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.
Third Fault.
Not sounding h after w.
The aspirate h is often sunk, particularly in the capital, where we do not find the least distinction of sound between while and wile, whet, and wet, where, and were, etc. The best method to rectify this, is 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 hoo-ile; whet, hoo-et; where, hoo-are; whip, hoo-ip, etc. 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 h at the beginning of words where it ought to be sounded, and of sounding it, either where it is not seen, or where it ought to be sunk. Thus we not unfrequently hear, especially among children, heart pronounced art, and arm, harm. This is a vice perfectly similar to that of pronouncing the v for the w, and the w for the v, 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, and, without setting the pupil right when he mispronounces these, or when he prefixes h improperly to other words, we may make him pronounce all the words where h is sounded, till he 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, honourable, honourably, hospital, hostler, hour, hourly, humble, humbly, humbles, humour, humourist, humourous, humorously, humoursome: where we may observe, that humour and its compounds not only sink the h, but sound the u like the pronoun you, or the noun yew, as if written yewmour, yewmorous, etc.
Thus I have endeavoured to correct some of the more glaring errors of my countrymen, who, with all their faults, are still upon the whole the best pronouncers of the English language: for though the pronunciation of London is certainly erroneous in many words, yet, upon being compared 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 erroneous 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 u in trunk, sunk, etc. differ from the sound of that letter in the northern parts of England, where they sound it like the u in bull, and nearly as if the words were written troonk, soonk, etc. 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 any 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 in the 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 half 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.
