PRONUNCIATION OP THE CONSONANTS OH, GUT, II, J, K, L. 41

GH,

390. This combination, at the beginning of aword, drops the A, as in ghost, ghastly, aghast.,gherkin, pronounced gost, rhyming with most;gastly, agast, guerkin: but when these letterscome at the end of a word, they form some ofthe greatest anomalies in our language ; gh, attlxe end of words, is generally silent, and conse-quently the preceding vowel or diphthong islong, us high, nigh, thigh, neigh, weigh, inveigh,eag/t (the obsolete way of spelling yew, a tree),bough, dough, though, although, clough (a cliff),plough, furlough, slough (a nnry place), through,throughout, thorough, borough, usquebaugh, pagh !

391. Gh is frequently pronounced like /, aslaugh, laughter, cough, chough, clough (an allow-ance in weight), slough (the east skin of a snakeor sore), enough, rough, tough, trough.

392. Gh is sometimes changed into ck, as hough,shough, lough, pronounced hock, shock, lock;sometimes we hear only the g sounded, as inburgh, burgher, and burgher ship.

GHT.

393. Gh in this termination is always silent, asfight, night, bought, fought, &c. The only excep-tion is draught ; which, in poetry, is most fre-quently rhymed with caught, taught, toe. ; but,in prose, is*so universally pronounced as if writ-ten draft, that the poetical sound of it grows un-couth, and is becoming obsolete. Draughts , thegame, is also pronounced drafts. Drought (dry-ness) is vulgarly pronounced' drowth: it is evenwritten so by Milton ; but im this he is not to beimitated, having mistaken the analogy of thisword, as well as that of height, which he spellshighth, and which is frequently so pronouncedby the vulgar.—See the words Height andDrought.

304. This letter is no move than breathing forci-bly before the succeeding vowel is pronounced.At the beginning of words it is always sounded,except in heir, heiress, honest, honesty, honour,honourable, herb, herbage, hospital, hostler, hour,humble, humour, humourous, humoursome. Ben Jonson leaves out the h in host, and classes it inthis respect with honest.

395. II is always silent after r, as rhetorick,rhapsody, rheum, rheumatism , rhinoceros, rhomb,rhubarb, myrrh, catarrh , and their compounds.

396 . H final, preceded by a vowel, is alwayssilent, as ah ! hah! oh ! foh ! sirrah, hallelujah ,Messiah.

397. This letter is often sunk after w, particu-larly in the capital, where we do not find theleast distinction of sound between while and wile,whet and tret, where and wear. Trifling as thisdifference may appear at first sight, it tend.'greatly to weaken and impoverish the pronun-ciation, as well as sometimes to confound wordsof a very dUVerent meaning. The fcaxons, as DrLowth observ es, placed the h before the w, ashuat ; and this is certainly its true place ; for, irthe pronunciation of all words beginning willwh, we ought to breathe forcibly before we probounce the tv, as if the words were writteihoo-at hao-ile, &c. and then we shall avoid thafeeble, cockney pronunciation, which is so disagreeable to a correct ear.

J.

S98. J is pronounced exactly like soft g, and isperfectly uniform in its sound,except in the wordhallelujah, where it is pronounced like y .

K.

399. K has exactly the sound of hard c: italways silent before n in the same syllable,knee, kneel, knack, knight, know, knuckle, knuknag, knap, knare, knave, knit., knock, knot, knot

400. It has been a custom within these twenyears to omit the k at the end of words winV Y «ceded by c. This has introduced a novel"V-o the language, which is ihat of ending awo^ith an uuusual letter, and is not only a blemi

In the face of it, but may possibly produce someirregularity in future formatives ; for mimickingmust be written with the k, though to mimic iswithout it. If we use colic as a verb, which isnot uncommon, we must write colicking andcolicked ; and though physicking and physickedare not the most elegant words, they are not quiteout of the line of formation. This omission of kis, however, too general to be counteracted, evenby the authority of Johnson ; but it is to be hopedit will be confined to words from the learnedlanguages : and indeed, as there is not the samevanity of appearing learned in the Saxon as inthe Latin and Greek, there is no great fear thatthick and stick will lose their k, though theynever had it in the original.

L,

401. Ben Jonson says L melteth in the sound-ing, and is therefore called a liquid. This, how-ever, cannot be the reason that r is called a li-quid ; for no two letters can, in this respect, bemore opposite.—See No. 21.

/, is mute in almond, caff, half, calve, halve,chaldron, falcon, folk, yolk (better written yelk,with the l sounded), fusil, halser, malmsey,salmon, salve, talbot (a species of dog).—SeeSalve.

402. L is mute also between a and k in thesame syllabic, as balk, chalk, talk, stalk, walk.

403. L is silent likewise between a and m inthe same syllable, as alms, balm, calm, palm,psalm, qualm, slutlm ; but when the m is detach-ed from the l, by commencing another syllable,the l becomes audible. Thus, though the l ismute in psalm, it is always heard in psal-mist,psal-medy, and pal-mistry; but in balmy andpalmy, where the y is an adjective terminationof our own, no alteration is made in the sound ofthe substantive which sinks the l, 380. Calmerand calmest ought to have the l mute, as theyare only degrees of comparison ; and palmer andpalmcncorm (except in the language of Scripture,where the l in palmerworm ought to be Heard)are only a sort of verbal nouns, which never al-ter the sound of the original word, and thereforeought to have the l mute. But though l is some-times mute in the noun salve, and in the verb tosalve, it is always heard in salver (a kind of plate).See Salve.

404. L ought always to be suppressed in theauxiliary verbs would, could, should: it is some-times suppressed in fault ; but this suppression isbecome vulgar (see the word). In soldier, like-wise, the l is sometimes suppressed, and '.he wordpronounced safer ; hut this is far from being themost correct pronunciation : l ought always to beheard in this word, and its compounds soldierly,soldiership, &c.

405. L, preceded by a mute, and followed bye, in a final syllable, has an imperfect sound,which does not do much honour to our language.The l, in this situation, is neither sounded like elnor le, but the e final is suppressed, and the pre-ceding mute articulates the l, without either apreceding or a succeeding vowel ; so that thissound may be called a monster in grammar—asyllable without a vowel! This will easily beperceived in the words able, table, circle, &c»which are pronounced as if written abl, tabl,dr cl, & c. and in those still more Gothick anduncouth abbreviated participial terminations,peopled, bridled, saddled, trifles, gaffes, &c. pro.nounced pee-pl'd, bri-dVd , sad-dVd , tri-flz, gaf-ff% y&c. 359, 472.

406. This letter has not only, like/ and s, theprivilege of doubling itself at the end of a word,hut it has an exclusive privilege ot being doublewhere they remain single ; though by what rightcannot well be conceived. Thus, according tothe general rule, when a verb ends in a singleconsonant, preceded by a single vowel, and theaccent is on the last syllable, the consonant isdoubled when a participial termination is added,as ,a'>et, abetting, beg, begging, begin, beginning,&c. but when the accent is not on the last syl-lable of the verb, the consonant remains single,as suffered, .suffering, benefiting, &c. hut the l isdoubled, whether the accent be on the last syl-lable or not, as duelling, levelling, victualling,travelling, traveller, &e. This gross irregularity,