[4]. Early English Pronunciation, with especial reference to Shakespeare and Chaucer. By Alex. J. Ellis, F.R.S.
[5]. Kritishes Lehrgebändes der englischen Sprache. Leipzig.
[6]. Merchant of Venice, Act i., Scene 3.
[7]. Persons who consider themselves experts in the art of aspirating might do well to procure “Harry Hawkins’ H Book; showing how he learned to aspirate his H’s,” and put their aspirative faculties to a crucial test, by reading aloud the story of “The Hairy Ape.” The little book cannot be too warmly recommended as a practical and amusing method of learning to aspirate.
[8]. See Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. Oxford University Press, 1880.
[9]. The following gentlemen kindly furnished the writer with an account of their habitual pronunciation of words in which the silent H is implicated:—Mr Matthew Arnold; Mr Samuel Brandram; Mr Robert Browning; Rev. Derwent Coleridge; The Very Rev. the Dean of Chichester; Right Hon. W. E. Forster; His Grace the Duke of Richmond and Gordon; Professor Huxley; Mr Henry Irving; Sir Wilfrid Lawson; His Eminence Cardinal Manning; Sir James Paget; Mr F. E. Sandys (Public Orator of Cambridge); Right Hon. Lord Selborne; Right Hon. Lord Sherbrooke; Rev. C. H. Spurgeon; Very Rev. Dean Stanley; Mr Edmond Yates; and a distinguished member of the present Ministry (1880).
[10]. A Higher English Grammar. By Alex. Bain, LL.D., Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen.
[11]. Note (by Professor Skeat).—There is a ridiculous notion that u, forsooth, must precede GH. Hence thogh, rightly pronounced with o, is actually spelt though. Laghter, rightly pronounced with a (as in Italian a), is spelt laughter. Through is quite correct: ou as in soup. Spellings like caught, slaughter, are not only mistakes for caght, slaghter, but the misspelling has affected the pronunciation. Gh is a comic question altogether.
[12]. According to Carpenter’s Physiology, to pronounce TH, “the point of the tongue is applied to the back of the incisors, or to the front of the palate.” Such injunctions as these are doubtless strictly followed out by foreigners learning English, the unavoidable result naturally being that thin and then become approximately “sin” and “szen.”
[13]. This only applies to occasions on which they indulge in English speech. The Anglo-Saxon WH (written Hw) had formerly a more palatal sound, and while passing into ʍ had a tendency to become f. In the Aberdeenshire dialect it has remained f; e.g., fan, far = when, where. Many such eccentric permutations are amusingly anaglyptographed in that monument of the “Aberdeenshire Doric,” Johnny Gibb o’ Gushetneuk. (Ed’bro’: D. Douglas.)