Such are the causes of the local peculiarities in pronunciation, which prevail among the country people in New England, and which, to foreigners, are the objects of ridicule. The great error in their manner of speaking proceeds immediately from not opening the mouth sufficiently. Hence words are drawled out in a careless lazy manner, or the sound finds a passage thro the nose.
Nothing can be so disagreeable as that drawling, whining cant that distinguishes a certain class of people; and too much pains cannot be taken to reform the practice.
Great efforts should be made by teachers of schools, to make their pupils open the teeth, and give a full clear sound to every syllable. The beauty of speaking consists in giving each letter and syllable its due proportion of sound, with a prompt articulation.
Thus in order to pronounce _cow_, _power_, or _gown_ with propriety, the pupil should be taught, after placing the organs in the position required by the first consonant, to open his mouth wide, before he begins the sound of _ow_: Otherwise in passing from that position to the aperture necessary to pronounce _ow_, he will inevitably articulate _ee_, _keow_.
A similar method is recommended to those polite speakers who are so fond of imitating the English stage pronunciation as to embrace every singularity, however disagreeable. I refer to the very modern pronunciation of _kind_, _sky_, _guide_, &c. in which we hear the short _e_ before _i_, _keind_, or _kyind_, _skey_, &c. This is the same barbarous dialect, as the _keow_ and _veow_ of the eastern country people. Yet, strange as it may seem, it is the elegant pronunciation of the fashionable people both in England and America. Even Sheridan, who has laid it down as a rule that _i_ is a dipthong, composed of _aw_ and _ee_, has prefixed a _y_ short to its sound in several words; as _kyind_, _skyi_, _gyide_, &c. We may with equal propriety prefix _e_ to the dipthong _ow_, or to _o_ in _poll_, or to _oo_ in _fool_, or to any other vowel. It is presumed that the bare mention of such barbarisms will be sufficient to restrain their progress, both in New England and on the British theater.
Some of the southern people, particularly in Virginia, almost omit the sound of _r_ as in _ware_, _there_. In the best English pronunciation, the sound of _r_ is much softer than in some of the neighboring languages, particularly the Irish and Spanish; and probably much softer than in the ancient Greek. But there seems to be no good reason for omitting the sound altogether; nor can the omission be defended on the ground, either of good practice or of rules. It seems to be a habit contracted by carelessness.