PRONUNCIATION OF THE CONSONANTS P, PH, Q, R, *•

43

P.

412. This letter is mute before s and t at thebeginning of words, psalm, psalmist , psalmody ,psalmography, psalter, psaltry ; the prefix p\cudo,signityuig false, as pseudogruphy, pseudology , andthe iiuerjection pshaw! To these wc may add,ptisan , ptyalism, ptysmagogue . It * s mute in themiddle of words between m and t, in empty,sempstress, peremptory, sumptuous, presumptuous,redemption, exemption, and raspberry. In cup.board it coalesces with and falls into its flal.soundb, as if written cubboard. It is mute in a finalsyllable between the same letters, as tempt , at-tempt, contempt, exempt, prompt, accompt. Inreceipt it is unite between i and J; and in themilitary corps (a body ot troops), both p and s aremute, as custom has acquiesced in the French pronunciation of most military terms.

PI1.

413. Ph is generally pronounced like f, as inhilosophy , phantom, &e. In nephew and Stephen

has the sound of v. In diphthong and triph-thong the sound of p only is heard ; and the h ismute likewise in naphtha, ophthalmick, &c. Inapophthegm both letters are dropped. The samemay be observed of phthisis, phthisic, and phthi-sical. Jn sapphire the first p slides into ph, by anaccentual coalition of similar letters very agree-able to analogy.—See Exaggerate.

414. Q has always the sound of k; it is con-stantly followed by n, pronounced like w; andit-s general sound is heard in quack, quill, queen,&c. pronounced kitac.k, kwill, ku-een, &c. Thatthe u subjoined to this letter has really the powerof tv may be observed in the generality of wordswhere a succeeds ; lor we find the vowel go intothe broad sound in quart, quarrel, quantity, &c.as much as in tear, warrant, want, &c. 85. Butit must he carefully noted that this broad soundis only heard under the accent; when the a, pre-ceded bv qu, is not accented, it has the sound otevery other accented a in the language, 02. Thusthe « in quarter, quarrel, quadrant, &c. becauseit has the accent, is broad:.the same may be ob-served when the accent is secondary only, 522,527 as in quadragesimal, quadrisyllable, &c.; butwhen the accent is on the succeeding syllable,as in qua-dratick, quadrangular, &c. the a goesinto tht obscure sound approaching to the Italian a, 92.

415. As a great number of words, derived fromthe French , have these letters in them, accordingvO our usual complaisance for that language, weadopt tlie French pronunciation : thus in coquet,doquet, etiquette, masquerade, harlequin , oblique,antique, opaque, pique, piquant, piquet, burlesque,grotesque, casque , mosque, quadrille, quater-cousin,tlie qtt is pronounced like k. Quoif and quoitought to be written and pronounced coif, coil.Paquet, laquey, chequer, and risque, have been■very properly spelled by Johnson as they arepronounced, packet, lackey, checker, and risk.Quoth ought to be pronounced with the u, as ifwhiten kwuth, and therefore is not irregular.Liquor and harlequin always lose the u; andconquer, conquerable, and conqueror, sometimes,particularly on the stage. This deviation, how-ever, seems not to have gone beyond recovery ;and conquest is still regularly pronounced conk-west. Quote and quotation are perfectly regular,and ought never to be pronounced, as some do,cote and cotation. Cirque, contracted from circus,and cinque , cinque-foil, cinque-ports, cinque-spot-ted, are pronounced sirk and sink ; and critique,when we inean a criticism, to distinguish it fromcritick, is pronounced criteek , rhyming withspeak . See Quoit and Quotation.

R.

416. This letter is never silent, but its sound issometimes transposed. In a final unaccented syl-lable, terminating with re, the r is pronounced*tter the e, as acre, lucre, sabre, fibre, ochre, eagre ,Waugre, sepulchre, theatre, spectre, metre, petre,”Wre, nitre , antre, lustre, accoutre, massacre;

to which we may add, centre and sceptre ; some-times written center and scepter j but, in myopinion, very improperly, as this peculiarity isfixed, and easily understood; while reducingmeagre to meager disturbs the rule, and addsanother anomaly to our pronunciation, by makingthe g hard before e, 98.

