Henry Sweet
Published: 2015-07-26
Total Pages: 258
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Excerpt from A Handbook of Phonetics: Including a Popular Exposition of the Principles of Spelling Reform The importance of phonetics as the indispensable foundation of all study of language - whether that study be purely theoretical, or practical as well - is now generally admitted. Without a knowledge of the laws of sound-change, scientific philology - whether comparative or historical - is impossible, and without phonetics their study degenerates into a mere mechanical enumeration of letter-changes. And now that philologists are directing their attention more and more to the study of living dialects and savage languages, many of which have to be written down for the first time, the absolute necessity of a thorough practical as well as theoretical mastery of phonetics becomes more and more evident. Many instances might be quoted of the way in which important philological facts and laws have been passed over or misrepresented through the observer's want of phonetic training. 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.
