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expressions.

The speaking voice is a more complicated machine than the singing voice, and capable of an infinite variety of effects; yet we may soon discover that words and syllables are often arranged in a succession which the mouth is incompetent to perform. In the Chapter upon Speaking, the different movements have been alluded to; and it will be readily conceived, that language should be so constructed as to fall in with the natural evolutions of the mouth.

The English tongue, so remarkable for its grammatical simplicity, is loaded with a great variety of dull unmeaning terminations. Mr. Sheridan attributes this defect 'to an utter inattention to what is 'easy to the organs of speech and agreeable to the 'ear;' and further adds, 'that the French having 'been adopted as the language of the court, no 'notice was taken of the spelling or pronunciation

* The different dialects in the South Sea Islands abound in vowel sounds, perhaps above any other language. They have also another striking peculiarity, that of rejecting all double consonants, possessing invariably vowel terminations, both of their syllables and their words; every vowel, therefore, is distinctly sounded. Several consonants used in the English, do not exist in those of the Georgian and Society Islands: there is no sibilant, or hissing sound; S, C, and the corresponding letters are therefore unnecessary. We copy a few of these words, the A sounded as in ah!

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'of our words until the reign of queen Anne." Our language is made up of a mixture of others, and though deficient in symmetry, is copious and powerful. The great obstacle to a correct pronunciation has been the want of a more accurate knowledge of the power and use of the consonants; which perplexity has been much increased by the circumstance, that the words derived from foreign languages retain their original spelling.

As words have also been constructed without any regard to facility of utterance, the ordinary operation of the mouth has, in many instances, converted the sound of one letter into that of another.

It has been previously remarked, that in musical accents a strong sound is invariably followed by a weak one, and a broad expression by one that is pointed. Similar effects take place in language and in words; it matters not of what letters they may be formed. In the word Catalani, for instance, though the three first syllables are precisely alike as to their vowels, they comply with this law, and fashion themselves into the following musical

phrase, Ka-te lah-ne; so that wherever the weaker accent falls, the vowel, though naturally broad, will contract itself into a narrow and diminished sound.

* So little was spelling attended to in the time of Elizabeth, that Dr. Johnson informs us, that on referring to Shakspeare's will, to determine how his name was spelt, he was found to have written it himself no less than three different ways.

The organs of speech also, are not sufficiently alert to repeat the same expression instantaneously, without producing a hiatus, and we naturally change the vowel into an intermediate sound, by which the voice imperceptibly passes from one syllable to another; as in the word impossibility, which, in the evolution of the mouth, takes the following form,

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im-pau-sa bi-la-te; because the mouth executes more easily that vowel to which the previous consonant leads. The tendency of the voice to sink into the chest, is one cause of the changes we are constantly making of one letter for another. Happily for us, this alteration is always from the sharp sound to the soft. Having not less than ten thousand words in our language that begin or end with S, were it not for this agreeable change, that horrible hissing, which foreigners so much complain of, would become intolerable.

The nature of the vowels and consonants has been generally described in the Chapter upon Speaking, but they will now be more fully considered.

CHAPTER XLIX.

AN ANALYSIS OF THE ALPHABET.

THE vowels, or vocal letters, are of the first importance to language. They are formed by the voice

alone, which, with a certain conformation of mouth, produces a simple continuous sound, and have been hitherto incorrectly ranked in the following order— A, E, I, O, U, Y, and W. The last being, at all times, the shortest possible utterance of the u or double oo, now no longer coquettes between vowels and mutes, but is constant to the former class.

The other letters are properly divided into the separate classes-mutes, liquids, and subliquids.

The mutes are the most opposed to the vowels. They have no vocal tone, and their office is merely to act as stops or joints in the structure of language; similar to the tongue, in flute-playing, marking and dividing the notes. They may, therefore, be considered as interruptions, performed by the action of the lips, teeth, and tongue upon the breath.

They consist of the following letters-C, F, H, K, Q, P, S, T, Th, and Sh, and the double mute X.* In speaking of the mutes by name, we attach a vowel to them, to render them more audible; but it must be understood, that here their exact utterance, when in combination, is all we are considering, and

*This class exhibits a lamentable want of simplicity and inefficiency. The four characters, C, K, Q, and S, have but two distinct sounds; while the mutes, Th, and Sh, ought surely to have simple characters. The Scotch have another mute ch, executed by forcing the breath through a narrow chink, formed by the root of the tongue and the back part of the palate. In the counties of Durham and Northumberland, this aspirate is converted into a liquid, and becomes their R. This is effected by vocalizing it, and vibrating the curtain of the palate with the breath, as we do the tip of the tongue in the ordinary R. This provincialism confirms the derivation of the liquid.

that with their names we have nothing to do. Their office is shewn in the words cock-pit, footpath, &c., the slow pronunciation of which convinces the ear that they admit of no tone, except at the point where the vowels occur.

The third class are the liquids, in which intonation is blended with the action of the breath, lips, teeth, and tongue; producing a modified petto tone, which can be continued for any length of time.

The difference between mutes and liquids will be best illustrated by an example; and, fortunately, the various inconsistencies of our alphabet afford us one, in which a mute and liquid are represented by the same character, TH. By strict attention to the slow utterance of the word thin, the ear at once detects that there is no voice, no vocal tone until the exact point at which the vowel comes on; while in the wore then, the voice is heard as soon as utterance commences, and as long as we choose to sustain the th before the vowel. The same difference is observable in the words thick and this. In uttering the mute Th the tongue should be placed in contact with the edge of the upper front teeth, and the breath forced between them; while doing this, let the voice sound, and the liquid Th is produced.

By a similar test, each mute will be found to have its corresponding liquid; the changes in all may not perhaps be so direct as the one given, but explanation will leave them all perfectly evident

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