for such a man to outface Aristotle, or any other divider of the letters; for he makes the sounds by which he judges. "Boy," says the teacher of Kirkham's Elocution, "describe the protracted sound of y."--Kirkham's Elocution, p. 110. The pupil may answer, "That letter, sir, has no longer or more complex sound, than what is heard in the word eye, or in the vowel i; but the book which I study, describes it otherwise. I know not whether I can make you understand it, but I will tr-oo-i-ee." If the word try, which the author uses as an example, does not exhibit his "protracted sound of y," there is no word that does: the sound is a mere fiction, originating in strange ignorance.
OBS. 6.--In the large print above, I have explained the principal classes of the letters, but not all that are spoken of in books. It is proper to inform the learner that the sharp consonants are t, and all others after which our contracted preterits and participles require that d should be sounded like t; as in the words faced, reached, stuffed, laughed, triumphed, croaked, cracked, houghed, reaped, nipped, piqued, missed, wished, earthed, betrothed, fixed. The flat or smooth consonants are d, and all others with which the proper sound of d may be united; as in the words, daubed, judged, hugged, thronged, sealed, filled, aimed, crammed, pained, planned, feared, marred, soothed, loved, dozed, buzzed. The labials are those consonants which are articulated chiefly by the lips; among which, Dr. Webster reckons b, f, m, p, and v. But Dr. Rush says, b and m are nasals, the latter, "purely nasal." [95] The dentals are those consonants which are referred to the teeth; the nasals are those which are affected by the nose; and the palatals are those which compress the palate, as k and hard g. But these last-named classes are not of much importance; nor have I thought it worth while to notice minutely the opinions of writers respecting the others, as whether h is a semivowel, or a mute, or neither.
OBS. 7.--The Cherokee alphabet, which was invented in 1821, by See-quo-yah, or George Guess, an ingenious but wholly illiterate Indian, contains eighty-five letters, or characters. But the sounds of the language are much fewer than ours; for the characters represent, not simple tones and articulations, but syllabic sounds, and this number is said to be sufficient to denote them all. But the different syllabic sounds in our language amount to some thousands. I suppose, from the account, that See-quo-yah writes his name, in his own language, with three letters; and that characters so used, would not require, and probably would not admit, such a division as that of vowels and consonants. One of the Cherokees, in a letter to the American Lyceum, states, that a knowledge of this mode of writing is so easily acquired, that one who understands and speaks the language, "can learn to read in a day; and, indeed," continues the writer, "I have known some to acquire the art in a single evening. It is only necessary to learn the different sounds of the characters, to be enabled to read at once. In the English language, we must not only first learn the letters, but to spell, before reading; but in Cherokee, all that is required, is, to learn the letters; for they have syllabic sounds, and by connecting different ones together, a word is formed: in which there is no art. All who understand the language can do so, and both read and write, so soon as they can learn to trace with their fingers the forms of the characters. I suppose that more than one half of the Cherokees can read their own language, and are thereby enabled to acquire much valuable information, with which they otherwise would never have been blessed."--W. S. Coodey, 1831.
OBS. 8.--From the foregoing account, it would appear that the Cherokee language is a very peculiar one: its words must either be very few, or the proportion of polysyllables very great. The characters used in China and Japan, stand severally for words; and their number is said to be not less than seventy thousand; so that the study of a whole life is scarcely sufficient to make a man thoroughly master of them. Syllabic writing is represented by Dr. Blair as a great improvement upon the Chinese method, and yet as being far inferior to that which is properly alphabetic, like ours. "The first step, in this new progress," says he, "was the invention of an alphabet of syllables, which probably preceded the invention of an alphabet of letters, among some of the ancient nations; and which is said to be retained to this day, in Ethiopia, and some countries of India. By fixing upon a particular mark, or character, for every syllable in the language, the number of characters, necessary to be used in writing, was reduced within a much smaller compass than the number of words in the language. Still, however, the number of characters was great; and must have continued to render both reading and writing very laborious arts. Till, at last, some happy genius arose, and tracing the sounds made by the human voice, to their most simple elements, reduced them to a very few vowels and consonants; and, by affixing to each of these, the signs which we now call letters, taught men how, by their combinations, to put in writing all the different words, or combinations of sound, which they employed in speech. By being reduced to this simplicity, the art of writing was brought to its highest state of perfection; and, in this state, we now enjoy it in all the countries of Europe."--Blair's Rhetoric, Lect. VII, p. 68.
OBS. 9.--All certain knowledge of the sounds given to the letters by Moses and the prophets having been long ago lost, a strange dispute has arisen, and been carried on for centuries, concerning this question, "Whether the Hebrew letters are, or are not, all consonants:" the vowels being
