Journal of a Sabbatical

February 1, 2001

literature and regional spelling

Today's Reading: The Future of Success by Robert Reich

Columbine's Not the Classics entry prompted me to look again at the Modern Library List , which I'd pretty much dismissed as a marketing ploy to sell more Modern Library editions rather than a meaningful guide to great literature. Well, it's still not a meaningful guide to great literature, but it was fun to tally up how many of the books on the list I'd read. From there naturally followed comparison to other lists. Collect one silly statistic, gotta collect 'em all. Herewith the tallies:

Modern Library List: 21

Radcliffe List: 35

Feminista List: 19

Like I would recognize great literature if I tripped over it? Well considering the unfavorable ratio of bookshelves to books in my house, I trip over literature frequently. I just don't know if it's great or not.

Speaking of literature Mopie writes about her class in Urban Scrawl dealing with Manhattan from 1850-1900, an interesting period since critics and theorists have long claimed that the center of the literary establishment shifted from Boston to New York in 1891. I've always wondered what conditions were brewing in New York before the pivotal date that attracted writers and critics to leave Boston and move to New York. Was Boston already doomed well before 1891? How long before? Is there a clear literary center of the US now? If so, is it New York? Do critics even think about things like that nowadays?

I just looked out my window and saw two, count them, two neighbors putting blue junk in their windshield washers. Has Busy Body noticed this yet? Will she lecture them about how they should have had that done at the dealer? Will she realize that I am not the only person who puts blue junk in my windshield washer all by myself?

I chanced upon Sachertorte's entry about the pronunciation of some Massachusetts place names and I beg to disagree on a couple of points. I have lived in Massachusetts all my life and I have always pronounced the "r" in Norwood. For what it's worth, I've always pronounced both d's in Medford too (though that's not on her list it's a frequent entry in such lists - "Meff-uh").

And assuming Natick is an English word it would have to have two t's (Nattick) to rhyme with "attic" so I don't think Massachusetts people are pronouncing it strangely or counter-intuitively with a long "a". However, Natick is not an English word, it's a Massachusett word. The spelling the early settlers chose was probably phonetic in 17th century English.

I'll grant that if Scituate is an English word, the "a" should be long. But since science and scenery are not shience and shenery, there's a good case that "sit" is a correct English pronunciation. However, Scituate is not English and furthermore it's misspelled. The original spelling of the town's name was "Satuit", a Narragansett (or related Algonkian language) word meaning "cold brook". A quick google search did not reveal any reason for the spelling change. At least one other Massachusett/Narragansett place name that I can think of with the same spelling problem is Cochituate, which is pronounced Cochichuit. There may have been some wholesale respelling of local place names at some point in Massachusetts history to make them look more like English with the paradoxical result of making them look less like modern English.

English spelling (I'm talking the King's English here, not American English yet) was standardized fairly late in history and definitely well after the time period when early settlers in America were attempting to write down what the local place names sounded like to them. Even within Roger Williams' A Key Into the Language of America he spells Narragansett as Narrogánset and Narigánset.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the pronunciation of the native place names is probably pretty consistent with the 17th century pronunciation but the spelling hasn't changed to match modern standardized English spelling. That's not a regional accent, that's something else entirely.

Ncussawontapam. (That's "my head aches" or "akes" as the English would have spelled it back then).