Note 17 — THE PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK, &c.

In some English schools a small concession has been made to common sense, and to sound principles of teaching, by confining the long slender sound of a to the long α, while the short α is pronounced like the short a in bat. Now, as changes are not easily made in England, especially among schoolmasters, who are a stiff-necked generation everywhere, it would have been worth while when they were moving, to kick the barbarous English a out of the scholastic world altogether. But their conservatism was too strong for this; besides, the ears of many were so gross that they would not have distinguished, or would have sworn that they could not distinguish, a long a from a short one, without giving the former the sound of an entirely distinct vowel! There is no limit to the nonsense that men will talk in defence of an inveterate absurdity.