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OBS. 1.—A knowledge of sounds can be acquired, in the first instance, only by the ear. No description of the manner of their production, or of the differences which distinguish them, can be at all intelligible to him who has not already, by the sense of hearing, acquired a knowledge of both. What I here say of the sounds of the letters, must of course be addressed to those persons only who are able both to speak and to read English. Why then attempt instruction by a method which both ignorance and knowledge on the part of the pupil, must alike render useless? I have supposed some readers to have such an acquaintance with the powers of the letters, as is but loose and imperfect; sufficient for the accurate pronunciation of some words or syllables, but leaving them liable to mistakes in others; extending perhaps to all the sounds of the language, but not to a ready analysis or enumeration of them. Such persons may profit by a written description of the powers of the letters, though no such description can equal the clear impression of the living voice. Teachers, too, whose business it is to aid the articulation of the young, and, by a patient inculcation of elementary principles, to lay the foundation of an accurate pronunciation, may derive some assistance from any notation of these principles, which will help their memory, or that of the learner. The connexion between letters and sounds is altogether arbitrary; but a few positions, being assumed and made known, in respect to some characters, become easy standards for further instruction in respect to others of similar sound.

OBS. 2.—The importance of being instructed at an early age, to pronounce with distinctness and facility all the elementary sounds of one's native language, has been so frequently urged, and is so obvious in itself, that none but those who have been themselves neglected, will be likely to disregard the claims of their children in this respect.[98] But surely an accurate knowledge of the ordinary powers of the letters would be vastly more common, were there not much hereditary negligence respecting the manner in which these important rudiments are learned. The utterance of the illiterate may exhibit wit and native talent, but it is always more or less barbarous, because it is not aided by a knowledge of orthography. For pronunciation and orthography, however they may seem, in our language especially, to be often at variance, are certainly correlative: a true knowledge of either tends to the preservation of both. Each of the letters represents some one or more of the elementary sounds, exclusive of the rest; and each of the elementary sounds, though several of them are occasionally transferred, has some one or two letters to which it most properly or most frequently belongs. But borrowed, as our language has been, from a great variety of sources, to which it is desirable ever to retain the means of tracing it, there is certainly much apparent lack of correspondence between its oral and its written form. Still the discrepancies are few, when compared with the instances of exact conformity; and, if they are, as I suppose they are, unavoidable, it is as useless to complain of the trouble they occasion, as it is to think of forcing a reconciliation. The wranglers in this controversy, can never agree among themselves, whether orthography shall conform to pronunciation, or pronunciation to orthography. Nor does any one of them well know how our language would either sound or look, were he himself appointed sole arbiter of all variances between our spelling and our speech.

OBS. 3.—"Language," says Dr. Rush, "was long ago analyzed into its alphabetic elements. Wherever this analysis is known, the art of teaching language has, with the best success, been conducted upon the rudimental method." * * * "The art of reading consists in having all the vocal elements under complete command, that they may be properly applied, for the vivid and elegant delineation of the sense and sentiment of discourse."—Philosophy of the Voice, p. 346. Again, of "the pronunciation of the alphabetic elements," he says, "The least deviation from the assumed standard converts the listener into the critic; and I am surely speaking within bounds when I say, that for every miscalled element in discourse, ten succeeding words are lost to the greater part of an audience."—Ibid., p. 350. These quotations plainly imply both the practicability and the importance of teaching the pronunciation of our language analytically by means of its present orthography, and agreeably to the standard assumed by the grammarians. The first of them affirms that it has been done, "with the best success," according to some ancient method of dividing the letters and explaining their sounds. And yet, both before and afterwards, we find this same author complaining of our alphabet and its subdivisions, as if sense or philosophy must utterly repudiate both; and of our orthography, as if a ploughman might teach us to spell better: and, at the same time, he speaks of softening his censure through modesty. "The deficiencies, redundancies, and confusion, of the system of alphabetic characters in this language, prevent the adoption of its subdivisions in this essay."—Ib., p. 52. Of the specific sounds given to the letters, he says, "The first of these matters is under the rule of every body, and therefore is very properly to be excluded from the discussions of that philosophy which desires to be effectual in its instruction. How can we hope to establish a system of elemental pronunciation in a language, when great masters in criticism condemn at once every attempt, in so simple and useful a labour as the correction of its orthography!"—P. 256. Again: "I deprecate noticing the faults of speakers, in the pronunciation of the alphabetic elements. It is better for criticism to be modest on this point, till it has the sense or independence to make our alphabet and its uses, look more like the work of what is called—wise and transcendent humanity: till the pardonable variety of pronunciation, and the true spelling by the vulgar, have satirized into reformation that pen-craft which keeps up the troubles of orthography for no other purpose, as one can divine, than to boast of a very questionable merit as a criterion of education."—Ib., p. 383.

