[191] This lady overlooked the other side of the question; viz. that by a reform of the spelling, words now spelt alike and pronounced differently, would be distinguished by their letters; for the nouns _abuse_ and _use_ would be distinguished from the verbs, which would be spelt _abuze_, _yuze_; and so in many instances. See the answer below. [192] This remark of the Doctor is very just and obvious. A countryman writes _aker_ or _akur_ for _acre_; yet the countryman is _right_, as the word _ought_ to be spelt; and we laugh at him only because _we_ are accustomed to be _wrong_. [193] This is a fact of vast consequence. [194] That is, if the language had retained the old _Roman_ spelling, and been pronounced as the modern _Italian_. This is a fair state of facts, and a complete answer, to all objections to a reform of spelling. [195] In the same ridiculous manner, as _we_ write, _rough_, _still_, _neighbor_, _wrong_, _tongue_, _true_, _rhetoric_, &c. and yet pronounce the words, _ruf_, _stil_, _nabur_, _rong_, _tung_, _tru_, _retoric_. Transcriber's Notes: Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. Simple typographical and spelling errors were corrected. The double commas occurring three times on p. 311 & 312 appear to be intentional. In DISSERTATION V the author was inconsistent in the use of italics in the minor headings--most of the time the language was italicized but when there were two or more languages then the language name was in standard font and the articles, conjunctions etc. were italicized. The usage was changed so that languages were always italicized and the other words were unitalicized. Italics words are denoted by _underscores_. Bold words are denoted by =equals=. Gespert font is denoted by +plus signs+. Greek text has been transliterated and enclosed in ~tildes~. Hand pointing right is denoted by --> Symbols for Diacritical Marks Encountered in the Text. In the table below, the "x" represents a letter with a diacritical mark. DIACRITICAL MARK SAMPLE ABOVE BELOW macron (straight line) ¯ [=x] [x=] 1 dot · [.x] [x.] acute accent (aigu) ´ ['x] [x'] breve (u-shaped symbol) ∪ [)x] [x)] tilde ˜ [~x] [x~] numbers 2 [2x] [x2] End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dissertation on the English Language, by Noah Webster, Jr.