DIFFERENT SOUNDS OF THE LETTER I.
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they were written fall'n and stoU’n: garden andburden-, therefore, are very analogically pro-nounced gard’n and OurtVn ; and this pronuncia-tion ought the rather to be indulged, as we al-ways hear the e suppressed in gardener and bur-densome, mM written gard'ner and burd’nsome.See No. 472.
104. This diversity in the pronunciation of theseterminations ought the more carefully to be at-tended to, as nothing is so vulgaf and childish asto hear swivel and heaven pronounced with the edistinctly, or novel and chicken with the e sup-pressed. Hut the most general suppression ofthis letter is in the preterits ol verbs and in par-ticiples ending in cd : here, when the e is notpreceded by d or t, the e is almost universallysunk 302, and the two dual consonants are pro-nounced in one .syllable : thus loved, lived, barred,inurred , are pronounced as if written lovd, livd,bard, m«rd. The same may be observed of ibisletter when silent in the singulars of nouns, orthe first persons of verbs, as theme, make, &c.which form themes in the plural, and makes inthe third person, &c. where the last e is silent,and the words are pronounced in one syllable.When the noun or tirst person of the verb endsin ;//, with the accent on it, the e is likewise sup-pressed, as a reply, two replies, he replies, &c.When words of t his form have the accent on thepreceding syllables, the c is suppressed, and they pronounced like short *, as cherries, marries ,carries, &c. pronounced cherriz , marriz, carriz,&c. In the same manner, carried, married, em-bodied, &c. are pronounced as if written c«rrid,marrkl, enihodid, &c. 282. But it must be care-fully noted that there is a remarkable exceptionto many of these contiactions when we are pro-nouncing the language of Scripture: here everyparticipial cd ought to make a distinct syllable,where it is not preceded by a vowel : thus, (< Whohath bilieved our report, and to whom is the armof the Lord revealed ?' y Here the participles areboth pronounced in three syllables; but in thefollowing passage, “ Whom he did predestinate,them he also called ; and whom lie called, themhe o\so justified ; and whom he justified, them healso glorified,'* called preserves the e, and ispronounced in two syllables; and Justified andglorified suppress the e, and are pronounced inthree.
1 .
105. This litter is a perfect diphthong, com-posed of the sounds of a in father, and e in he,pronounced as closely together as possible 37.When these sounds are openly pronounced, theyproduce the familiar absent ay ; which, by theold English dramatic writers, was often express-ed by /: hence we may observe, that unless ourancestors pronounced the vowel i like the o inoil, the present pronunciation of the word ay inthe House of Commons , in the phrase the Ayeshave it, is contrary to ancient as well as to pre-sent usage : such a pronunciation of this word isnow coarse ami rustick. This sound is heard whenthe Inter is lengthened by final e, as time , thine,or ending a liable with the accent upon it, asti-tle, di-al; in monosyllables ending with nd, asbind, find, mind , &c.; in three words ending withId, as child, mild , wild ; and in olio very irregu-larly ending with nt, as pint. 37.
100. There is one instance where this letter,though succeeded by final e, does not go into thebroad English sound like the noun eye, but intothe slender foreign sound like e. This is in theword shire, pronounced as if written sheer, bothwhen single, as a knight of the shire ; of in com-posttuvu, as * in Nottinghamshire , Leicestershire ,«c. This is the sound Dr. Lowth gives it in IrisGrammar, page 4 : and it is highly probable thalthe simple shire acquired this slender sound fron:tts tendency to become s|ender in the compoundswhere it is at a distance from the accent, antwhere all the vowels have a natural tendency t<
become short and obscure._See Shire
107. The short sound of this letter is heard h/uw.&c.and when ending an mmceentetsyllable, as van-i-ty, qual-i-ty, &c. where, thouglbe properly said to be short, as it is nodml e .u b y a consonant, yet it 1ms but half itinthongal sound. This sound is the sound c
e, the last letter of the diphthong that forms thelong i; and it is not a little surprising that Dr.Johnson should say that the short i was a soundwholly different from the long one. 551.
10S.' When this letter is succeeded by r, andanother consonant not in a final syllable, it hasexactly the sound of e in vermin, vernal, &c. asvirtue , virgin, Sec. which approaches to the.soundof short n ; but when it comes be lore r, followedby another consonant in a final syllable, it ac-quires the sound of u exactly, as bird, dirt, shirt,squirt, &c. Mirth, birth, gird, gi>'t, skin , fcirl,whirl, and firm, are the only exceptions to thisrule, where i is pronounced like c, and as if thewords were written merth, berth, and ferm.
109. The letter r, in this case, seems to have thesame influence on this vowel as it evidently hason a and o. When these vowels come beforedouble r, or single r, followed by a vowel, as inarable, carry, 7narry, orator, horrid, forage, &c.they are considerably shorter than when the r isthe final letter of the word, or when it is suc-ceeded by another consonant, as in arbour, car,mar, or, nor, for. In the same manner, the i,coming before either double r, or single r, fol-lowed by a vowel, preserves its pure short sound,as in irritate, spirit, conspiracy, &c.; but when ris followed by another consonant, or is the finulletter of a word with the accent upon it, the igoes into a deeper and broader sound, equivalentto short e, as heard in virgin, virtue, &c. So fir ,a tree, is perfectly similar to the first syllable offerment, though often corruptly pronounced likefar, a skin. Sir and stir are exactly pronouncedas if written sur and star. It seems, says Mr.Nares, that our ancestors distinguished thosesounds more correctly. Bishop Gardiner, in hisfirst letter to Cheke, mentions a witticism of Ni-cholas Rowley, a fellow Cantab with him, to thiseffect: “ Let handsome girls be called virgins ,plain ones vurgins.”
“ Si pulchra est, virgo, sin turpis, vurgo vocetur,”
Which, says Mr. Elphinston, may be modernizedby the aid of a far more celebrated line:
“ Sweet virgin can alone the fuir express,
Line by degrees, and beautifully less:
But let the hoyden, homely, rough-hewn vnrgtnEngross the homage of a Major Sturgeon, ”
110. The sound of i, in this situation, ought tobe the more carefully attended to, as letting itfall into the sound of u, where it should have thesound of e, has a grossness in it approaching tovulgarity. Perhaps the only exception to thisrule is when the succeeding vowel is n ; for thisletter, being a semi-consonant, has some influenceon the preceding i, though not so much as a per-fect consonant would have. This makes Mr,Sheridan’s pronunciation of the i in virulent, andits compounds, like that in virgin, less exception-able than 1 at first thought it; but since we can-not give a semi-sound of short i to correspond tothe semi-consonant sound of «, l have preferredthe pure sound, which I thVnk the most agreeableto polite usage. See Mr. Garrick’s Epigram upontire sound of this letter, under the word Virtue .
Irregular and unaccented Sounds.
111. There is an irregular pronunciation of thisletter which has greatly multiplied within thesefew years, and that is, the slender sound heardin ee. This sound is chiefly lound in words de-rived from the French and Italian languages ; andwe think we show our breeding by a knowledgeof those tongues, and an ignorance of our owii:
“ Report of fashions in proud Italy ,
Whose manners still ouv tardy apish nationLimps after, in base awkward imitation.”
When Lord Chesterfield wrote his letters to hisson, the word oblige was, by many polite speakers,pronounced as if written obleege, to give a hint oftheir knowledge of the French language; nay,Pope has rhymed it to this sound :
“ Dreading ev’n fools, by flatterers besieg'd,And so obliging that lie ne’er oblig'd,”