ENGLISH NGLISH GRAMMAR is the art of speaking and writing the English. language with propriety. It is divided into four parts, viz. ORTHOGRAPHY, ETYMOLOGY, SYNTAX, and PROSODY. This division may be rendered more intelligible to young minds, by observing, in other words, that Grammar treats, first, of the form and sound of letters, the combination of letters into syllables, and syllables into words; secondly, of the different sorts of words, their various modifications, and their derivation; thirdly, of the union and right order of words in the formation of a sentence; and lastly, of the just pronunciation, and poetical construc tion of sentences. PART I. ORTHOGRAPHY. CHAPTER 1. Of the LETTERS. SECT. 1. Of the nature of the letters and of a perfect alphabet. An articulate sound, is the sound of the human voice, formed by the organs of speech. Orthography teaches the nature and power of letters, and the just method of spelling words. A letter is the first principle, or least part, of a word The letters of the English language, called the Eng fish Alphabet, are twenty-six in number. B The following is a list of the Roman, Italic, and Old English characters. Old English. Name. Cap. Small. Cap. Small. A a A perfect alphabet of the English language, and, indeed of every other language, would contain a number of letters precisely equal to the number of simple articulate sounds belonging to the language. Every simple sound would have its distinct character; and that character be the representative of no other sound. But this is far from being the state of the English alphabet. It has more original sounds than distinct significant letters; and, consequently, some of these letters are made to represent, not one sound alone, but several sounds. This will appear by reflecting, that the sounds signified by the united letters th, sh, ng, are elementary, and have no single appropriate characters in our alphabet; and that the letters a and u represent the different sounds heard in hat, hate, hall; and in but, bull, mule. To explain this subject more fully to the learners, we shall set down the characters made use of to represent all the elementary articulate sounds of our language, as nearly in the manner and order of the present English alphabet, as the design of the subject will admit; and shall annex to each character the syllable or word, which contains its proper and distinct sound. proper to begin with the vowels. And here it will be By this list it appears, that there are in the English language fourteen simple vowel sounds: but as i and u, when pronounced long may be considered 'as diphthongs, or diphthongal vowels, our language, strictly speaking, contains but twelve simple vowel sounds; to represent which, we have only five distinct characters or letters. If a infar, is the same specific sound as a in fat; and u in bull, the same as o in move, which is the opinion of some grammarians; then there are but ten original vowel sounds in the English language. The following list will show the sounds of the consonants, being in number twenty-two. Several letters marked in the English alphabet, as consonants, are either superfluous, or represent, not simple, but complex sounds. C, for instance, is superfluous inboth its sounds; the one being expressed by k, and the other by s. G, in the soft pronunciation, is not a simple, but a complex sound; as age is pronounced aidge. Jis * Some grammarians suppose h to mark only an aspiration, or breathing: but it appears to be a distinct sound, and formed in a particular manner, by the orgaus of speech. Encyclopedia Britannica. |