THE REPRESENTATION OF THE CONSONANT SOUND W.

The sound w and the succeeding sound y are explosive vowels rather than consonants, closely resembling the explodents b and d, from the rapidity of the action and the impossibility of prolonging the sound. There is no difficulty in representing this sound in spelling, as there is no other letter than w, except the sound follows k, when kw have to be written by qu, as in queen. The letter w is never doubled. It unites with a, e and o to form digraphs, as aw, ew, ow, but is never a vowel by itself, except in Welsh, where it has the power of our u in full, if short, or oo in fool, if long; thus, drug (Welsh), is pronounced droog.

W is sometimes a silent letter before the sound r, as wrap, wrest, wring, wrong, wrath, wreck, with their derivatives and compounds.

Mr. A. J. Ellis, a great phonetic authority, in his conjectural pronunciation of the Ormulum, an old English poem, written about 1250, supposes this silent w to have had the power of V, and written to have been pronounced vritten, and so on of other words with w before r.

A few examples of the sound w will suffice:

RULE XXI.

THE REPRESENTATION OF THE CONSONANT SOUND OF Y.

This explosive non-continuous sound partakes of the nature of both vowel and consonant,. This sound commences but never ends a syllable. It is generally represented by y, as in youth; sometimes, however, by u, as in use; and occasionally by i, as in onion.

The letter y is used for forming digraphs with a, e and o, as in bay, valley, boy; and is always used for the short sound of i when final in a word, as silly, folly.

ON THE ASPIRATE AND THE LETTER H.

The letters of the alphabet in all the European languages are fewer than the elementary sounds, and contrivances are adopted to remedy the deficiency by writing two letters together, to represent those sounds for which there is no single letter. The letter h plays an important part in this respect in the English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese languages. In English it unites with s, to form the simple consonant sound in shall; with c, to form the frequent consonantal diphthong in church; with t, to form a digraph for the two sounds heard in thin and then; with p, to form a second character for f, as in physic; and occasionally with g, to indicate its hard sound, as in gherkin. Its use is so great as an assistant letter for forming digraphs, that it is employed in this way 66 times out of every 100 where it occurs, and only 32 times as an aspirate, whilst twice in the 100 it is altogether silent.

The aspirate is a strongly whispered vowel of the same kind as the vowel it precedes; but as it does not possess the essential characteristics of vowels, vocality and absence of

whisper, it is properly classed among the consonants. For instance, when we pronounce he, we have first an audible whisper of ē and then the vowel ē; when we say high, we have first an audible whisper of a, the first element of the diphthong i, immediately followed by the vocal diphthong i; consequently there are in reality as many qualities of aspirates as there are of vowels.

To render a whisper audible through the comparatively large openings of the vocal positions a great expenditure of breath is required, the effect of which is to cause all aspirated syllables to be louder than others, or accented. Any one may verify this for himself. The quantity of air contained in the lungs of an ordinary sized man, when fully inflated, is about sixteen cubic inches. Try how often you can pronounce the word bat in moderately quick time, and you will probably do so thirty-two times before the lungs are exhausted, thus consuming half a cubic inch for each time the word bat is spoken. Inflate the lungs again, and say the word hat, which only differs from the former word by the substitution of the aspirate for b; the lungs will be exhausted probably before you have spoken it ten times, proving the consumption of breath to be one and a half cubic inches for each word, or three times as much as the word bat requires. Here we seem to have a reason founded in nature herself for the gradually increasing disuse of the aspirate among the less educated classes.

Aspiration renders syllables loud or accented, but as we require at least one unaccented syllable on either side of an accented one, we can pronounce with aspiration exhib'it, but not exhibition; for the bi in the latter word bearing the accent will not allow of the hi being accented as well, which it would be if aspirated. We can, therefore, pronounce the word only as exi-bi'-tion, without the h.

Monosyllables commencing with h cannot, therefore, always have it sounded, because those words only which the meaning requires to be emphatic will bear the aspiration. In the sentence How high he holds his head! in which as isolated words all would be aspirated, the unaccented words must have their h silent. We now see why such words as history and he'ro are aspirated, while the removal of the accent to another syllable causes the h to be silent in the derivatives historical, histo 'rian, un'histor' ical, hero' ical.

When aspiration is heard it must be represented by h, as

there is no other letter can do it. A great difficulty in spelling arises from being obliged to write the letter so frequently when it is silent. Almost the only assistance that can be given to the pupil is to furnish him with a list of those words in which the h has to be written but not sounded, they are:

heir

harmonious heptag'onal heral'dic

Authorities differ respecting herb, hospital, humor and humble, but the general practice now is to aspirate them.

RULE XXIII.

THE COMPOUND CONSONANT X (KS).

These whispered sounds are represented by x, cs, ks and cc, as in six, attics, necks, lakes, and accent. It is necessary to know the meaning of the word containing these sounds, in order to write them correctly. No word or syllable commences with the sound ks, but many words commence with the prefix ex-, always written with an x, as extol, exclude, extent. It is chiefly in the endings of words that these sounds occasion any difficulty.

If these sounds end a noun in the singular number we must use x, as fox, box, axe, tax, ox, sex, flax, wax, index, apex, &c.; and we also retain the x when we make plurals of them, as foxes, taxes, sexes, boxes.

If a verb in the infinitive mood end in these sounds we must use x, as to fix, vex, hoax, mix; and we retain the x in all tenses and derivatives, as fixes, fixed, fixing, fixture, fixity, fixable.

The foregoing are almost the only cases in which the letter x is used; we will now give rules for these sounds when represented by cs or ks.

If these sounds end a noun in the plural number we must write cks, ks or cs, as frocks, books, critics; also the third person singular of the present tense of verbs, as sucks, seeks, physics. That is, an s is simply added to nouns and verbs ending in the sound k. See Rule 5.

After the prefixes ac- or ex-, soft c is added to form the sound x, as access, accède, excīte, excel.

No word begins with the sound x, but about thirty begin with the letter x, sounded as z, as Xerxes, Xenophon, Xanthic, &c.

RULE XXIV.

THE COMPOUND CONSONANT X (GZ).

This is the vocal power of the preceding compound consonant, and consists of the elements g z. It is only in the prefix ex- that x (gz) is ever used, as exist, exhort, exhume, exult, exhibit, exhale, exact, exâlt. In all other cases the sounds are represented by the two letters g s, as in the examples following: