Thus it is unsafe, here as elsewhere, to generalize too facilely, and particularly unsafe to exhibit causes with too much assurance. "Man frage nicht warum," says Philipp Karl Buttmann. "Der Sprachgebrauch lässt sich nur beobachten."[80] But the greater distinctness of American utterance, whatever its genesis and machinery, is palpable enough in many familiar situations. "The typical American accent," says Vizetelly, "is often harsh and unmusical, but it sounds all of the letters to be sounded, and slurs, but does not distort, the rest."[81] An American, for example, almost always sounds the first /l/ in /fulfill/; an Englishman makes the first syllable /foo/. An American sounds every syllable in /extraordinary/, /literary/, /military/, /secretary/ and the other words of the /-ary/-group; an Englishman never pronounces the /a/ of the penultimate syllable. /Kindness/, with the /d/ silent, would attract notice in the United States; in England, according to [Pg171] Jones,[82] the /d/ is "very commonly, if not usually" omitted. /Often/, in America, commonly retains a full /t/; in England it is actually and officially /offen/. Let an American and an Englishman pronounce /program/ (/me/). Though the Englishman retains the long form of the last syllable in writing, he reduces it in speaking to a thick triple consonant, /grm/; the American enunciates it clearly, rhyming it with /damn/. Or try the two with any word ending in /-g/, say /sporting/ or /ripping/. Or with any word having /r/ before a consonant, say /card/, /harbor/, /lord/ or /preferred/. "The majority of Englishmen," says Menner, "certainly do not pronounce the /r/ ...; just as certainly the majority of educated Americans pronounce it distinctly."[83] Henry James, visiting the United States after many years of residence in England, was much harassed by this persistent /r/-sound, which seemed to him to resemble "a sort of morose grinding of the back teeth."[84] So sensitive to it did he become that he began to hear where it was actually non-existent, save as an occasional barbarism, for example, in /Cuba-r/, /vanilla-r/ and /California-r/. He put the blame for it, and for various other departures from the strict canon of contemporary English, upon "the American common school, the American newspaper, and the American Dutchman and Dago." Unluckily for his case, the full voicing of the /r/ came into American long before the appearance of any of these influences. The early colonists, in fact, brought it with them from England, and it still prevailed there in Dr. Johnson's day, for he protested publicly against the "rough snarling sound" and led the movement which finally resulted in its extinction.[85] Today, extinct, it is mourned by English purists, and the Poet Laureate denounces the clergy of the Established Church for saying "the /sawed/ of the /Laud/" instead of "the sword of the Lord."[86]