x PKEFACE. 
plain traces of the older utterance). The same has happened, in a less degree, after /, and some of the 
latest authorities (even in England) prescribe always loo (16) instead of /M,- so radical a change has 
not been ventured upon in this work, in which 6 is written only after an I that is preceded by 
another consonant : cultivated pronunciation is much less uniform here than in the 
General variations of preceding case. But further, after the other so-called dental consonants /, d, n, s, z, 
of 'rertai vowels. " except in syllables immediately following an accent, the usage of the majority of 
good speakers tends to reduce the y-elemeut to a lighter and less noticeable form, 
while many omit it altogether, pronouncing oo (6). Of this class of discordances no account is 
taken in the re-spellings for pronunciation ; usage is in too fluid and vacillating a condition to 
be successfully represented. After the sounds ch, j, sh, zh, however, only d is acknowledged. Another 
case is that of the r. Besides local differences in regard to the point of production in the mouth, 
and to the presence, or degree, of trilling in its utterance, a very large number, including some 
of the sections of most authoritative usage, on both sides of the Atlantic, do not really utter the 
r-sound at all unless it be immediately followed by a vowel (in the same or a succeeding word), but 
either silence it altogether or convert it into a neutral-vowel sound (that of hut or hurt). The muti- 
lation thus described is not acknowledged in this dictionary, but r is everywhere written where it 
has till recently been pronounced by all; and it is left for the future to determine which party of the 
speakers of the language shall win the upper hand. The distinction of the two shades of neutral- 
vowel sound in hut and hurt, which many authorities, especially in England, ignore or neglect, is, as 
a matter of course, made in this work. The latter, or -hurt-sound, is found in English words only 
befoi'e r in the same syllable ; but it is also a better correspondent to the French eu and " mute e " 
sounds than is the former, or hut-sound. In like manner, the air-sound is distinguished (as a) from the 
ordinary e- or a-sounds. Further, the two sounds written with o in sot and song are held apart through- 
out, the latter (marked with 6) being admitted not only before r (as in nor), but in many other situations, 
where common good usage puts it. But as there is a growing tendency in the language to turn o into 
6, the line between the two sounds is a variable one, and the 6 (on this account distinguished from d, 
with which from a phonetic point of view it is practically identical) must be taken as marking an 
o-sound which in a part of good usage is simple o. A similar character belongs to the so-called " inter- 
mediate a " of ask, can't, command, and their like, which with many good speakers has the full a-sound 
(of far, etc.), and also by many is flattened quite to the " short a " of fat, etc. This is signified by a, 
which, as applied to English words, should be regarded rather as pointing out the varying utterance 
here described than as imperatively prescribing any shade of it. 
On the side of consonant utterance, there is a very large class of cases where it can be made a 
question whether a pure t or d or s or z is pronounced with an i- or ?/-sound after it before another vowel, 
or whether the consonant is fused together with the i or y into the sounds ch, j, sh, or zh respectively 
for example, whether we say nature or nachur, gradual or grajoal, sure or shor, vizual 
The pronunciation or vizhoal. There are many such words in which accepted usage has fully ranged 
of certain conso- . 
nants. itselt on the side of the tused pronunciation : for example, vizhon, not v^z^on, for 
vision; azhur, not azure, for azure; but with regard to the great majority usage is less 
decided, or else the one pronunciation is given in ordinary easy utterance and the other when speaking 
with deliberation or labored plainness, or else the fused pronunciation is used without the fact being 
acknowledged. For such cases is introduced here a special mark under the consonant thus, t, d, s, z 
which is intended to signify that in elaborate or strained utterance the consonant has its own proper 
value, but in ordinary styles of speaking combines with the following ^-element into the fused sound. 
The mark is not used unless the fused sound is admissible in good common speech. 
This same device, of a mark added beneath to indicate a familiar utterance different from an 
elaborate or forced one, is introduced by this dictionary on a very large scale in marking the sounds of 
the vowels. One of the most peculiar characteristics of English pronunciation is the way in which it 
slights the vowels of most unaccented syllables, not merely lightening them in point of quantity and 
stress, but changing their quality of sound. To write (as systems of re-spelling for pronunciation, and 
