the outlying regions were said to speak in a degenerated language, which was called a patois (pronounced pah twoh).

Q. How did the Midland dialect gain the ascendancy?

A. London was the capital of England, as well as the seat of the Court; furthermore Chaucer, in using the Midland dialect as a medium for his writings, fixed it as a national language.

Q. What versions of the Bible have affected our language?

A. The translations from the Latin by John Wycliffe about 1382, which spread the written language among the peasants, and the version of 1611, which King James authorized to be made by a commission selected from his bishops and clergy.

Q. What other writers developed our language?

A. All the great writers, including Marlowe, Milton, and especially Shakespeare, whose tremendous vocabulary has shown us the limitless possibilities of our tongue; and so, as civilization has progressed, the dialect of London has gradually been refined and enriched, until now it is the mother tongue of millions and millions of people scattered over the world.

Q. Is it likely that we shall ever have a universal language?

A. Owing to the rapid increase of its use, we are justified in hoping that the English language will become a world language.

Q. Have any successful attempts been made to create a world language?

A. Schleyer, a German scholar, invented a language called Volapuk, which failed of its purpose, chiefly on account of its grammatical complexity.

Esperanto, the invention of Dr. Zamenhof, now occupies this experimental field, but its practicability as a world language has yet to be proved. Its distinguishing feature is that all the nouns end in e, adjectives in a, the adverbs in e, and the pronouns in i; it has a growing vocabulary.

DICTIONARIES

Question. What dictionaries are regarded as the best authorities on pronunciation at the present time?

Answer. In America the International Dictionary and the Century Dictionary; in England Stormonth's Dictionary. In both countries the New English Dictionary, the result of both English and American scholarship, the larger portion of which has been completed, is available for use.

Q. When and by whom was the first pronouncing dictionary compiled?

A. In 1760, by Thomas Sheridan, the father of the celebrated actor and dramatist, Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

Q. How was Sheridan fitted for this selfappointed task?

A. He was a member of the best society in the time of Queen Anne, the Augustan Age of our literature, and had been educated by his father, the close companion of Dean Swift.

Q. What other compilers of dictionaries were there at about this period?

A. Nathan Bailey, 1721; Samuel Johnson, 1755; James Buchanan, 1757; William Johnston, 1764; Ash, Perry, Barclay, and Kendrick, between 1773 and 1775. Their lexicons, however, consisted merely of a list of words in which the accented syllables were indicated.

Q. Who were Sheridan's important successors? A. John Walker, 1791; James Knowles (Sheridan's nephew), about 1789-1840; Benjamin Smart, 1836; Noah Webster, 1806, 1828, 1841; Joseph Worcester, 1830, 1846, 1860; Standard, 1890, 1893, 1894; International, 1890, 1904; Imperial, 1904, 1906, 1907. The New English Dictionary contains vastly more words than any of the others, and a complete history of every word in the language in all its uses from its first introduction.

Q. Are there any dictionaries devoted to colloquialism or slang?

A. Yes; Barrere and Leland have compiled a slang dictionary entitled "Slang, Jargon, and Cant" (1888), and another is "Farmer's Slang and its Analogues" (1890).

PRONUNCIATION

Question. What characterizes good pronun

ciation?

Answer. Consistency.

Q. What is consistency?

A. When applied to vocabulary, it means the adherence to a uniform plane of speech instead of jumping to extremes. For example, it is ridiculous to hear an illiterate person with a commonplace tone use flat a in dance, ask, after, and in the same breath say literat-ure, cult-ure, furnit-ure; it is like patching a calico dress with a piece of velvet.

Q. What has spelling to do with pronunciation ? A. Very little, especially in the English language.

Q. Why is this?

A. Because of the unguarded addition of mute consonants made by writers immediately preceding Chaucer.

Q. What is the modern trend in spelling?

A. To do away with superfluous letters that make words difficult to spell as well as to pronounce.