=2.= There are several ways of approaching the question. We may turn our attention mainly to the requirements of the public speaker--clergyman, actor, singer, lecturer, reciter, or politician; this is the province of the teachers of elocution. It must be confessed that these have rarely had a scientific training; in many cases they base their teaching on their own experience as reciters and on what their powers of observation have enabled them to learn from their pupils; and they frequently hand on traditions obtained from their own teachers, which may have nothing but old age to recommend them. It is to be feared that the majority of those professing to teach elocution are little better than quacks; and by no one is this more readily acknowledged than by the few who have made an earnest study of the art of public speaking and singing.
The physicist considers the production of sounds from another point of view; he measures the waves of sound with delicate instruments. The physiologist, again, studies the organs of speech in a state of health and sickness.
From all these the phonetician derives assistance. His concern is the spoken language generally. He seeks to ascertain how sounds are produced, and how they are represented in writing; he traces the changes which sounds undergo according to time and place; he attempts to determine the standard of speech for his own time and his own surroundings; he considers how the pronunciation is best imparted to the young and to foreigners.
When the reader has come to the end of this little book, he will see how complicated these problems are, and how much yet awaits solution; he may also have acquired some interest in these problems and desire to give his help. Such help is urgently needed; the number of serious students is distressingly small, and real progress can only be made if their number grows considerably.
=3.= Reference has been made to the question of =standard speech=; it is convenient to discuss this at once, as the standard selected naturally affects the way in which the subject of English pronunciation is treated.
It is generally agreed that there are two principal types of English speech: Southern English, of which Dr H. Sweet is the best known exponent; and Northern English, which Dr R. J. Lloyd has described in an excellent book. Southern English may be defined as the English spoken in London. The definition will at once strike the reader as requiring some modification--for what form of English is not spoken in London? and the dialect (or rather set of dialects) peculiar to London and known as "cockney" is certainly not to be set up as the standard.