Deaf is generally pronounced deef. It is the universal practice in the eastern states; and it is general in the middle and southern; tho some have adopted the English pronunciation, def. The latter is evidently a corruption; for the word is in analogy with leaf and sheaf, and has been from time immemorial. So in Sir William Temple's works, Virg. Ecl.
——"We sing not to the deaf,
An answer comes from every trembling leaf."
Leaf and deaf, with a different orthography, are repeatedly made to rhime in Chaucer's works; as in the Wife of Bath's Prologue, L. 6217,
"For that I rent out of his book a lefe,
That of the stroke myn ere wex al defe."
So also line 6249.
This was the orthography of his time, and an almost conclusive evidence that deaf was pronounced deef.[60] This pronunciation is generally retained in America, and analogy requires it.
This dissertation will be closed with one observation, which the reader may have made upon the foregoing criticisms: That in many instances the Americans still adhere to the analogies of the language, where the English have infringed them. So far therefore as the regularity of construction is concerned, we ought to retain our own practice and be our own standards. The English practice is an authority; but considering the force of custom and the caprice of fashion, their practice must be as liable to changes and to errors, as the practice of a well educated yeomanry, who are governed by habits and not easily led astray by novelty. In the instances where we have adhered to analogy, no consideration can warrant us in resigning our practice to the authority of a foreign court, which, thro mere affectation, may have embraced many obvious errors. In doubtful cases, to pay a suitable deference to the opinions of others, is wise and prudent; but to renounce an obvious principle of propriety because others have renounced it, is to carry our complaisance for the faults of the great, much farther than we can justify, and in a nation, it is an act of servility that wants a name.
