The /i/-sound presents several curious differences. The English make it long in all words of the /hostile/-class; in America it is commonly short, even in /puerile/. The English also lengthen it in /sliver/; in America the word usually rhymes with /liver/. The [Pg175] short /i/, in England, is almost universally substituted for the /e/ in /pretty/, and this pronunciation is also inculcated in most American schools, but I often hear an unmistakable /e/-sound in the United States, making the first syllable rhyme with /bet/. Contrariwise, most Americans put the short /i/ into /been/, making it rhyme with /sin/. In England it shows a long /e/-sound, as in /seen/. A recent poem by an English poet makes the word rhyme with /submarine/, /queen/ and /unseen/.[94] The /o/-sound, in American, tends to convert itself into an /aw/-sound. /Cog/ still retains a pure /o/, but one seldom hears it in /log/ or /dog/. Henry James denounces this "flatly-drawling group" in "The Question of Our Speech,"[95] and cites /gawd/, /dawg/, /sawft/, /lawft/, /gawne/, /lawst/ and /frawst/ as horrible examples. But the English themselves are not guiltless of the same fault. Many of the accusations that James levels at American, in truth, are echoed by Robert Bridges in "A Tract on the Present State of English Pronunciation." Both spend themselves upon opposing what, at bottom, are probably natural and inevitable movements--for example, the gradual decay of all the vowels to one of neutral color, represented by the /e/ of /danger/, the /u/ of /suggest/, the second /o/ of /common/ and the /a/ of /prevalent/. This decay shows itself in many languages. In both English and High German, during their middle periods, all the terminal vowels degenerated to /e/--now sunk to the aforesaid neutral vowel in many German words, and expunged from English altogether. The same sound is encountered in languages so widely differing otherwise as Arabic, French and Swedish. "Its existence," says Sayce, "is a sign of age and decay; meaning has become more important than outward form, and the educated intelligence no longer demands a clear pronunciation in order to understand what is said."[96]