and town-bred standard of speech throughout the schools of the
country, is destroying dialects and local forms with great rapidity.
These have been studied by specialists, and their value is fully
recognized; but the attitude of the educated classes towards them is
still contemptuous or indifferent. This ignorant contempt is to be
regretted for many reasons. Not only is some knowledge of dialects
needful for any true understanding of the history and character of our
language, but the standard speech has in the past derived much
enrichment and what is called 'regeneration' from the picturesque
vocabularies of local vernaculars. The drying-up of these sources
cannot but be regarded as a misfortune. We shall therefore actively
encourage educated people, and, above all, teachers in country
schools, to take a more sympathetic interest in the forms and usages
of local speech. The Scotch Education Board has recently ordered that
dialect should not be unduly discouraged in Scottish schools, and
advised that children should be allowed some use of their natural
speech in class. We hope that this example may be followed all over
the country. We also believe that a knowledge of provincial
pronunciation, and a familiarity with the richness and beauty of the
vowel sounds which it often preserves, especially in the North, would
be of value to those who speak the standard language, and would
certainly lead to some correction of the slurred and indistinct way of
speaking which is now regarded as correct English, and deliberately
taught as such on the Continent.

VI. As to idiomatic pronunciation involving speech-rhythm. The
literary taste of the eighteenth century, as typified in Dr. Johnson,
consciously discredited idioms which it held to be ungrammatical; and
this error persists. A simple instance is the growing loss of our
enclitics. The negative _not_ was enclitic after the verb, and this