TH ENGLISH DIALECT IS A DIRECT AND CHIEF CAUSE OF
HOMOPHONES._

[Sidenote: Evidence of Jones' dictionary.]

Evidence of the present condition of our ruling educated speech in the
South of England I shall take from Mr. Daniel Jones' dictionary,[16]
the authority of which cannot, I think, be disputed. It is true that
it represents a pronunciation so bad that its slovenliness is likely
to be thought overdone, but there is no more exaggeration than any
economical system of phonetic spelling is bound to show. It is indeed
a strong and proper objection to all such simplifications that they
are unable to exhibit the finer distinctions; but this must not imply
that Mr. Jones' ear is lacking in delicate perception, or that he is
an incompetent observer. If he says, as he does say, that the second
syllable in the words _obloquy_ and _parasite_ are spoken by educated
Londoners with the same vowel-sound (which he denotes by [e], that is
the sound of _er_ in the word _danger_), then it is true that they are
so pronounced, or at least so similarly that a trained ear refuses to
distinguish them [obl_er_quy, par_er_site].

[Footnote 16: _A Phonetic Dictionary of the English Language_, by
Hermann Michaelis, Headmaster of the Mittelschule in Berlin, and
Daniel Jones, M.A., Lecturer on Phonetics at University College,
London, 1913. There is a second edition of this book in which the
words are in the accustomed alphabetical order of their literary
spelling.]

To this an objector might fairly reply that Mr. Jones could
distinguish the two sounds very well if it suited him to do so;
but that, as it is impossible for him to note them in his defective
phonetic script, he prefers to confuse them. I shall not lose sight
of this point,[17] but here I will only say that, if there really is a
difference between these two vowels in common talk, then if Mr. Jones
can afford to disregard it it must be practically negligible, and
other phoneticians will equally disregard it, as the Oxford Press has
in its smaller dictionary.

[Footnote 17: I am not likely to forget it or to minimize it, for it
is my own indictment against Mr. Jones' system, and since his practice
strongly supports my contention I shall examine it and expose it
(see p. 43); but the objection here raised is not really subversive
of my argument here, as may be judged from the fact that the Oxford
University Press has adopted or countenanced Mr. Jones' standard in
their small popula