OBS. 4.—How far these views are compatible, the reader will judge. And it is hoped he will excuse the length of the extracts, from a consideration of the fact, that a great master of the "pen-craft" here ridiculed, a noted stickler for needless Kays and Ues, now commonly rejected, while he boasts that his grammar, which he mostly copied from Murray's, is teaching the old explanation of the alphabetic elements to "more than one hundred thousand children and youth," is also vending under his own name an abstract of the new scheme of "tonicks, subtonicks, and atonicks;" and, in one breath, bestowing superlative praise on both, in order, as it would seem, to monopolize all inconsistency. "Among those who have successfully laboured in the philological field, Mr. Lindley Murray stands forth in bold relief, as undeniably at the head of the list."—Kirkham's Elocution, p. 12. "The modern candidate for oratorical fame, stands on very different, and far more advantageous, ground, than that occupied by the young and aspiring Athenian; especially since a correct analysis of the vocal organs, and a faithful record of their operations, have been given to the world by Dr. James Rush, of Philadelphia—a name that will outlive the unquarried marble of our mountains."—Ibid., p. 29. "But what is to be said when presumption pushes itself into the front ranks of elocution, and thoughtless friends undertake to support it? The fraud must go on, till presumption quarrels, as often happens, with its own friends, or with itself, and thus dissolves the spell of its merits."—Rush, on the Voice, p. 405.

OBS. 5.—The question respecting the number of simple or elementary sounds in our language, presents a remarkable puzzle: and it is idle, if not ridiculous, for any man to declaim about the imperfection of our alphabet and orthography, who does not show himself able to solve it. All these sounds may easily be written in a plain sentence of three or four lines upon almost any subject; and every one who can read, is familiar with them all, and with all the letters. Now it is either easy to count them, or it is difficult. If difficult, wherein does the difficulty lie? and how shall he who knows not what and how many they are, think himself capable of reforming our system of their alphabetic signs? If easy, why do so few pretend to know their number? and of those who do pretend to this knowledge, why are there so few that agree? A certain verse in the seventh chapter of Ezra, has been said to contain all the letters. It however contains no j; and, with respect to the sounds, it lacks that of f, that of th sharp, and that of u in bull. I will suggest a few additional words for these; and then both all the letters, and all the sounds, of the English language, will be found in the example; and most of them, many times over: "'And I, even I, Artaxerxes, the king, do make a decree to all the treasurers' who 'are beyond the river, that whatsoever Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven, shall require of you, it be done speedily' and faithfully, according to that which he shall enjoin." Some letters, and some sounds, are here used much more frequently than others; but, on an average, we have, in this short passage, each sound five times, and each letter eight. How often, then, does a man speak all the elements of his language, who reads well but one hour!

OBS. 6.—Of the number of elementary sounds in our language, different orthoëpists report differently; because they cannot always agree among themselves, wherein the identity or the simplicity, the sameness or the singleness, even of well-known sounds, consists; or because, if each is allowed to determine these points for himself, no one of them adheres strictly to his own decision. They may also, each for himself, have some peculiar way of utterance, which will confound some sounds which other men distinguish, or distinguish some which other men confound. For, as a man may write a very bad hand which shall still be legible, so he may utter many sounds improperly and still be understood. One may, in this way, make out a scheme of the alphabetic elements, which shall be true of his own pronunciation, and yet have obvious faults when tried by the best usage of English speech. It is desirable not to multiply these sounds beyond the number which a correct and elegant pronunciation of the language obviously requires. And what that number is, it seems to me not very difficult to ascertain; at least, I think we may fix it with sufficient accuracy for all practical purposes. But let it be remembered, that all who have hitherto attempted the enumeration, have deviated more or less from their own decisions concerning either the simplicity or the identity of sounds; but, most commonly, it appears to have been thought expedient to admit some exceptions concerning both. Thus the long or diphthongal sounds of I and U, are admitted by some, and excluded by others; the sound of j, or soft g, is reckoned as simple by some, and rejected as compound by others; so a part, if not all, of what are called the long and the short vowels, as heard in ale and ell, arm and am, all and on, isle or eel and ill, tone and tun, pule or pool and pull, have been declared essentially the same by some, and essentially different by others. Were we to recognize as elementary, no sounds but such as are unquestionably simple in themselves, and indisputably different in quality from all others, we should not have more sounds than letters: and this is a proof that we have characters enough, though the sounds are perhaps badly distributed among them.