417. The same transposition of r is always per-ceived in the pronunciation of apron and iron;and often in that of citron and saffron, as if writ-ten apuru, turn, citurn, saffurn: nor do I thinkthe two first can be pronounced otherwise with-out a disagreeable stiffness; but the two last maypreserve the r before the vowel with great pro-priety. Children and hundred have slid into thisanalogy, when used colloquially, but preservetilt? r before the e in solemn speaking.

418. As this letter is but a jar of the tongue,sometimes against the roof of the mouth, andsometimes at the orifice of the throat, it is themost imperfect of all the consonants ; and, as itsformation is so indefinite, no wonder, when it isnot under the accent, that the vowels which pre-cede it should be so indefinite in their sounds, aswe may perceive in the words friar, Her, elixir tnadir , mayor, martyr, which, with respect tosound, might be written friur, liur, elixur, nadur,mayur, martur, 98. These inaccuracies in pro-nunciation, says an ingenious writer, “ we seemto have derived from our Saxon ancestors. Dr.Hicks observes, in the first chapter of his SaxonGrammar, that * Comparativa apud eos (Anglo-Saxonas) indifi'erenter exeunt in ar, <rr, er, ir, or,nr, yr; et Superlativa in ast, rest, est , ist, ost ,list, yst; participia praeseniis temporis in and , and,end, ind, ond, und , ynd; praeteriti verb in ad, ad,id, od, ud, yd ; pro vario scilicet vel asvi vel locidialecto.* Upon various other occasions alsothey used two or more vowels and diphthongsindifferently ; and this not always from differenceof age or place, because these variations are fre-quently found in the same page. This will ac-count for the difference between the spelling andpronunciation of such anomalous words as busyand bury, now pronounced as if written bisy andbevy (the i and e having their common short '*sound), and formerly spelt indifferently with c, u,or y.”—Essay on the Harmony of Language .—Robson, 1774.

419. There is a distinction in the sound of thisletter, scarcely ever noticed by any of our writer son the subject, which is, in my opinion, of nosmall importance; and that is, Die rough andsmooth r. Ben Jonson , in his Grammar, says it issounded firm in the beginning of words, and moreliquid in the middle and ends, as in rarer, riper»and so in the Latin . The rough r is formed bj-jarring the tip of the tongue against the roof ofthe month near the fore teeth : th# smooth r is avibration of the lower part of the tongue, near theroot, against the inward region of the palate, nearthe entrance of the throat. This latter r is thatwhich marks the pronunciation of England, andthe former that of Ireland . In England, and par-ticularly in London , the r in lard, bard,.card, re-gard, &c. is pronounced so much in the throat asto be little more than the middle or Italian a ,lengthened into load, baud, caad,regaad; whilein Ireland the r, in these words, is pronouncedwith so strong a jar of the tongue against the fore-part of tiie palate, and accompanied with suchan aspiration or strong breathing at the beginningof the letter, as to produce that harshness we callthe Irish accent. But if this letter is too forcibly-pronounced in Ireland , it is olten too feeblysounded in England, and particularly in London ,where it is sometimes entirely sunk ; and it may,perhaps, be worthy of observation, that, pro-vided we avoid a too forcible pronunciation ofthe r, when it ends a word, or is followed by aconsonant in the same syllable, we may give asmuch force as we please to this letter at the be-ginning of a word, without producing any harsh-ness to the ear: thus Rome , river , rage, may havethe r as forcible as in Ireland ; but bar, bard ,card, hai'd, &c. must have it nearly as soft as inLondon .

420 . As the former letter was a jar, this is %hi*,*; but a hiss which forms a much more deft-