for as English verse is formed by accent or stress, if this accent or stress were upon different syllables in different countries, what is verse in England would not be verse in Scotland or Ireland; and this sufficiently shows how very indefinitely the word accent is generally used. Mr. Elphinston, who must be allowed to be a competent judge in this case, tells us, that in Scotland they pronounce silence, biás, canváss, sentence, triumph, comfort, solace, construe, rescue, respite, govern, harass, ronsáck, cancel, with the accent on the last syllable instead of the first. To this list may be added the word menace, which they pronounce as if written menáss; and though they place the accent on the last syllable of canal, like the English, they broaden the a in the last syllable, as if the word were spelt canal. ay be farther observed, that they place an accent on the comparative adverb as, in the phrases much, as little, as many, as great, &c. while the English, except in some very particular emphatical cases, lay no stress on this word, but pronounce these phrases like words of two or three syllables without any accent on the first. But besides the mispronunciation of single words, there is a tone of voice with which these words are accompanied, that distinguishes a native of Ireland or Scotland, as much as an improper sound of the letters. This is vulgarly, and, if it does not mean stress only, but the kind of stress, I think, not improperly called the accent. For though there is an asperity in the Irish dialect, and a drawl in the Scotch, independent of the slides or inflections they make use of, yet it may with confidence be affirmed, that much of the peculiarity which distinguishes these dialects may be reduced to a predominant use of one of these slides. Let any one who has sufficiently studied the speaking voice to distinguish the slides, observe the pronunciation of an Irishman and a Scotchman, who have much of the dialect of their country, and he will find that the former abounds with the falling, and the latter with the rising inflection; and if this is the case, a teacher, if he understands these slides, ought to direct his instruction so as to remedy the imperfection. But as avoid. ing the wrong, and seizing the right at the same instant, is, perhaps, too great a task for human powers, I would advise a native of Ireland, who has much of the accent, to pronounce almost all his words, and end all his sentences, with the rising slide; and a Scotchman in the same manner, to use the falling inflection: this will, in some measure, counteract the natural propensity, and bids fairer for bringing the pupil to that nearly equal mixture of both slides which distinguishes the English speaker, than endeavouring at first to catch the agreeable variety. For this purpose the teacher ought to pronounce all the single words in the lesson with the falling inflection to a Scotch. man, and with the rising to an Irishman; and should frequently give the pauses in a sentence the same inflections to each of these pupils, where he would vary them to a native of England. But while the human voice remains unstudied, there is little expectation that this distinction of the slides should be applied to these useful purposes. Besides a peculiarity of inflection, which I take to be a falling circumflex, directly opposite to that of the Scotch, the Welsh pronounce the sharp consonants and as, irations instead of the flat. (See Principles, No. 29, 41.) Thus for big they say pick; for blood, ploot; and for good, coot. Instead of virtue and rice, they say firtue and fice; instead of zeal and praise, they say seal and prace; instead of these and those, they say thece and thoce; and instead of azure and osier, they say ausher and osher; and for jail, chail. Thus there are nine distinct consonant sounds which, to the Welsh, are entirely useless. To speak with propriety, therefore, the Welsh ought for some time to pro nounce the flat consonants and aspiratious only; that is, they ought not only to pronounce them where the letters reg ir but even where they require the sharp sound: this will be the best way to acquire a hal it; and when this is ouce done, a distinction will be easily made, and a just pronunciation more readily acquired. There is scarcely any part of England remote from the capital where a different system of pronunciation does not prevail. As in Wales they pronounce the sharp consonants for the flat, so in Somersetshire they pronounce many of the flat instead of the sharp: thus for Somersetshire, they say Zomersetshire; for father, vuther; for think, THink, and for shure, zhure.t There are dialects peculiar to Cornwall, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and every distant county in England; but as a consideration of these would lead to a detail too minute for the present occasion, I shall conclude these remarks with a few observations on the peculiarities of my countrymen, the Cockneys; who, as they are the models of pronunciation to the distant provinces, ought to be the more scrupulously correct. FIRST FAULT OF THE LONDONERS.-Pronouncing s indistinctly after st. The letters after st, from the very difficulty of its pronunciation, is often sounded inarticulately. The inhabitants of London, of the lower order, cut the knot, and pronounce it in a distinct syllable, as if e were before it; but this is to be avoided as the greatest blemish in speaking; the three last letters in posts, fists, mists, &c. must all be distinctly heard in one syllable, and without permitting the letters to coalesce. For the acquiring of this sound, it will be proper to select nouns that end in st or se; to form them into plurals, and pronounce them forcibly and distinctly every day. The same may be observed of the third person of verbs ending in sts or stes, as persists, wastes, hastes, &c. SECOND FAULT.