GEORGE YOUNG. FORMOSA FI?HERY, COOKHAM.

VERSES ON ' THE BEE.'

The above verses have often been attributed to the Earl of Essex, but Mr R. Warwick Bond has shown good reasons for assigning them to John Lyly. In his edition of Lyly's Works, vol. III, p. 445, he states those reasons, and at p. 494 he prints a version corresponding in the main with that which is here noted, but with an extra stanza following stanza 4. At p. 445 he gives in a note a list of all the MS. cdpies known to him, thirteen in number, to which we may now add another

This content downloaded from 193.142.30.55 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 10:26:25 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions