Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/1054

 VII. OF THE LETTER G.

The consonant G has two sounds;--the one hard, guttural, and peculiar to this letter; the other soft, like that of j. G before a, o, u, l, r, or at the end of a word, is hard; as in game, gone, gull, glory, grace, log, bog; except in ''gaol. G before e, i, or y, is soft; as in gem, ginger, elegy''. Except--1. In get, give, gewgaw, finger, and a few other words. 2. When a syllable is added to a word ending in g: as, long, longer; fog, foggy.

G is silent before m or n in the same syllable; as in ''phlegm, apothegm, gnaw, design. G, when silent, usually lengthens the preceding vowel; as in resign, impregn, impugn''.

Gh at the beginning of a word has the sound of g hard; as in ghastly, gherkin, Ghibelline, ghost, ghoul, ghyll: in other situations, it is generally silent; as in ''high, mighty, plough, bough, though, through, fight, night, bought. Gh final sometimes sounds like f; as in laugh, rough, tough; and sometimes, like g hard; as in burgh''. In hough, lough, shough, it sounds like k, or ck; thus, hock, lock, shock.

VIII. OF THE LETTER H.

The sound of the consonant H, (though articulate and audible when properly uttered,) is little more than an aspirate breathing. It is heard in hat, hit, hot, hut, adhere.

H at the beginning of a word, is always sounded; except in heir, herb, honest, honour, hospital, hostler, hour, humble, humour, with their compounds and derivatives. H after r, is always silent; as in ''rhapsody, rhetoric, rheum, rhubarb. H final, immediately following a vowel, is always silent; as in ah, Sarah, Nineveh, Shiloh''.

IX. OF THE LETTER I.

The vowel I has three sounds, each very common to it, and perhaps properly its own:--

1. The open, long, full, or primal i; as in life, fine, final, time, bind, child, sigh, pint, resign. This is a diphthongal sound, equivalent to the sounds of middle a and open e quickly united.

2. The close, curt, short, or stopped i; as in ink, limit, disfigure, mimicking.

3. The feeble, faint, or slender i, accentless; as in divest, doctrinal, diversity.

This third sound is equivalent to that of open e, or ee uttered feebly. I generally has this sound when it occurs at the end of an unaccented syllable: except at the end of Latin words, or of ancient names, where it is open or long; as in literati, Nervii, Eli, Levi.

In some words, (principally from other modern languages,) i has the full sound of open e, under the accent; as in Porto Rico, machine, magazine, antique, shire.

Accented i followed by a vowel, has its open or primal sound; and the vowels belong to separate syllables; as in pliant, diet, satiety, violet, pious. Unaccented i followed by a vowel, has its feeble sound; as in expatiate, obedient, various, abstemious.

DIPHTHONGS BEGINNING WITH I.

I, in the situation last described, readily coalesces with the vowel which follows, and is often sunk into the same syllable, forming a proper diphthong: as in fustian, quotient, question. The terminations cion, sion, and tion, are generally pronounced shun; and cious and tious are pronounced shus.

Ie is commonly an improper diphthong. Ie in die, hie, lie, pie, tie, vie, and their derivatives, has the sound of open i. Ie in words from the French, (as cap-a-pie, ecurie, grenadier, siege, bier,) has the sound of open e. So, generally, in the middle of English roots; as in chief, grief, thief; but, in sieve, it has the sound of close or short i. In friend, and its derivatives or compounds, it takes the sound of close e.

TRIPHTHONGS BEGINNING WITH I.

The triphthongs ieu and iew both sound like open or long u; as in lieu, adieu, view.

The three vowels iou, in the termination ious, often fall into one syllable, and form a triphthong. There are two hundred and forty-five words of this ending; and more than two hundred deriva- tives from them. Walker has several puzzling inconsistencies in their pronunciation; such as fas-tid-i-ous and per-fid-ious, con-ta-gi-ous and sac-ri-le-gious. After c, g, t, or x, these vowels should coalesce: as in gra-cious, re-li-gious, vex-a-tious, ob-nox-ious, and about two hundred other words. After the other consonants, let them form two syllables; (except when there is a syn- seresis in poetry;) as in dw-bi-ou-s, o-di-ous, va-ri-ous, en-vi-ous.

X. OF THE LETTER J.

The consonant J, the tenth letter of the English alphabet, has invariably the sound of soft g, like the g in giant, which some say is equivalent to the complex sound dzh; as, jade, jet, jilt, joy, justice, jewel, prejudice.

XI. OF THE LETTER K.

The consonant K, not silent, has uniformly the sound of c hard; and occurs where c would have its soft sound: as in keep, looking, kind, smoky.

K before n is silent; as in knave, know, knuckle. In stead of doubling c final, we write ck; as in lack, lock, luck, attack. In English words, k is never doubled, though two Kays may come together in certain compounds; as in brickkiln, jackknife. Two Kays, belonging to different syllables, also stand together in a few Scripture names; as in ''Akkub, Bakbakkar, Bukki, Bukkiah, Habakkuk. Hakkoz, Ikkesh, Sukkiims''. C before k, though it does not always double