OBS. 7.—I have enumerated thirty-six well known sounds, which, in compliance with general custom, and for convenience in teaching. I choose to regard as the oral elements of our language. There may be found some reputable authority for adding four or five more, and other authority as reputable, for striking from the list seven or eight of those already mentioned. For the sake of the general principle, which we always regard in writing, a principle of universal grammar, that there can be no syllable without a vowel, I am inclined to teach, with Brightland, Dr. Johnson, L. Murray, and others, that, in English, as in French, there is given to the vowel e a certain very obscure sound which approaches, but amounts not to an absolute suppression, though it is commonly so regarded by the writers of dictionaries. It may be exemplified in the words oven, shovel, able;[99] or in the unemphatic article the before a consonant, as in the sentence, "Take the nearest:" we do not hear it as "thee nearest," nor as "then carest," but more obscurely. There is also a feeble sound of i or y unaccented, which is equivalent to ee uttered feebly, as in the word diversity. This is the most common sound of i and of y. The vulgar are apt to let it fall into the more obscure sound of short u. As elegance of utterance depends much upon the preservation of this sound from such obtuseness, perhaps Walker and others have done well to mark it as e in me; though some suppose it to be peculiar, and others identify it with the short i in fit. Thirdly, a distinction is made by some writers, between the vowel sounds heard in hate and bear, which Sheridan and Walker consider to be the same. The apparent difference may perhaps result from the following consonant r, which is apt to affect the sound of the vowel which precedes it. Such words as bear, care, dare, careful, parent, are very liable to be corrupted in pronunciation, by too broad a sound of the a; and, as the multiplication of needless distinctions should be avoided, I do not approve of adding an other sound to a vowel which has already quite too many. Worcester, however, in his new Dictionary, and Wells, in his new Grammar, give to the vowel A six or seven sounds in lieu of four; and Dr. Mandeville, in his Course of Reading, says, "A has eight sounds."—P. 9.

OBS. 8.—Sheridan made the elements of his oratory twenty-eight. Jones followed him implicitly, and adopted the same number.[100] Walker recognized several more, but I know not whether he has anywhere told us how many there are. Lindley Murray enumerates thirty-six, and the same thirty-six that are given in the main text above. The eight sounds not counted by Sheridan are these: 1. The Italian a, as in far, father, which he reckoned but a lengthening of the a in hat; 2. The short o, as in hot, which he supposed to be but a shortening of the a in hall; 3. The diphthongal i, as in isle, which he thought but a quicker union of the sounds of the diphthong oi, but which, in my opinion, is rather a very quick union of the sounds ah and ee into ay, I;[101] 4. The long u, which is acknowledged to be equal to yu or yew, though perhaps a little different from you or yoo,[102] the sound given it by Walker; 5. The u heard in pull, which he considered but a shortening of oo; 6. The consonant w, which he conceived to be always a vowel, and equivalent to oo; 7. The consonant y, which he made equal to a short ee; 8. The consonant h, which he declared to be no letter, but a mere breathing, In all other respects, his scheme of the alphabetic elements agrees with that which is adopted in this work, and which is now most commonly taught.

OBS. 9.—The effect of Quantity in the prolation of the vowels, is a matter with which every reader ought to be experimentally acquainted. Quantity is simply the time of utterance, whether long or short. It is commonly spoken of with reference to syllables, because it belongs severally to all the distinct or numerable impulses of the voice, and to these only; but, as vowels or diphthongs may be uttered alone, the notion of quantity is of course as applicable to them, as to any of the more complex sounds in which consonants are joined with them. All sounds imply time; because they are the transient effects of certain percussions which temporarily agitate the air, an element that tends to silence. When mighty winds have swept over sea and land, and the voice of the Ocean is raised, he speaks to the towering cliffs in the deep tones of a long quantity; the rolling billows, as they meet the shore, pronounce the long-drawn syllables of his majestic elocution. But see him again in gentler mood; stand upon the beach and listen to the rippling of his more frequent waves: he will teach you short quantity, as well as long. In common parlance, to avoid tediousness, to save time, and to adapt language to circumstances, we usually utter words with great rapidity, and in comparatively short quantity. But in oratory, and sometimes in ordinary reading, those sounds which are best fitted to fill and gratify the ear, should be sensibly protracted, especially in emphatic words; and even the shortest syllable, must be so lengthened as to be uttered with perfect clearness: otherwise the performance will be judged defective.

