Preserving the Languages spoken by Uncivilized Nations. 29 



of precisely the same character. An individual who exhibited 

 this peculiarity asserted that his ear could detect no difference 

 between Weal and Veal, Winegar and Vinegar. Whether 

 this insensibility be general amongst those who have acquired 

 this vulgar London peculiarity I am not prepared to say, but 

 I have known a similar insensibility to exist where another 

 substitution of the same kind had taken place. In some parts 

 of Worcestershire and Herefordshire a striking error prevails 

 in the use of the aspirate ; we hear it employed where it should 

 be suppressed, and it is suppressed where it should be em- 

 ployed. Although this is done so systematically that it seems 

 like the result of design and principle, yet, as I have just stated, 

 I know that it may take place from a want of perception of the 

 difference existing between the two sounds *. I heard a gen- 

 tleman from that district say that he could not distinguish as 

 from has. I am unable to say how far changes of this kind 

 are to be attributed to a defective appreciation of the sounds 

 produced, but I believe there can be little doubt that such 

 changes are rather to be attributed to a want of aptitude in 

 the organ producing than in the organ perceiving the sound. 

 A cause of this latter kind operates to prevent many persons 

 from pronouncing the TH, to which, in consequence, they 

 give the power of T or of D. A similar difficulty occasions the 

 L to be pronounced like R, as, for example, " the Rong grories 

 of majestic Rome," for the Long glories, &c. Children, in 

 learning to speak, often, transiently, exhibit difficulties of this 

 kind, which they for the most part speedily surmount, unless the 

 difficulty be very great, in which case it may become permanent. 

 The commutation of one letter for another, as is exhibited 

 in the declinable parts of speech, in the composition of com- 

 pound words, and also in the concurrence of words in a sen- 

 tence, of which there are so many striking examples in the 

 Greek language, are doubtless to be referred to some physi- 

 cal cause which may sometimes be found in the greater facility 

 of utterance, and at others in the more agreeable sound con- 

 veyed to the ear. The manner of contraction from double 

 vowels to diphthongs, and from long vowels to short, is to be 

 referred to a similar cause, as being rather dependent on a 

 physical cause than to be regarded as a peculiarity connected 

 with a particular language. The contraction of OI into I in 

 Greek seems to be quite analogous to the vulgar pronuncia- 



. * [An instance illustrative of this is within our own knowledge, in which 

 a person who was originally incapable of distinguishing between aspirated 

 and unaspirated sounds, and who therefore uttered them indiscriminately, 

 has gradually acquired both the perception and the right utterance of 

 them.— Edit.] 



