276 Cl Al? Das Mr! OP Sz 
/ 
guage, ‘The Hebrews and Greeks led Europe into this 
miftake, which prejudice fince has taken great care to pre= 
ferve. The Phenicians, and after them the Hebrews, not. 
diftinguifhing fufficiently the fimple formation of the ele~- 
ments, adopted words which began with the founds, with-. 
out confidering, in fome inftances, any relation that the. 
found has with the objet. ‘Thus x begins the name of. 
the oxgwwhich is a/pha in the Phenician (and & aleph in the: 
Hebrew) hence the Greek name a/pha,, when Cadmus in-. 
troduced letters into Greece.—The B being the firft letter. 
of the voice of the fheep, was reprefented among the: 
Egyptians, by a Hieroglyphick in the form of a theep.. 
The *nAMEs ofthe letters, inftead of the POWERS, have 
been. hitherto invariably ftudied; we conceive them there-. 
fore, not to be fimple founds, and hence the ridiculous di-. 
vilion of the alphabet into. vowels; confonants ; mutesy. 
pure and impure; femivowels.and their numerous fubdi-. 
vilions. 
The characters ought all to be divided into two claffes;. 
VOWELS and ASPIRATES, 
A.vowel is a letter that is founded by the voice,} whence: 
its name. An afpirate is a letterthat cannot be founded but. 
by the breath. Of the former there are twenty one in the 
Englith Language; ofthelatter nine, making thirty letters. . 
The: 
* I have been afked how we fhall be able to fpell words to each other, without zaming the 
letters—It would be thought ridiculous to afk the names of the words that compofe a fentence, 
but the queftions are exactly parallel, or of one form; by this mode the mere pronouncing of ihe 
word flowly is fufficient, and there is no other fpelling ; thus a child, that reads the letters, reads. 
words compoied of them, as he reads fentences compofed of words. If I were to teach a 
child, not by affinity of found or reafon, but by mere repetition, to call the letter s /even, the - 
e ten, andthe x fix, tofpell the word /ex, it would be deemed very irrational, but it is much , 
lefs fo, than the mode by which moft of the words in the Englifh language are taught ;—for - 
inftance, double-u—ayt /b——ai—fce—ayt/b, are to be hammered, by name, into a child’s head - 
to produce the word which / Oh, cruelty, ignorance, and lofs of timc ! (See © table of 
founds line 12. . 
+ Speaking is rendering ideas audible by the voice; whi ering is rendering them audible by the . 
breath; and a perfon cannot therefore, with propriety, be faid-to fpeak in.a whifper. Voice 
is derived from vox a found, but we have fixed the idea to a certain clafi of founds, otherwife 
jt would be as proper to call any fouud whatever, voice, agto call by that name the particular 
founds uttered by the humau organs of {peech ——— 
