There are great impediments to the general use of a standard in
pronunciation comparable to that existing in spelling.
(orthography). One is the fact that pronunciation is learnt
’’naturally’’ and unconsciously, and orthography is learnt deliberately (1)______
and consciously. Large numbers of us, in fact, remain
throughout our lives quite unconscious with what our speech (2)______
sounds like when we speak out, and it often comes as a shock (3)______
when we firstly hear a recording of ourselves. It is not a voice we (4)______
recognize at once, whereas our own handwriting is something
which we almost always know. We begin the ’’natural’’ learning (5)______
of pronunciation long before we start learning to read or write,
and in our early years we went on unconsciously imitating and (6)______
practicing the pronunciation of those around us for many more
hours per every day than we ever have to spend learning even (7)______
our difficult English spelling. This is ’’ natural’’, therefore, that (8)______
our speech-sounds should be those of our immediate circle；after
all, as we have seen, speech operates as a means of holding a
community and giving a sense of ’’belonging’’. We learn quite (9)______
early to recognize a ’’stranger’’, someone who speaks with an accent
of a different community--perhaps only a few miles far. (10)______