as they are now.[1] The letters k and f are akin to each other; the Sanscrit katvar is the Gothic fidvor (four), and the Lithuanian dwy-lika is our twâ-lifa (twelve). With us, Livorno becomes Leghorn; and in Aberdeenshire kwa (the Latin quis) is pronounced fa. No change seems to have been made in the sounds when dun and ur were written as doun and our in the Creed before us. The English word for domus is to this day pronounced in Northumberland as hoose. This, in parts of Yorkshire, is corrupted into ha-oose; if this last be pronounced rapidly, it gives house, as it is sounded by good speakers of English in our day.[2] It is hard to know why us should be spelt now as it was a thousand years ago, and yet why ur should be turned into our.
EAST MIDLAND.
(A.D. 1240.)
| Who þat þen wil berihed a be, | a saved | |
| So of þe þrinnes b leve he, | b Trinity | |
| And nede at hele c þat last ai sal | c salvation | |
| Ðat þe fleshede d ai with al | d incarnation | |
| Of cure louerd Jhu Crist forþi e | e therefore | |
| Dat he trowe it trewli. |
- ↑ The pronunciation of a word like Loughborough is the despair of foreigners. Why should cough be sounded differently from plough? ‘I have a cow in my box,’ said a Frenchman, meaning a cough in his chest. Bunyan, who came from the East Midland, pronounced daughter as dafter; so we see by his rimes, quoted by Mr. Earle (Philology of the English Tongue), p. 127.
- ↑ It is pronounced in South Lancashire in a way quod literis dicere non est, but something like heawse (Garnett's Essays, p. 77). Coude (our could), wound, and bound have three different sounds in modern English.
