John Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary: Part Of The Indo-European Language
English language is a member of the Indo-European language family which include Latin, French, Celtic languages, Germanic languages, Baltic languages, Indo-Iranian languages, Slavic languages. English is a part of the Germanic languages; there are three groups of the Germanic language and which are: the North Germanic or Norse, including Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic, the West Germanic, including German, Dutch and English, the East Germanic which is from Gothic. The origin of the English language is the West Germanic that came from the Anglo-Saxon invaders. The history of the English language went through three periods, the first period is Old English (450-1100 AD.) the main historical features of this period are: the coming of the
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John Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (1791) was very effective in setting standards for the correct pronunciation. Sheridan and Walker chose the educated Londoners speech as a model, however in linguistic aspect the features of this model are not better or worse than what was used by other speakers. Elocutionists considered it was necessary to standardize pronunciation in parallel with grammar, vocabulary and …show more content…
This criteria included the peculiar words of all professions, which means relating to specific group of people that distinct them from others. To include foreign words in his dictionary as well, like alien or category. The names of species are to be included for example, cat, rose and dog not because they needed definitions but because the accents of such words needed to be settled, the sounds of the words to be enquired, knowing the exact origin of the words or deducing the etymology. He wanted to settle the words spelling or orthography. Another criterion he added in his dictionary plan was creating a pronunciation guide, the polysyllables emphasizing and the monosyllables pronunciation. He planned to examine the words derivation, explain words with clarity, depth and brevity. The plan contained imputing words to classes; general, obsolete, poetic, that is used by a particular writer, used only in comic writing, or by barbarians (Freeborn,
John Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (1791) was very effective in setting standards for the correct pronunciation. Sheridan and Walker chose the educated Londoners speech as a model, however in linguistic aspect the features of this model are not better or worse than what was used by other speakers. Elocutionists considered it was necessary to standardize pronunciation in parallel with grammar, vocabulary and …show more content…
This criteria included the peculiar words of all professions, which means relating to specific group of people that distinct them from others. To include foreign words in his dictionary as well, like alien or category. The names of species are to be included for example, cat, rose and dog not because they needed definitions but because the accents of such words needed to be settled, the sounds of the words to be enquired, knowing the exact origin of the words or deducing the etymology. He wanted to settle the words spelling or orthography. Another criterion he added in his dictionary plan was creating a pronunciation guide, the polysyllables emphasizing and the monosyllables pronunciation. He planned to examine the words derivation, explain words with clarity, depth and brevity. The plan contained imputing words to classes; general, obsolete, poetic, that is used by a particular writer, used only in comic writing, or by barbarians (Freeborn,