378 ANALYTIC ORTHOGRAPHY. 
them some errors occur, which he begs’—Our own pronunciation of statue is stat-yoo= 
statju, but it appears that some pronounce it with tr, in chew. In a phonetic periodical, 
the former is preferred, because “‘it is a neater sound, and is more pleasant to the eye.” 
That is, ‘t’ is handsomer than the character which was then used for tr. But the 
argument falls with the fall of the character, and such arguments are not valid at any time. 
586. The French words ‘dépendance’ and ‘ diffidence’ with their identic final syllable, 
were received as identic, and have so remained. Yet a few elocutionists will have it that 
one of these now English words ends like dance and the other like dense. But even were 
this so, as the English and French do not usually alter their orthography with the varia- 
tions of speech, it is likely that the dense pronunciation would have fallen to ‘dependance,’ 
and dance to ‘ diffidence,’ as in the Italian ‘ dipendenza’ and ‘diffidanza.’ 
587. Some prefer the pronunciation of men of letters, but in the present state of phonetic 
and prosodic knowledge, as exhibited in the great majority of the grammars, men of letters 
constitute the ignorant class, with the perversions of French analogies added to their ig- 
norance; and if the vulgar corrupt (develop?) words, they are at least true to the verna- 
cular laws. But in comparing a lettered with an illiterate pronunciation, the two must 
be of the same locality and dialect, church cannot be judged by kirk; and the words must 
be vernacular, as one, two, three; body, head, arm, eye;—land, field, water, fire, house, 
rain, star, sun, moon. 
588. The misuse of h is unknown to large districts and various dialects. In fact, although 
we have known h/ to be omitted, we have never heard hat for at, hear for ear, &. As the 
Welsh poat for boat is due to the Welsh law of permutation, so the cockney misplacement 
of h may be a Cteltic remnant based on a form like the Irish an oigh (the virgin,) na hogha 
(of the virgins.)* 
589. The three different vowels of ooze, wp, eel, were once given to us by three lettered 
Cherokees as occurring in the second syllable (of four) of their word for eight. We con- 
sidered it likely that the wp was correct, although a ‘syllabic’ writer might have consi- 
dered it as certainly wrong; but when we asked an unlettered native, he used no vowel 
whatever in this place, and we deemed him correct and the others perverted by their syl- 
* But more probably the misuse of h, and the confusion between English w and v, are due to the differences 
between the dialects of Anglish and those of French. Anglish and Latin had English w, which the French re- 
placed with their v, so that there was a continual conflict between the two in words like will, wall, way, veer; and 
in wine and vin-egar the result is heterogeneous. H, which is stable in Teutonic, is evanescent in Romanic, and 
wanting in modern French, which accounts for its misuse in the natural dialect of the South of England. It is 
worthy of remark that the analogous confusion between sonant and surd th existing in the dialects of Anglish, has 
resulted in uniformity, independently of the spelling; for practice varied to such an extent that on the adoption 
of the Roman alphabet, both were represented by th—which each reader was expected to read in his own mode. 
