different sounds

cause it comes from aliius, and tlic two shoitvowels in coago become one long vowel m cogo,

81 . The short sound of the middle or Italian a,•which is generally confounded with Ine shortsound of the slender a, is the sound ot this vowelin man, pan, tan, mat. hat, &c.: we generally findthis sound before any two successive consonants(those excepted in the foregoing remarks), andeven when it comes before an \r, if a vowel fol-low, or the r be doubled ; for lf this consonant bedoubled, in order to produce another syllable,the* long sound becomes short, as mar , marry;ca~, carry, &c. where we find the monosyllableha« the long, and the dissyllable the short sound ;but if a come before r, followed by another con-sonant, it has its long sound, as in part, partial,&c.

Si. The only exception to this rule is in adjec-tives derived from substantives ending in r ; forin this ease the a continues long, as in the primi-tive. Tims tiie a in starry, or full of stars, is aslong as in star ; and the a in the adjective tarry,or besmeared with tar, is as long as in the sub-stantive tar, though short in the word tarry, tostav.

83. The third long sound of a is that which wemore immediately derive from our maternal lan-guage, the Saxon, but which at present we useless than any other : this is the a iny<7«, ball, gall,33: we find a correspondent sound to this a intlie diphthongs aw and aw, as laud, law, saw, &C.;though it must here be noted that we have im-proved upon our German parent, by giving abroader sound to this letter in these words thanthe Germans themselves would do, were they topronounce them.

84. The long sound of the deep broad German a is produced by U after it, as in all, wall, call;or, indeed, by one l, and any other consonant,except the mute labials p, b,f, and v, as sail,bald, false, falchion, falcon, &c. The exceptionsto this rule are generally words from the Arabic and Latin languages, as Alps, Albion, asphaltic,falcated, salve, calculate, amalgamate, Alcoran,and Alfred, &c.; the two last of which may beconsidered as ancient proper names which havebeen frequently latinized, and by this means haveacquired a slenderer sound of a- This rule, how-ever, must be understood of such syllables onlyas have the accent on them ; for when al, fol-lowed by a consonant, is in the 1irst syllable ol' aword, having the accent on the second, it is thenpronounced as in the first syllables of alley,val-ley, &c. as alternate, balsamic, falcade, fulca-tion , &c. Our modern orthography, which hasdone its utmost to perplex pronunciation, hasmade it necessary to observe, that every wordcompounded of a monosyllable with U, as albeit,also, almost , downfal , &c. must be pronounced asif the two liquids were still remaining, notwith-standing mu' word-menders have wisely taken oneaway, to the destruction both of sound and ety-mology ; for, as Mr. Elphinston shrewdly ob-serves, “ Every l eader, young and old, must nowbe so sagacious an analyst as to discern at oncenot only whut are compounds and what theirSimples, but that al in composition is equal to allout ot it; or, in other words, that it is both whatit is, and what it is not.” Prin. Eng. Latiguage,vol. i. page 60. See No. 404.

® 5 * The w has a peculiar quality of broadeningti 8 * e i- tcrj even when prepositive : this is always4 . le ^fiect, except when the vowel is closed byu e sharp or flat guttural A or g, x, fig, nk, or theu k ' a */> as wax, waft, thwack, twang, twank:

# we Pronounce the. a broad, though short in1p1t ’ Uavt > was, what,&c. ; and though otherl , >,e a l <> alter its sound before ll,t i._ of these letters goes to the formation of

tu cal iZ U T c ’ a " '<««. »<■«»«■;

| ; yet we see w preserve the

teal /,» 1,e l°re a single consonant,

aat-low, swal-low, fa

88. The "

86. Tne q including the sound of the «\ anbeing no move than this letter preceded by lought, according to analogy, to broaden everyU goes before like the w ; thus quantity ought the pronounced as if written kwontity, and quot'dshould rhyme with jollity ; instead of which wfrequently hear the tv robbed of its rights in iproxy ; arid quality so pronounced as to rhym

OF THE LETTER. A. 21

with legality ; while to rhyme quantity, accord-ing to this affected mode of pronouncing it, wemust coin such words as plantity and consonantity. The a in quaver and equator is an excep-tion to this rule, from the preponderaney otanother which requires a, ending a syllable underthe accent, to have the slender sound of thatletter; to which rule father, master, and water,and, perhaps, quadrant., are the only exceptions.

