Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 10.djvu/80

LEFT u XT, u, the 21st letter and the 5th vowel of the English alphabet. It is one of the three primitive vowels, from which the various vowel sounds in the Aryan lan- guages have been developed. Its true primary sound was that which it still re- tains in most of the European languages, viz., that of 00 in cool, tool, wood, etc., corresponding to the French ou, as in cour, tour, etc., the sound being some- times short and sometimes long. The Anglo-Saxon u (marked with an accent) has commonly become in modern English the dipthong ou or ow, as Anglo-Saxon thu=thou, %M=now, muth=:mouth, etc. After r, and after the sounds sh and zh, u has generally retained its old long sound, as in rule, truth, etc. In Anglo- Saxon r'U')n=: room, brucan='bro6k (v.) the original long sound is retained, though the form is altered. The old short sound of u is still retained in bull, full, pull, put, etc., but as a rule this sound became changed (probably about the middle of the 17th century) to the sound heard in cut, tun, fun, etc. (marked u), a sound then new to Eng- lish, not being mentioned by any writer before 1653. This sound, which is vei'y similar to that of the unaccented French e, is characteristic of English, and is of- ten given to the vowels a, e, when un- accented, as in cavalry, camel, etc. It is also given to the vowel o, even when ac- cented, as in money, come, honey, among, etc. A modified form of it often occurs before r, as in bur, cur, fur, etc., and sometimes^ rr, as in knurr, purr, etc. ("hiarked u). This sound is sometimes given to a, i, o, and y before r, as in auricular, her, fir, work, martyr. In the 16th or 17th century arose the practice of using gu to represent a hard g before an e, as in guess, a French practice, bor- rowed from qu; and to this, and the wish to indicate a long vowel by a final e, must be attributed plague, vague, fa- tigue, rogue, etc. The final -gue does not, however, always indicate a preced- ing long vowel; cf. epilogue, synagogue. tongue, etc. The use of u for w in per- suade, etc., is modern, also imitated from its use in qu. The long sound of u, as in mute, duke, confuse, etc. (marked u), and modified by r, as in cure, pure (marked ii), is not a simple vowel, an i sound being more or less distinctly in- troduced before it, or fused with it. The corresponding short sound is heard in unit, unity, etc. In some dialects in the United States, this sound is also some- times given to us after r. Duke is some- times vulgarly pronounced with the same sound, as dook. The original sound of short u is now only retained in bury, burial, busy and business. The long sound of u, as in mute, is also repre- sented by other combinations, as by -ue, in due, sue, etc.; by ew, in dew, flew, etc.; and by ui in suit. Ue is used in later spelling as a final u, owing to a rule made by no one knows whom, no one knows why, and no one knows when, that no English word can end in u. In the 13th and 14th centuries ue= French eu. Ui has several sounds: (1) ii, as in suit, fruit, etc.; (2) = i, as in build, guild; (3) 1, as in guide; (4) i, as in mosquito; (5) wi, as in anguish, lan- guid. In buoy, buy, buyer, buying, etc., the u is silent, as also in plaguy. In the best period of Roman literature the u sound was expressed by the character v, a character which did not exist in the Anglo-Saxon alphabet, its sound, when it occurred between two vowels, being rep- resented by i or occasionally by u. In later times u and v stood indifferently for either sound, the capital being gen- erally written V. In this respect U and V stand to each other as I and J. In almost all English dictionaries, up to a comparatively recent date, words begin- ning with U and V were combined. In printing, where the sheets are marked by the letters A, B, C, etc. (standing for 1, 2, 3, etc.), the signs J, v, and w are ig- nored, so that, for this purpose, the let- ters of the alphabet are only 23. In re- spect to its order in the alphabet, its 62