In the case of phonetic change, it is only to be expected that the sounds of a language will not remain eternally changeless. A language is spoken by a large number of individuals, no two of whom are gifted with precisely the same vocal apparatus. In consequence no two of them will utter words in precisely the same way. Before writing and printing were general, these slight variations in articulation were bound to have an effect on the language. People more or less unconsciously imitate the sounds they hear, especially if they are not checked up by the written forms of words. Even to-day changes are going on, and writing is at best a poor representation of phonetics. The Georgian, the Londoner, the Welshman and the Middle Westerner can understand the same printed language, precisely because it does not at all represent their peculiarities of dialect. Variant sounds uttered by one individual may be caught up in the language, especially if the variant articulation is simpler or shorter. Thus the shortening of a word from several syllables to one, though it starts accidentally, is easily made habitual among a large number of speakers because it does facilitate speech. In the classic example, pre-English, "habeda" and "habedun" became in Old English, "haefde" and" haefdon," and are in present English (I, we) "had."[1] In the same way variations that reduce the unstressed syllables of a word readily insinuate themselves into the articulatory habits of a people. In the production of stressed syllables, the vocal chords are under high tension and the breath is shut in. It is easier, consequently, to produce the unstressed syllables "with shortened, weakened articulations... lessening as much as possible all interference with the breath stream."[2] Thus "contemporaneous prohibition" becomes "kntempe'rejnjes prhe'bifn." Sound changes thus take place, in general, as lessenings of the labor of articulation, by means of adaptation to prevailing rest positions of the vocal organs. They take place further in more or less accidental adaptations to the particular speech habits of a people. That is, those sounds become discarded that do not fit in with the general articulatory tendencies of a language. Of this the weakening of unstressed syllables in English and palatalization in Slavic are examples.[1*] [Footnote 1: Bloomfield: _loc. cit._, p. 211.] [Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 212.] [Footnote 1*: _Ibid._, p. 218.]