12
nis instruction so as to remedy the imperfection.But as avoiding the wrong, and seizing the rightat the same instant, is, perhaps, too great a taskfor human powers, I would advise a native ofIreland , who has much of the accent, to pro-nounce almost all his words, and end all his sen-tences, with the rising slide; and a Scotchman,in the same manner, to use the fulling inflection :this will, in some measure, counteract the na-tural propensity, and bids fairer for bringing thepupil to that nearly equal mixture of both slides,which distinguishes the English speaker, thanendeavouring at first to catch the agreeable va-riety. For this purpose the teachet ought to pro-nounce all the single words in the lesson withthe falling inflection to a Scotchman, and withthe rising to an Irishman ; and should frequentlygive the pauses in a sentence the same inflectionsto each of these pupils, where lie would varythem to a native of England. But, while the hu-man voice remains unstudied, there is little ex-pectation that this distinction of the slides shouldbe applied to these useful purposes.
Besides a peculiarity of inflection, which I taketo be a falling circumflex, directly opposite tothat of the Scotch, the Welch pronounce thesharp consonants and aspirations instead of theflat. (See Principles, No. 29, 41.) Thus for bigthey say pick; for blood, ploot ; mid for good,coot. Instead of virtue and vice, they say firtueand Jice ; instead of zeal and praise, they sayseal and prace ; instead of these and those, theysay thece and thoce j and instead ot azure andosier, they say aysher and osher ; and tor jail,chail. Thus there are nine distinct consonantsounds, which, to the Welch, are entirely useless.To speak with propriety, therefore, the Welchought for some time to pronounce the flat con-sonants and aspirations only ; that is, they oughtnot only to pronounce them where the letters re-quire the flat sound, but even wheie they requirethe sharp sound : this will be the best way toacquire a habit; and, when this is once done, adistinction will be easily made, and a just pro-nunciation more readily acquired.
There is scarcely any part of England remotefrom the capital where u different system of pro-nunciation does not prevail. As in Wales theypronounce the sharp consonants for the flat, soin Somersetshire they pronounce many of the flatinstead of the sharp : thus for Somersetshire , theysay ^Somersetshire s for father, vather ; for f/tiuk,THink ; and for sure, xhure*.
There are dialects peculiar to Cornwall , Lan cashire , Yorkshire , and every distant county inEngland ; but, as a consideration of these wouldlead to a detail too minute for the present occa-sion, I shall conclude these remarks with a fewobservations on the peculiarities of my country-men, the Cockneys ; who, as they are the models of pronunciation to the distant provinces, oughtto be the more scrupulously correct.
First Fault of tub Londoners.— Pronouncings indistinctly after st.
The letter s, after st, from the very difficultyof its pronunciation, is often sounded inarticu-lately. The inhabitants of London , of the lowerorder, cut the knot, and pronounce it in a distinctsyllable, as if e were before it; but this is to beavoided as the greatest blemish in speaking: thethree last letters in posts, fists, mists, &c. mustall be distinctly heard in one syllable, and with-out permitting the letters to coalesce. For theacquiring of this sound, it will be proper to selectnouns that end in st or ste ; to form them intoplurals, and pronounce them forcibly and dis-tinctly every day. The same may be observedof the third person of verbs ending in sts or stes,as persists, wastes, hastes, See.
Second Fault — Pronouncing w for v,and inversely .
The pronunciation of v for w, and more fre-quently of w for v, among the inhabitants of Lon don , and those not always of the lower order, isa blemish of the first magnitude. The difficultyof remedying this defect is the greater, as the
• See the word Change*
cure of one of these mistakes hdS a tendency topromote the other.
Thus, if you are very careful to make a pupilpronounce remand vinegar, not as if written wealand teinegar, you will lind him very apt to pro-nounce wine and wind&% if written vine and vind.The only method of rectifying this habit seems tobe this : Let the pupil select from a Dictionarynot only all the words that begin with v, but asmany as he can of those that have this letter inany other part. Let him be told to bite his un-der lip while he is sounding the tun those words,and to practise this every day till he pronouncesthe v properly at first sight: then, and not tillthen, let him pursue the same method with ti.ew ; which he must be directed to pronounce bya pouting out of the lips, without suffering themto touch the teeth. Thus by giving all the at-tention to only one of these letters at a time,and fixing by habit the true sound of that, weshall at last find both of them reduced to theirproper pronunciation in a shorter time than byendeavouring to rectify them both at once.
Third Fault. —Not sounding h after w.
The aspirate h is often sunk, particularly in thecapital, where we do not find the least "distinc-tion of sound between while and wile, whet andwet, where and were, See. The best method torectify this is to collect all the words of this de-scription from a Dictionary, and write themdown ; and, instead of the wh, to begin them withhoo in a distinct sj’lluble, and so to pronouncethem. Thus let while be written and soundedhoo-ile ; whet, hoo ct ; where, hoo.are ; whip , hoo-ip,&c. This is no more, as Dr. Lowth observes^than placing the aspirate in its true position be-fore the w, as it is in the Saxon, which the wordscome from ; where we may observe that, thoughwe have altered the orthography of our ances-tors, we have still preserved their pronunciation.
Fourth Fault. —Not sounding li where it oughtto be sounded, and inversely.
A still worse habit than the last prevails, chieflyamong the people of London , that of sinking theh at tlie beginning of words where it oughL to hesounded, and of sounding it either where ii isnot seen, or where it ought to be sunk. Thus wenot unfrequently hear, especially among chil-dren, heart pronounced art , and arm, harm. Thisis a vice perfectly similar to that of pronouncingthe v for the w, and the to for the v, and rcquiiesa similar method to correct it.
As there are so very few words in the languagewhere the initial h is sunk, we may select thesefrom the rest, and, without setting the pupilright when he mispronounces these, or when heprefixes h improperly to other words, we muvmake him pronounce all the words where h issounded, till he has almost forgot there are anywords pronounced otherwise ; then he may goover those words to which he improperly prefixesthe h, and those where the h is seen, hut notsounded, without any danger of an interchange.As these latter words are but few, I shall subjoina catalogue of them for the use of the learner:Heir, heiress, herb, herbage, honest, honesty,honestly, honour, honourable, honourably, hospitalhostler , hour, hourly, humble, humbly,'humbles*humour, humourist, humorous, humorously, hu*moursome: where we may observe, that humourand its compounds not only sink the h, but soundthe m like the pronoun you, or the noun yew, usif written yetemour, yewmorous, &c.
Thus I have endeavoured to correct some ofthe more glaring errours of my countrymen, whowith all their faults, are still upon the whole thebest pronouncers of the English language : forthough the pronunciation of London is certainlyerroneous in many words, yet, upon being com-pared with that of any other place it is un-doubtedly the best; that is, not only the best bycourtesy, and because it happens to be the pro-nuneiaiion of the capital, but the best by a bettertitle, that ot being more generally received ; orin other words, though the people of London areerroneous in the pronunciation of many wordsthe inhabitants ot every other pluce are erroneousin many more. Nay, harsh as the sentence mayseem, those at a considerable distance from the