53 



NOTE. 



The Committee beg leave to append to the above the fol- 

 lowing note : 



With regard to the character, so generally ascribed in Ger- 

 many, of greater softness to the sounds of "d," "g," and 

 "b," when respectively compared with those of " t," "k," 

 and "p," it appears to the members of the committee that 

 the production of the latter sounds is accompanied with less 

 force of breath and of the muscular action of the tongue, 

 and is accompanied with a larger volume of intonation than 

 that of the former. It therefore seems to them that the cha- 

 racter of greater hardness, rather than of softness, would 

 be naturally attached to "d," "g," and "b." They would 

 ask whether, instead of the more recent ascriptions of soft- 

 ness and hardness, and if we reject the scholastic distinctions 

 of slender, middle, and rough, tenues, mediae and aspiratse, 

 (I'lld, [j.iaa, and daffia, a more correct idea would not be given 

 by the use, in this case, of the words delicfte or well-defined, 

 as applies to "t," "k," and "p," and coarser, to "d," "g," 

 and "b." 



They observe in this, as in some other works of great 

 learning and just reputation, from the German school, a pre- 

 vailing or total omission of the theta and the aspirated delta, 

 or Anglo-Saxon b, as they occur in the English words " thick" 

 and "this." The committee avoid the inquiry whether the 

 pronunciation of the Latin contained these sounds, and of 

 the authority, in this respect, of the Greek, kept up as a liv- 

 ing language to our days ; but certainly the theta and the 

 aspirated delta cannot be rejected from the English. They 

 do not appear to the committee as hissing sounds, but sui 

 generis. They seem to be produced by protruding the tongue 

 quite beyond the edge of the incisor teeth, and then emit- 



