1. _The fault of incompetent enunciation._--A person who says _sick_ for _thick_, or _elebben_ for _eleven_, does so, not because he knows no better, but because he cannot enounce the right sounds of _th_ and _v_. He is _incompetent_ to it. His error is not one of ignorance. It is an acoustic or a phonetic defect. As such it differs from-- 2. _The fault of erroneous enunciation._--This is the error of a person who talks of _jocholate_ instead of _chocolate_. It is not that he _cannot_ pronounce rightly, but that he mistakes the nature of the sound required. Still more the person who calls _a hedge_ _a nedge_, and _an edge_ _a hedge_. s. 244. Incompetent enunciation, and erroneous enunciation are, however, only the proximate and immediate causes of bad orthoepy. Amongst the remote causes (the immediate causes of _erroneous_ enunciation) are the following. I. _Undefined notions as to the language to which a word belongs._--The flower called _anemone_ is variously pronounced. Those who know Greek say _anem[=o]ne_, speaking as if the word was written _anemohny_. The mass say, _anem[)o]ne_, speaking as if the word was written _anemmony_. Now, the doubt here is as to the language of the word. If it be Greek, it is _anem[=o]ne_. [Greek: Haima rhodon tiktei, ta de dakrua tan anemonan]. BION. And if it be English, it is (on the score of analogy) as undoubtedly _an['e]mmony_. The pronunciation of the word in point is determined when we have determined the language of it. II. _Mistakes as to fact, the language of a word being determined._--To know the word _anem[=o]ne_ to be Greek, and to use it as a Greek word, but to call it _anem[)o]ny_, is not to be undecided as to a matter of language, but to be ignorant as to a matter of quantity. III. _Neglect of analogy._--Each and all of the following words, _orator_, _theatre_, _senator_, &c. are in the Latin language, from whence they are derived, accented on the second syllable; as _or['a]tor_, _the['a]tre_, _sen['a]tor_. In English, on the contrary, they are accented on the first; as _['o]rator_, _th['e]atre_, {175} _s['e]nator_. The same is the case with many other words similarly derived. They similarly suffer a change of accent. So many words do this, that it is the rule in English for words to throw their accent from the second syllable (counting from the end of the word) to the third. It was on the strength of this rule,--in other words, on the analogies of _orator_, &c., that the English pronunciation of the Greek word [Greek: anemone] was stated to be _an['e]mmone_. Now, to take a word derived from the Latin, and to look to its original quantity only, without consulting the analogies of other words similarly derived, is to be neglectful of the analogies of our own language, and attentive to the quantities of a foreign one. These, amongst others, the immediate causes of erroneous enunciation, have been adduced not for the sake of exhausting, but for the sake of illustrating the subject.