A
CRITICAL PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY
AND
EXPOSITOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
☞ (559). Fte (73), fr (77), fll (83), ft (81); m (93), mt (95); pne (105), pn (107); n (162), mve (164), nr (167), nt (163); tbe (171), tb (172), bll (173); l (299); pnd (313); thin (466), this (469).
A
A, The first letter of the alphabet (73).
A, an article set before nouns of the singular number; a man, a tree. Before a word beginning with a vowel, it is written an, as an ox; A is sometimes a noun, as great A; A is placed before a participle, or participial noun; gone a hunting, come a begging: A has a signification denoting proportion; the landlord hath a hundred a year.
☞ The change of the letter a into an before a vowel or mute h for the sake of sound, seems to deserve more attention than has generally been given to it by any of our grammarians, and will therefore be considered under the article An; which see.
Of the Alphabetical Pronunciation of the Letter A.
So many profound and ingenious observations have been made upon this first step to literature, that volumes might be filled with the erudition that has been lavished on this letter alone. The priority of place it claims, in all alphabets, has made it so much the object of attention, that philologists suppose the foundation of learning but weakly laid till the natural and civil history of the first letter be fully settled.
But, however deep have been their researches into the origin of this letter, we find no author in our language has hitherto attempted to settle the disputes that have arisen between the natives of England, Ireland, and Scotland, about the true sound of it, when called by its name. Instead, therefore, of tracing this character through the circles of Gomer, the Egyptian Hieroglyphics, the mysterious Abraxas, or the Irish Ogum, I shall endeavour to obviate a difficulty that frequently arises when it is pronounced in the Hornbook: or, in other words, to enquire what is the true name of the first letter of the English alphabet—whether we are to say Aye, B, C; Ah, B, C; or Aw, B, C.
And first, it will be necessary to consider the nature of a vowel; which grammarians are generally agreed in defining to be "a simple articulate sound, formed by the impulse of the voice by the opening only of the mouth in a particular manner." Now, as every vowel by itself is sounded long, as nothing but its junction with a consonant can make it otherwise, it is natural, when pronouncing this vowel alone, to give it the long open sound; but as this long open sound is threefold, as heard in face, father, and water, a question arises, which of these long sounds shall we adopt as a common name to the whole species of this letter? The English make choice of the a in face, the Irish of that in father, and the Scotch of that in water. Each party produces words where the letter a is sounded in the manner they contend for; but when we demand why one should have the preference, the controversy is commonly at an end; any farther reasons are either too remote or too insignificant to be produced: and indeed, if a diversity of names to vowels did not confound us in our spelling, or declaring to each other the component letters of a word, it would be entirely needless to enter into so trifling a question as the mere name of a letter; but when we find ourselves unable to convey signs to each other on account of this diversity of names, and that words themselves are endangered by an improper utterance of their component parts, it seems highly incumbent on us to attempt an uniformity in this point, which, insignificant as it may seem, is undoubtedly the foundation of a just and regular pronunciation.
The first rule for naming a letter, when pronounced alone, seems to be this: Whatever sound we give to a letter when terminating a syllable, the same sound ought to be given to it when pronounced alone; because, in both cases, they have their primary, simple sound, uninfluenced by a succeeding vowel or consonant; and therefore, when we pronounce a letter alone, it ought to have such a sound as does not suppose the existence of any other letter. But wherever a terminates a syllable, with the accent upon it, (the only state in which it can be said to be pure) it has always the English sound of that letter. The only exceptions to this rule are, the words fa-ther, ma-ster, and wa-ter; and that these are merely exceptions, appears from the uniformity with which the a is pronounced otherwise in parent, papal, taper, fatal, etc. The other vowels have their names exactly similar to the sound they have in a similar situation, as the e like that in me-grim, the i like the i in ti-tle, the o as the o in no-ble, and the u like the u in tu-tor. Thus, as it appears from the general analogy of pronunciation, that the sound of the a, which the English adopt, is the only one that does not necessarily suppose the existence of any other sound, it inevitably follows that theirs only is the proper appellation of that letter.