-Pronouncing w for ▼, and inversely. The pronunciation of r for, and more frequently of w for v, among the inhabitants of London, and those not always of the lower order, is a blemish of the first magnitude. The difficulty of remedying this defect is the greater, as the cure of one of these mistakes has a tendency to promote the other. Thus, if you are very careful to make a pupil pronounce veal and vinegar, not as if written weal and winegar, you will find him very apt to pronounce wine and wind, as if written vine and vind. The only method of rectifying this habit seems to be this: Let the pupil select from a Dictionary, not only all the words that begin with v, but as many as he can of those that have this letter in any other part. Let him be told to bite his under lip while he is sounding the v in those words, and to practise this every day till he pronounces the v properly at first sight: then, and not till then, let him pursue the same method with the w; which he must be directed to pronounce by a pouting out of the lips without suffering them to touch the teeth. Thus by giving all the attention to only one of these letters at a time, and fixing by habit the true sound of that, we shall at last find both of them reduced to their proper pronunciation, in a shorter time than by endeavouring to rectify them both at once. See this more fully exemplified in Elements of Elocution, Vol. II. page 13. Or rather the rising circumflex. For an explanation of this infection, see Rhetorical Grammar, third edition. page 75 See the word Change. THIRD FAULT.-Not sounding h after w. The aspirate & is often sunk, particularly in the capital, where we do not find the least distinction of sand between while and wile, whet and wet, where and were, &c. The best method to rectify this, u to collect all the words of this description from a Dictionary, and write them down; and, instead of the wh, to begin them with hoo in a distinct syllable, and so to pronounce them. Thus, let while be written and sounded hoc-ile; whet, hoo-et; where, hoo-are; whip, hoo-ip, &c. This is no more, as Dr. Lowth observes, than placing the aspirate in its true position before the w, as it is in the Saxon, which the words come from; where we may observe, that though we have altered the orthography of our ancestors, we have still preserved their pronunciation. Fourth Fault-Not sounding h where it ought to be sounded, and inversely. A still worse habit than the last prevails, chiefly among the people of London, that of sinking the A at the beginning of words where it ought to be sounded, and of sounding it, either where it ist sees, or where it ought to be sunk. This we not unfrequently hear, especially among childreu, her pronounced at, and arm, harm. This is a vice perfectly similar to that of pronouncing the u for the r, and the w for the r, and requires a similar method to correct it. As there are so very few words in the language where the initial h is sunk, we may select these from the rest, auri, without setting the pupil right when he mispronounces these, or when he prefixes à improperly to other words, we may make him pronounce all the words where h 13 sounded, till be has almost forgot there are any words pronounced otherwise: then he may go over those words to which he improperly prefixes the h, and those where the h is seen, but not sounded, without any danger of an interchange. As these latter words are but few, I shall subjoin a catalogue of them for the use of the learner; heir, heiress, herb, herbage, honest, honesty, honestly, honour, honouratue, nomata abi, hospital, hostler, hour, hourly, humble, humbly, humbles, humour, humorist, humorous, baromonas, kulmorsome where we may observe, that humour and its compounds not only sink the A, but sound the like the pronoun you, or the noun yew as if written yeumour, yewmorous, &c Thus I have endeavoured to correct some of the more glaring errors of my countrymen, who, with a' their faults, are still upon the whole the best pronouncers of the English language: for Dough the pronunciation of London is certainly erroneous ir many words, yet, upon being compand with that of any other place, it is undoubtedly the best; that is, not only the best by courtesy and because it happens to be the pronunciation of the capital, but the best by a better title, that of being more generally received: or, in other words, though the people of London are erTeorias in the pronunciation of many words, the inhabitants of every other place are erroneous in many more. Nay, harsh as the sentence may seem, those at a considerable distance from the capital do not only mispronounce many words taken separately, but they scarcely pronounce with purity a single word, syllable, or letter. Thus, if the short sound of the letter um trunk, sunk, der from the sound of that letter in the northern parts of England, where they sound it like the ■ iz N?, and nearly as if the words were written troonk, soonk, &c. it necessarily follows, that every word where the second sound of that letter occurs, must by those provincials be mispronounced. But though the inhabitants of London have this manifest advantage over all the other inhabitants of the island, they have the disadvantage of being more disgraced by their peculiarities than By other people. The grand difference between the metropolis and the provinces is, that people of education in London are generally free from the vices of the vulgar; but the best educated people za lae provinces, if constantly resident there, are sure to be strongly tinctured with the dialect of the country in which they live. Hence it is, that the vulgar pronunciation of London, though not talt so erroneous as that of Scotland, Ireland, or any of the provinces, is, to a person of correct taste, a thousand times more offensive and disgusting. DIRECTIONS to FOREIGNERS, In order to attain a Knowledge of the Marks in this Dictionary, and to acquire a right Pronunciation of evry Word in the English Language. A 5 the sounds of the vowels are different in different languages, it would be endless to bring parallel sonda from the various languages of Europe; but, as the French is so generally understood DI« n the Continent, if we can reduce the sounds of the English letters to those of the Froch, we shali render the pronunciation of our language very generally attainable; and this, it is presumed, wis be pretty accurately accomplished by observing the following directions: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z bici di i of agretch ai dje qué ell em en o pi kiou arr ess ti iou vi doblint ex ouai zedd The French have all our vowel sounds, and will therefore find the pronunciation of hem very easy. Te aur dificulty they will meet with seems to be i, which, though demonstrably composed of twe - sounds, has passed for a simple vowel with a very competent judge of English pronunciafw" The reason is, these two sounds are pronounced so closely together as to require some attenfoto dover their comparat parts: this attention Mr. Sheridant never gave, or he would not has told us that this di, bthog is a compound of our fullest and slenderest soundså and è; the first Boom by the largest, and the last by the smallest aperture of the mouth. Now nothing is more cer te than the accuracy of this definition. The third sound of a, which is perfectly equivalent to the tard weand of 6, when combined with the first sound of e, must inevitably form the diphthong in boy, c. and not the diphthongal sound of the vowel i in idle, and the personal pronoun I; this double dwill, upon a close examination, be found to be composed of the Italiana in the last syllable of and the first sound of e, pronounced as closely together as possible; and for the exactness of San 'efamation, I appeal to every just English ear in the kingdom. ker tertums III of his Prosodiad Grammar prefixed to his Dictionary. that the net parsiomegancal and accurate investigator of the formation and powers of the letters, says: # Our wulDua dan wets to be such a diphthong (or rather syllable, or part of a syllable) composed of a, i, or e, i, and 95 vowel Elements of Speech, page له رشد Win oaking of the long English, says it is sounded eodem ferè modo quo Gallorum ai in vocibus main, pare Nempe souum habet compositum ex Gallorum è feminino et i vel y" Gramumatica Lingua The other diphthongal vowel u is composed of the French i, pronounced as closely as possible to their diphthong ou, or the English èè and 8, perfectly equivalent to the sound the French would give to the letters you, and which is exactly the sound the English give to the plural of the second personal pronoun. The diphthong of or on is composed of the French & and i; thus toy and boy would be exactly expressed to a Frenchman by writing them tâi, bẩi. The diphthongs ou and our, when sounded like ou, are composed of the French & and the diphthong ou; and the English sounds of thou and now may be expressed to a Frenchman by spelling them thaou and naou. W is no more than the French diphthong ou; thus West is equivalent to Ouest, and wall to ouall. Y is perfectly equivalent to the French letter of that name, and may be supplied by i; thus yoke, &c. is expressed by toke, iou, &c. you, or I consonant, must be pronounced by prefixing to the French j: thus jau, joy, &c. sound to a Frenchman as if spelled djé, djúi, &c. If any difficulty be found in forming this combination of sounds, it will be removed by pronouncing the d, ed, and spelling these words edjé, edjâi, &c. Ch, in English words not derived from the Greek, Latin, or French, is pronounced as if t were prefixed; thus the sound of chair, cheese, chain, &c. would be understood by a Frenchman as if the words were written tchére, tchize, tchène. Sh in English is expressed by ch in French; thus shame, share, &c. would be spelled by a Frenchman chéme, chére, &c. The ringing sound ng in long, song, &c. may be perfectly conceived by a pupil who can pronounce the French word Encore, as the first syllable of this word is exactly correspondent to the sound in those English words; and for the formation of it, see Principles, No. 57; also the word ENCORE. But the greatest difficulty every foreigner finds in pronouncing English, is the lisping consonant th. This, it may be observed, has, like the other consonants, a sharp and flat sound; sharp as in thin, bath, flat as in that, with. To acquire the true pronunciation of this difficult combination, it may be proper to begin with those words where it is initial :"and first, let the pupil protrude his tongue a little way beyond the teeth, and press it between them as if going to bite the tip of it; while this is doing, if he wishes to pronounce thin, let him hiss as if to sound the letters; and after the hiss, let him draw back his tongue within his teeth, and pronounce the preposition in, and thus will the word thin be perfectly pronounced. If he would pronounce thet, let him place the tongue between the teeth as before; and while he is his sing as if to sound the letter z, let him withdraw his tongue into his mouth, and immediately pronounce the preposition at. To pronounce this combination when final in bath, let him pronounce ba, and protrude the tongue beyond the teeth, pressing the tongue with them, and hissing as if to sound s; if he would pronounce with, let him first form wi, put the tongue in the same position as before, and hiss as if to sound z. It will be proper to make the pupil dwell some time with the tongue beyond the teeth in order to form a habit, and to pronounce daily some words out of a Dictionary beginning and ending with these letters. These directions, it is