Note (return) — LIST OF HOMOPHONES

In culling these flowers of speech I was not blind to their great picturesque merits, but they must not be taken for jokes, at least they must not be thought of as conjuring smiles on the faces of Messrs. Jones, Michaelis and Rippmann: they are deadly products of honest study and method, and serious evidence whereby any one should be convinced that such a standard of English pronunciation is likely to create homophones: and yet in searching the dictionary I have not found it guilty of many new ones.20 For examples of homophones due to our 'standard' speech one might take first the 20 wh- words (given on page 14) which have lost their aspirate, and with them the 9 wr- words: next the 36 words in table iv and note, which have lost their trilled R: and then the 41 words from table vi on page 15; and that would start us with some 100 words, the confusion of which is due to our Southern English pronunciation, since the differentiation of all these words is still preserved in other dialects. The differentiation of these 100 words would of course liberate their twins, so the total number of gains should be doubled.