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Rhetorical Grammar (English linguistics 1500-1800; a collection of facsimile reprints)
Rhetorical Grammar - English linguistics 1500-1800; a collection of facsimile reprints Author:John Walker Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3At first sight we are surprised that two such different letters as textit{a and textit{i should be affected in the same manner by the hard gutturals, textit{g, c, and textit{k; but when we... more » reflect that textit{i is really composed of textit{a and textit{e, our surprise ceases; and we are pleased to find the ear perfectly uniform in its procedure, and entirely unbiassed by the eye. From this view of the analogy, we may see how much mistaken is a very solid and ingenious writer on this subject, who says, that textit{"ky-ind for textit{kind is a monster of pronunciation, heard only on our stage." N are's Orthoepy, p. 28. See Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, under the word Guilt. textit{The liquid sound of T, Z), textit{S, and soft C, after the accent, and before the semiconsonant diphthongs. Nothing can be better established in the genuine pronunciation of our language, than the liquid sibila- tion of these consonants, when the accent comes before them, and the inverted diphthongs succeed. This is evident in the numerous terminations in textit{tion,sion, cion; and if we had words ending in textit{dion, it is not to be doubted but that they would flow into the same current of sound. The general ear, true to analogy, melts these consonants into the soft hiss before the long textit{u; for though apparently a single letter, it is composed of textit{e oo, or rather textit{y oo, and is therefore not only not a pure vowel, but a semiconsonant diphthong, exactly in sound like the pronoun textit{you. Hence we hear polite speakers always pronounce textit{educate, as if written textit{edjucate; virtue as textit{verchew; verdure as textit{verjure; and if the general ear were not textit{corrupted by being textit{corrected, weshould in the same analogy hear textit{Indian pronounced textit{Injian; odious, ojeous; and...« less