OBS. 10.—Some of the vowels are usually uttered in longer time than others; but whether the former are naturally long, and the latter naturally short, may be doubted: the common opinion is, that they are. But one author at least denies it; and says, "We must explode the pretended natural epithets short and long given to our vowels, independent on accent: and we must observe that our silent e final lengthens not its syllable, unless the preceding vowel be accented."—Mackintosh's Essay on E. Gram., p. 232. The distinction of long and short vowels which has generally obtained, and the correspondences which some writers have laboured to establish between them, have always been to me sources of much embarrassment. It would appear, that in one or two instances, sounds that differ only in length, or time, are commonly recognized as different elements; and that grammarians and orthoëpists, perceiving this, have attempted to carry out the analogy, and to find among what they call the long vowels a parent sound for each of the short ones. In doing this, they have either neglected to consult the ear, or have not chosen to abide by its verdict. I suppose the vowels heard in pull and pool would be necessarily identified, if the former were protracted or the latter shortened; and perhaps there would be a like coalescence of those heard in of and all, were they tried in the same way, though I am not sure of it. In protracting the e in met, and the i in ship, ignorance or carelessness might perhaps, with the help of our orthoëpists, convert the former word into mate and the latter into sheep; and, as this would breed confusion in the language, the avoiding of the similarity may perhaps be a sufficient reason for confining these two sounds of e and i, to that short quantity in which they cannot be mistaken. But to suppose, as some do, that the protraction of u in tun would identify it with the o in tone, surpasses any notion I have of what stupidity may misconceive. With one or two exceptions, therefore, it appears to me that each of the pure vowel sounds is of such a nature, that it may be readily recognized by its own peculiar quality or tone, though it be made as long or as short as it is possible for any sound of the human voice to be. It is manifest that each of the vowel sounds heard in ate, at, arm, all, eel, old, ooze, us, may be protracted to the entire extent of a full breath slowly expended, and still be precisely the same one simple sound;[103] and, on the contrary, that all but one may be shortened to the very minimum of vocality, and still be severally known without danger of mistake. The prolation of a pure vowel places the organs of utterance in that particular position which the sound of the letter requires, and then holds them unmoved till we have given to it all the length we choose.

OBS. 11.—In treating of the quantity and quality of the vowels, Walker says, "The first distinction of sound that seems to obtrude itself upon us when we utter the vowels, is a long and a short sound, according to the greater or less duration of time taken up in pronouncing them. This distinction is so obvious as to have been adopted in all languages, and is that to which we annex clearer ideas than to any other; and though the short sounds of some vowels have not in our language been classed with sufficient accuracy with their parent long ones, yet this has bred but little confusion, as vowels long and short are always sufficiently distinguishable."—Principles, No. 63. Again: "But though the terms long and short, as applied to vowels, are pretty generally understood, an accurate ear will easily perceive that these terms do not always mean the long and short sounds of the respective vowels to which they are applied; for, if we choose to be directed by the ear, in denominating vowels long or short, we must certainly give these appellations to those sounds only which have exactly the same radical tone, and differ only in the long or short emission of that tone."—Ib., No. 66. He then proceeds to state his opinion that the vowel sounds heard in the following words are thus correspondent: tame, them; car, carry; wall, want; dawn, gone; theme, him; tone, nearly tun; pool, pull. As to the long sounds of i or y, and of u, these two being diphthongal, he supposes the short sound of each to be no other than the short sound of its latter element ee or oo. Now to me most of this is exceedingly unsatisfactory; and I have shown why.

OBS. 12.—If men's notions of the length and shortness of vowels are the clearest ideas they have in relation to the elements of speech, how comes it to pass that of all the disputable points in grammar, this is the most perplexed with contrarieties of opinion? In coming before the world as an author, no man intends to place himself clearly in the wrong; yet, on the simple powers of the letters, we have volumes of irreconcilable doctrines. A great connoisseur in things of this sort, who professes to have been long "in the habit of listening to sounds of every description, and that with more than ordinary attention," declares in a recent and expensive work, that "in every language we find the vowels incorrectly classed"; and, in order to give to "the simple elements of English utterance" a better explanation than others have furnished, he devotes to a new analysis of our alphabet the ample space of twenty octavo pages, besides having several chapters on subjects connected with it. And what do his twenty pages amount to? I will give the substance of them in ten lines, and the reader may judge. He does not tell us how many elementary sounds there are; but, professing to arrange the vowels, long and short, "in the order in which they are naturally found," as well as to show of the consonants that the mutes and liquids form correspondents in regular pairs, he presents a scheme which I abbreviate as follows. VOWELS: 1. A, as in =all and wh~at, or o, as in orifice and n~ot; 2. U—=urn and h~ut, or l=ove and c~ome; 3. O—v=ote and ech~o; 4. A—=ah and h~at; 5. A—h=azy, no short sound; 6. E—=e=el and it; 7. E—m=ercy and m~et; 8. O—pr=ove and ad~o; 9. OO—t=o=ol and f~o~ot; 10. W—vo=w and la~w; 11. Y—(like the first e—) s=yntax and dut~y. DIPHTHONGS: 1. I—as ah-ee; 2. U—as ee-oo; 3. OU—as au-oo. CONSONANTS: 1. Mutes—c or s, f, h, k or q, p, t, th sharp, sh; 2. Liquids—l, which has no corresponding mute, and z, v, r, ng, m, n, th flat and j, which severally correspond to the eight mutes in their order; 3. Subliquids—g hard, b, and d. See "Music of Nature," by William Gardiner, p. 480, and after.

