they must not be thought of as conjuring smiles on the faces of
Messrs. Jones, Michaelis and Rippmann: they are deadly products of
honest study and method, and serious evidence whereby any one should
be convinced that such a standard of English pronunciation is likely
to create homophones: and yet in searching the dictionary I have not
found it guilty of many new ones.[20] For examples of homophones
due to our 'standard' speech one might take first the 20 _wh_- words
(given on page 14) which have lost their aspirate, and with them the
9 _wr_- words: next the 36 words in table iv and note, which have lost
their trilled _R_: and then the 41 words from table vi on page 15; and
that would start us with some 100 words, the confusion of which is
due to our Southern English pronunciation, since the differentiation
of all these words is still preserved in other dialects. The
differentiation of these 100 words would of course liberate their
twins, so the total number of gains should be doubled.

[Footnote 20: A fair list might no doubt be made; the most amusing
item would be--_Ophelia_ = _aphelia_: then _illusion_ = _elusion_,
_paten_ = _pattern_, _seaman_ = _seamen_, _phial_ = _file_, _custody_
= _custardy_, and of course _verdure_ = _verger_ and _fissure_ =
_fisher_. It would also allow _partition_ = _petition_, _proscribe_
= _prescribe_, and _upbraid_ = _abrade_! I take these from the first
edition.]

[Sidenote: Example of one class.]

But number is not so important as the quality and frequency of the
words involved, so I will instance one class in detail, namely the
words in which _aw_ and _or_ are confused. Here are a dozen of them: