Each dialect has peculiarities of grammar: In itany pails of England, and in :scot land, the plu ral of e ye is not /yes, but the archaic cycit, or /i, 1,11 II. The habitual use of be, where the standard gnuninar prescribes ant, is, arc, etc., is prevalent in large district: of England. Of this kind is the use of the strong conjugation for the weak, or vice versa: as /coy. /op, for /cop, hupel, leaped. (3) Peculiarities of vocab ulary: Those individual words current in one nr more districts, but unknown to the standard vol.abulary, are properly pro: inciali.enns. They are usually genuine words of an older stage of the language. that have survived longer in some localities than in others. Some provincialisms, as beam or bairn, for child. marrow fur fellow or match, to greet for to weep, are common to Scot land and the north of England. others are more local, as to dram, for to fasten or cement : Itcppcn. a Yorkshire term for pretty near: I hrippa, in Cheshire. to cudgel. The exclusion of such words from the standard language is often acci dental, and manyif f o_ them might he and are with advantage resumed; as marrow, gloaming, etc. (4) Peculiarities of intonation: This is some times. though with little propriety, called accent, which means. strictly the stress laid upon a par ticular syllable of a word. There are no doubt local peculiarities of this kind. too. The ten denev of standard English, especially the more recent, is to throw the accent toward the begin ning of the word: in Seotland, the tendency lin gers to say carp' for en' r y. peculiarities of intonation lie in the ditierent ways in which the pitch, of the voice is inanaged—in the musical accompaniment of articulation. Differences in this respect give rise to the monotonous drawl of one district. the angry, querulems tone of an other. the sing-song of a third. etc.
So long as dialectic varieties of language were looked upon indiscriminately as corruptions and barbarisms. they were noticed by schools only that such corruptions might be avoided. .\ more rational ph ilfdogy. trenching upon the rules of good writing, considers then; essential parts of the speech of a people, and a knowledge of them necessary to any thorough investigation of the genius of that speech. It is obvious that
ctiobct is entirely a obit/re term, and that what We call by that in one connection we may call zi in another connection. Thus, oreek and Latin may be called sister dialects of that primitive language from it. is 1101(1 that they. as well as the other members of the litdotf•rn anie family, branelied off. (See Creek spoken of by it self, how•ver. is a language. and ionic.. Doric, .1ttie, etc., are dialects of it. The same holds plod with the others. In practice, however nearly related the speech of two peoples may be, W.• lb) not apply the term dialects. unless the peoples are mutually intelligible and have a com mon literary standard.
For several centuries collections of dialeetie words 11:1Vs been made. but, it is only within re cent years that the stlhie•t has been studied sei entifically and with reference to the exact sounds of dialectic words. The last stage in (lie study of the English dialects is marked by the public:Ili( of the English Dial( el Dirt :unary, edited by .J. Wright (London, IS98 et seq.). A list of the most important glossaries and grammars of the English dialects is given in Paul, I; ril riss der rm iseh, L'h 1896) . and a shorter list may be found in Best 111 i II re (1.1111(1011. 1 ) . .1 stint• of the .1inerican dialects is being conducted by the American Dialeet Society, the results of NvIlich are appearing in the Dialt et Notts t Norwood, ltitto et seq.). The investigation of the German dialects is summarized in Paul's Grand riss. Of the Scandinavian languages the Swed ish has kern most carefully studied on this side, several journals being devoted to the subject. For the dialects of the Nomance languages, con sult,: Gracr, Grandriss der roam aisehen vol. i.(Slra 1 ti!..'4 ) ; and for the Greek dialects: leist•r, /he yri,e/cisein a Dia /et:h.- I8s9); Hoffmann. Die gricchi s•hen hialchtc linger'. 18111 -93) : Smyth, f;reck Diakets (Oxford, 18114). For the Italic dialects consult Conway, Italic Diatects (Oxford, 1900). See A NI 1.:111CANISNIS : ENCLISII LAN :111(1 articles on other languages.