OBS. 13.—Dr. Rush comes to the explanation of the powers of the letters as the confident first revealer of nature's management and wisdom; and hopes to have laid the foundation of a system of instruction in reading and oratory, which, if adopted and perfected, "will beget a similarity of opinion and practice," and "be found to possess an excellence which must grow into sure and irreversible favour."—Phil. of the Voice, p. 404. "We have been willing," he says, "to believe, on faith alone, that nature is wise in the contrivance of speech. Let us now show, by our works of analysis, how she manages the simple elements of the voice, in the production of their unbounded combinations."—Ibid., p. 44. Again: "Every one, with peculiar self-satisfaction, thinks he reads well, and yet all read differently: there is, however, but one mode of reading well."—Ib., p. 403. That one mode, some say, his philosophy alone teaches. Of that, others may judge. I shall only notice here what seems to be his fundamental position, that, on all the vocal elements of language, nature has stamped duplicity. To establish this extraordinary doctrine, he first attempts to prove, that "the letter a, as heard in the word day," combines two distinguishable yet inseparable sounds; that it is a compound of what he calls, with reference to vowels and syllables in general, "the radical and the vanishing movement of the voice,"—a single and indivisible element in which "two sounds are heard continuously successive," the sounds of a and e as in ale and eve. He does not know that some grammarians have contended that ay in day is a proper diphthong, in which both the vowels are heard; but, so pronouncing it himself, infers from the experiment, that there is no simpler sound of the vowel a. If this inference is not wrong, the word shape is to be pronounced sha-epe; and, in like manner, a multitude of other words will acquire a new element not commonly heard in them.

OBS. 14.—But the doctrine stops not here. The philosopher examines, in some similar way, the other simple vowel sounds, and finds a beginning and an end, a base and an apex, a radical and a vanishing movement, to them all; and imagines a sufficient warrant from nature to divide them all "into two parts," and to convert most of them into diphthongs, as well as to include all diphthongs with them, as being altogether as simple and elementary. Thus he begins with confounding all distinction between diphthongs and simple vowels; except that which he makes for himself when he admits "the radical and the vanish," the first half of a sound and the last, to have no difference in quality. This admission is made with respect to the vowels heard in ooze, eel, err, end, and in, which he calls, not diphthongs, but "monothongs." But in the a of ale, he hears =a'-ee; in that of an, ~a'-~e; (that is, the short a followed by something of the sound of e in err;) in that of art, ah'~-e; in that of all, awe'-~e; in the i of isle, =i'-ee; in the o of old, =o'-oo; in the proper diphthong ou, ou'-oo; in the oy of boy, he knows not what. After his explanation of these mysteries, he says, "The seven radical sounds with their vanishes, which have been described, include, as far as I can perceive, all the elementary diphthongs of the English language."—Ib., p. 60. But all the sounds of the vowel u, whether diphthongal or simple, are excluded from his list, unless he means to represent one of them by the e in err; and the complex vowel sound heard in voice and boy, is confessedly omitted on account of a doubt whether it consists of two sounds or of three! The elements which he enumerates are thirty-five; but if oi is not a triphthong, they are to be thirty-six. Twelve are called "Tonics; and are heard in the usual sound of the separated Italics, in the following words: A-ll, a-rt, a-n, a-le, ou-r, i-sle, o-ld, ee-l, oo-ze, e-rr, e-nd, i-n,"—Ib., p. 53. Fourteen are called "Subtonics; and are marked by the separated Italics, in the following words: B-ow, d-are, g-ive, v-ile, z-one, y-e, w-o, th-en, a-z-ure, si-ng, l-ove, m-ay, n-ot, r-oe."—Ib., p. 54. Nine are called "Atonics; they are heard in the words, U-p, ou-t, ar-k, i-f, ye-s, h-e, wh-eat, th-in, pu-sh."—Ib., p. 56. My opinion of this scheme of the alphabet the reader will have anticipated.