I've been thinking about the Jabberwocky recently, due to having recently seen the new Alice in Wonderland film, which includes a Jabberwocky and a scene in which the Mad Hatter recites the first verse of the poem.
It's a verse that I know well, though the pronunciation of it has always been a bit iffy. Take, for example, "gyre and gimble"; I'm certain that they should be alliterative, and therefore either both hard g's or both soft g's. Together, they conjure up the idea of movement, in my opinion, and 'gyre' seems like it should come from the same basic root as words like "gyrate" and "gyroscope", which suggests that the g should be soft. According to Wikipedia, Lewis Carroll once worte that it should be a hard g in both cases, and while his opinion on the matter is an important one, is it possible that he was wrong? I feel that the poem flows and sounds better if one uses soft g's.
On the other hand, "gimble" is apparently related to "gimlet", a small hand-tool for drilling holes, which is pronounced with a hard g.
Personally, I'd prefer to pronounce gyre with a soft g and gimble with a hard g, rather than use the hard g versions of both words in spoite of the loss of alliteration.
(By the way, it is currently brillig, at least at the time of posting this.)
1 comment:
I've personally read them as hard g's - but I do agree that they both need to be the same.
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