87. The short sound of this broad a is heardwhen it is preceded by tv, and succeeded by asingle consonant in the same syllable, as wal-iow,swal-low, &e. or by two consonants in the samesyllable, as want, least, wasp, &c. but when l orr is one of the consonants, the a becomes long,as walk, swarm, &c.

Irregular and unaccented Sounds.

88. But, besides the long and short sounds com-mon lo all the vowels, there is a certain transientindistinct pronunciation of some of them, whenthey are not accented, that cannot be so easilysettled : when the accent is not upon it, no vowelis more apt to run into this imperfect sound thanthe a ; thus the particle a before participles, inthe phrases a-going, a-walking, a-shooting, &c.seems, says Dr. Lowth, to be the true and genuinepreposition on, a little disguised by familiar useand quick pronunciation : the same indistinctness,from rapidity and coincidence of sound, has con-founded the pronunciation of this mutilated pre-position to the ear, in the different questionswhat's o'clock? when we would know the hour,and what's a clock? when we would have the de-scription of that horary machine; and if the ac-cent be kept strongly on the first syllable of theword tolerable, as it always ought to be, we findscarcely any distinguishable difference to theear, if we substitute u or o instead of a in thepenultimate syllable. Thus tolerable, tolerable,and tolerable, are exactly the same word to theear, if pronounced without premeditation ortransposing the accent, for the real purpose ofdistinction ; and inwards, outwards, &c. might,with respect to sound, he spelt inaurds , ontwurds ,&c. Thus the word man, when not under theaccent, might he written mun in nobleman, hus-bandman, woman j and tertian and quartan ter-thin and quartun, Sec. The same observation willbold good in almost every final syllable where ais not accented, as medal, dial, giant, bias, &c.defiance, temperance, &c. ; but when the finalsyllable ends in age, ate, or ace , the a goes into asomewhat different sound. See DO and 91.

89. There is a corrupt, but a received, pronun-ciation of this letter in the words any, many,'Thames, wheietbe a sounds like short e, as ifwritten enuy, menny, Terns. Catch, among Lon-doners, seems to have degenerated into kftch ;and says, the third person of the verb to say, has,among all ranks of people, and in every part ofthe united kingdoms, degenerated into sez, rhym-ing with Fez.

90. The a goes into a sound approaching theshort i, in the numerous termination in age, whenthe accent is not on it, as cabbage, village, cou-rage, &c. and are pronounced nearly as if v nttencabbige, riltige, courigc, &c. The exceptions tothis rule are chiefly among tvords of three syl-lables, with the accent on the first; these scentto be the following: Adage, presage, scutage, he-morrhage, vassalage, carcilage, gwidage, pucelagc,mucilage, cartilage,pupilage, orphanage, villanagc,appanage, concubinage, baronage, patronage, par-sonage, personage, equipage, ossijrage, saxifrage,umpirage, embassage, hermitage, heritage, parent-age, messuage.

91. The a in the numerous termination ate ,when the accent is not on it, is pronounced some-what differently in different words. If the wordbe a substantive, or an adjective, the a seems tobe shorter than when it is a verb : thus a goodear will discover a difference in the quantity ofthis letter in delicate and dedicate; in climate,primate, and ultimate; and the verbs to calcu-late, to regulate, and to speculate, where we findthe nouns and adjectives have the a considerablyshorter than the verbs. Innate, however, pre-serves the a as long as if the accent weie on it:but the unaccented terminations in ace, whethernouns or verbs, have the a so short and obscureas to be nearly similar to the u in us ; thus pa*