s. 242. Errors in pronunciation are capable of being classified. In the first place, they may be arranged according to their situation. The man who pronounces the verb _to surv['e]y_, as if it was _s['u]rvey_ (that is, with the accent on the wrong syllable), errs in respect to the accentuation of the word; the situation, or seat of his error, being the accent. To say _or[=a]tor_ instead of _or[)a]tor_ is to err in respect to the quantity of the word, the seat of the error being in the quantity; and to pronounce the _a_ in _father_, as it is pronounced in Yorkshire, or the _s_ in _sound_, as it is pronounced in Devonshire (that is, as _z_), is to err in {173} the matter of the articulate sounds. To mispronounce a word because it is misspelt[34] is only indirectly an error of orthoepy. It is an error, not so much of orthoepy, as of orthography; and to give a wrong inflection to a word is not bad pronunciation but bad grammar. For practical purposes, however, many words that are really points of grammar and of orthography, may be dealt with as points of orthoepy. That the preceding classification is natural I am induced to believe by the following circumstances. Errors in the way of articulation generally arise from a source different from those of accent and of quantity. Errors in accent and quantity are generally referable to insufficient grammatical or etymological knowledge, whilst the errors of articulation betray a provincial dialect. The misdivision of syllables, an orthoepical error of a fourth kind, has in the English, and perhaps in other languages, given rise to a peculiar class of words. There have been those who have written _a nambassador_ for _an ambassador_, misdividing the syllables, and misdistributing the sound of the letter _n_. The double form (_a_ and _an_) of the English indefinite article, encourages this misdivision. Now, in certain words an error of this kind has had a permanent influence. The English word _nag_ is, in Danish, _oeg_; the _n_, in English, having originally belonged to the indefinite _an_, which preceded it. The words, instead of being divided thus, _an ag_, were divided thus, _a nag_, and the fault became perpetuated. That the Danish is the true form we collect, firstly, from the ease with which the English form is accounted for, and, secondly, from the old Saxon form _ehu_, Latin _equus_. In _adder_ we have the process reversed. The true form is _nadder_, old English; _natter_, German. Here the _n_ is taken from the substantive and added to the article. In _newt_ and _eft_ we have each form. The list of words of this sort can be increased. s. 243. In the second place, faults of pronunciation may be arranged according to their cause. {174}