presumed, if properly attended to, will be sufficient to give such foreigners as understand French, and have not access to a master, a competent knowledge of English pronunciation; but to render the sounds of the vowels marked by figures in this Dictionary still more easily to be comprehended, with those English words which exemplify the sounds of the vowels, I have associated such French words as have vowels exactly corresponding to them, and which immediately convey the true English pronunciation. These should be committed to memory, or written down and held in his hand while the pupil is inspecting the Dictionary. Perhaps the greatest advantage to foreigners and provincials will be derived from the classification of words of a similar sound, and drawing the line between the general rule and the exception. This has been an arduous task; but it is hoped the beneût arising from it will amply repay it. When the numerous varieties of sounds annexed to vowels, diphthongs, and consonants, lie scattered without bounds, a learner is bewildered and discouraged from attempting to distinguish them; but when they are all classed, arranged, and enumerated, the variety seems less, the number smaller, and the distinction easier. What an inextricable labyrinth do the diphthongs ea and on form as they lie loose in the language! but classed and arranged as we find them, No. 226, &c. and 313, &c. the confusion vanishes, they become much less formidable, and a learner has it in his power, by repeat. ing hem daily, to become master of them all in a very little time. The English accent is often an insurmountable obstacle to foreigners, as the rules for it are so various and the exceptions so numerous; but let the inspector consult the article Accent in the Principles, particularly No. 492, 505, 506, &c. and he will soon perceive how much of our language is regulary accented, and how much that which is irregular is facilitated by an enumeration of the greater number of exceptions. But scaredy any method will be so useful for gaining the English accent as the reading of verse This will naturally lead the ear to the right accentuation; and though a different position of the accent is frequerly to be met with in the beginning of a verse, there is a sufficient regularity to render the pronouncing of verse a powerful means of obtaining such a distinction of force and feebleness as is commonly called the accent: for it may be observed, that a foreigner is no less distinguishable by placing an accent upon certain words to which the English give no stress, than by placing the stress upon a wrong syllable. Thus if a foreigner, when he calls for bread at table, by saying, give me some bread, lays an equal stress upon every word, though every word should be pronounced with its exact sound, we immediately perceive he is not a native. An Englishman would pronounce these four words like two, with the accent on the first syllable of the first, and on the last syllable of the last, as if written giveme somebréd; or rather, girme sumbréd; or more commonly, though vulgarly, gimme somebréd. Verse may sometimes induce a foreigner, as it does sometimes injudicious natives, to lay the accent on a syllable in long words which ought to have none, as in a couplet of Pope s Essay on Criticism: False eloquence, like the prismatic glass, "Its gaudy colours spreads on every place." Here a foreigner would be apt to place an accent on the last syllable of eloquence as well as the first, which would be certainly wrong; but this fault is so trifling, when compared with that of laying the accent on the second syllable, that it almost vanishes from observation; and this misaccentua tion, verse will generally guard him from. The reading of verse, therefore, will, if I am not mistaken, be found a powerful regulator, both of accent and emphasis. CONTENTS Definition of vowels and consonants Diphthongs and triphthongs enumerated Consonants distinguished into classes Analogical table of the consonants Organick formation of the letters Of the quantity and quality of the vowels Of the iniluence of accent on the sounds of the letters The letter A and its different sounds The letter E and its different sounds The letter I and its different sounds The letter O and its different sounds The letter U and its different sounds The vowel Y and its different sounds The vowel W and its different sounds Of the diphthongs cailed semi-consonants Of the diphthongs AE, AI, AO, and all the rest in their alphabetical order G always mute before N in the same syllable at the end of a word, exemplified in the words impuga, oppugn, propugn, expugn, impregn, &c. with the authorities of the most respectable If, when silent, and when sounded A is exactly similar to ks, and liable to the same alterations of sound Mr Sheridan's errour in this point detected The shortening power of this accent The shortening power of the secondary accent exemplified in the uncertainty and inconsis- tency of Mr. Sheridan and Dr. Kenrick in their division of words into syllables Syllabication different according to the different ends to be attained by it Syllabication exhibiting the sound of a word, depending, in some measure, on the nature of the The almost total independence of the English quantity on that of the Greek and Latin, exem- The only possible case in which we can argue from the Latin quantity to the English Dissyllables from the Saxon and French languages enumerated - ibid. ibid. Causes of the prevalence of shortening the first syllable of dissyllables from these languages - ibid. Uncertainty and inconsistency of Dr. Kenrick in his notation of the quantity of these vowels Exception to the general rule of pronouncing these syllables when e is followed by r ibid. Tendency of o before r to go into the same obscurity as e, exemplified in the diversity and |