Pronunciation is the mode of enouncing certain words and syllables. As
pronunciation varies with the modes and fashions of the times, it is
sometimes fluctuating in particular words, and high authorities are often
so much at variance, that the correct mode is hard to be determined; hence
to acquire a correct pronunciation, this irregularity, whatever be the
cause, must be submitted to.

Be very careful to give each letter its proper sound and avoid omitting or
perverting the sound of any letter or syllable of a word, without some good
authority.

The unaccentuated syllables of words are very liable to be either omitted,
slurred or corrupted, and there is no word in the language more frequently
and unjustly treated in this respect than the conjunction--_and_. It
is seldom half articulated, although it is properly entitled to
_three_ distinct elementary sounds.

Heaven _a_nd earth will witness,
If Rome must fall, that we are innocent. I

The Assyrian came down, like the wolf on the fold,
And _h_is cohorts were gleaming in purple _a_nd gold.

The word _and_, in these and similar examples, is commonly pronounced
as if written _u_nd or _u_n, with an imperfect or partially occluded
articulation of these elements; whereas, it ought always to be
pronounced in such a manner that each of its own three elementary sounds,
though in their combined state, may distinctly appear.

In pronouncing the phrase, "and his," not only the _a_, but the