learn three forms of one speech must be a negligible number;
the practical pupils will generally be content to master one, and
that will, no doubt, be the highly recommended style B, and its
corresponding dictionary; they will rule out A and C as works
of supererogation; and indeed those would be needless if B were
satisfactory.

[Sidenote: In deliberate repititions.]

So, then, we are asking what is the condition of a man who has learned
the dictionary standard?

(1) In common talk if we speak so indistinctly as not to be
understood, we repeat our sentence with a more careful articulation.
As Sweet used to say, the only security against the decay of language
through careless articulation into absolute unintelligibility is the
personal inconvenience of having to repeat your words when you are
indistinctly heard. 'What' leaps out from the dictionary with a shout
to the rescue of all his fellows. And when you have experienced
this warcry 'what? what?' oftener than you like, you will raise the
standard of your pronunciation (just as you would raise your voice to
a deaf listener) merely to save yourself trouble, even though you were
insensible to the shame of the affront.

[Sidenote: In asseveration.]

And this more careful articulation obtains also in all _asseveration_.
A speaker who wishes to provoke attention to any particular statement
or sentiment will speak the words by which he would convey it more
slowly and with more careful articulation than the rest of his
utterance.

Under both these common conditions the man who has learned only the
vernacular of Mr. Jones' phonetics has no resource but to emphasize
with all their full horrors words like _seprit_, _sin'kerpate_,
_din'ersty_, _ernoin't_, _mis'ernthrope_, _sym'perthy_,
_mel'ernkerly_, _mel'erdy_, _serspe'ct_, _erno'y_, &c.[24], which
when spoken indistinctly in careless talk may pass muster, but when
accurately articulated are not only vulgar and absurd, but often
unrecognizable.

[Footnote 24: Writing _er_, always unaccented, for [e].]

[Sidenote: In public speaking.]

(2) Again, public speakers use a pronunciation very different from
that in the dictionary, and Mr. Jones admits this and would teach
it _sepritly_ as 'style A'. But it is wrong to suppose that its
characteristics are a mere fashion or a pedantic regard for things
obsolete, or a nice rhetorical grace, though Mr. Jones will have it
to be mostly artificial, 'due to well-established, tho