Excerpt from On Early English Pronunciation: With Especial Reference to Chaucer Besides, the former mode of putting the question has a tendency towards the assumption that each symbol, or group of symbols, stood only for one sound, or at most for one pair of sounds, one long and one short. Considering that our first vowel is at present the representative of at least four distinct sounds (as in fate, fat, fat/zer, fall), and our second vowel of at least three (as in we, w/zen, were); we must not assume that it was entirely otherwise five or ten centuries ago. Mr. Ellis leans on the broken reed of the maxim that The Orthography shows the sound How untrustworthy the support is - though unhappily we some times have no other - will be abundantly proved further on. But besides trusting far too implicitly to this delusive maxim, Mr. Ellis in conducting his case exhibits singular partiality towards one class of witnesses, while others - by far the most important - he treats with undeserved dis respect: they are not indeed put out of court, but they are by no means allowed full, a patient, and impartial hearing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.