Dialect study involves the observation and description of all facts concerning the natural living speech of men, and especially those points in which the speech of individuals or groups differs from that of the standard literary language as represented in classic writers and classic speakers. Standard literary English is always a little behind the times. It is the stuffed and mounted specimen in the museum. Dialect is the live animal on its native heath. Most people, indeed, will think that their speech does not differ materially from standard English. They say, “We speak near enough alike ‘for practical purposes’. But a thousand years hence the pronunciation of our country may have changed so much that it will seem like another language, and our descendants will write learned theses to prove that we pronounced ‘cough’ like cow or like cuff. A new language will have grown out of an old one, but no one know how it came about. Careful dialect study will help explain it.” Kansas is a peculiarly favorable field for dialect study. We have here side by side representatives from nearly every state in the Union, and from a dozen foreign countries. The observer has here what elsewhere he must travel over half the world to find. In a district where the people are all natives, the speech is so nearly homogeneous that it is difficult to find any one who recognizes the peculiarities of his own language, but here the contrast of strange tongues strikes us immediately and we become conscious early of the fact that all men do not speak alike. Study of dialect may be classified under the heads of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. Of these the last two are the easiest, and may be carried on by almost any one with pleasure and valuable results. Pronunciation is the most difficult of these matters to study, as competent observation and reports can be made only by one who has made a thorough study of Phonetics. To those who might wish to take up the study of this branch of the subject, Sweet’s Primer of Phonetics, and Grandgent’s “Vowel Measurements” and “German and English Sounds” are recommended.