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
