CONSONANTS. 



e 'where), i (bill), n (rode), u (push) or the five vowel 

 sounds, such as they exist in the continental lan- 

 guages of Europe are not found ; but in respect to 

 the consonants, languages differ very much : thus the 

 German has no sound like the English th ; the Eng- 

 lish no German ch; both no Polish guttural /, &c. 

 Some nations have an antipathy towards certain 

 classes of consonants, and use them, either not at all, 

 or seldom, as is the case, for instance, with several 

 Indian tribes. The various interesting relations of 

 consonants to vowels, and of the sounds and letters 

 in the different idioms, have not yet received any sa- 

 tisfactory investigation, which is so much the more 

 desirable, as general philology lias attracted, in this 

 age, the attention of several distinguished literati, 

 both in Europe and this hemisphere. Mr P. Dupon- 

 ceau has led the way, in these investigations, by his 

 English Phonology, or an Essay towards an Analy- 

 sis and Description of the component Sounds of the 

 English Language, published in the Transactions of 

 the American Philosophical Society, in Philadelphia, 

 vol. i. new ser. 1818 a treatise which ranks with the 

 other productions of the same acute, comprehen- 

 sive, and learned mind. We have no doubt that the 

 more the science of languages is developed, the 

 more obvious will be the necessity of the study of 

 phonology, by which Mr Duponceau denotes, in gene- 

 ral, the knowledge of the sounds produced by the 

 human voice. The various relations of consonants and 

 vowels will then be investigated. In the Essay on 

 Phonology, the learned inquirer says, " I have not been 

 able to discover, in the English language, more than 

 twenty-nine pure elementary sounds, of which seven 

 are vocal, twenty-one organic or consonant, and 

 two are aspirations or spirits." In a spelling-book 

 of the Sandwich island language, printed at the 

 Sandwich islands, there are but twelve consonants 

 enumerated ; c, f, g, q, s, at, z, y, not occurring in 

 the language. In different languages, the consonants 

 are classified in different ways : thus, in Greek, 



1, according to the organs, into 



Labials, /3, <r, <p, n ; 

 Linguals, S, r, S, , x, 5 , <r ; 

 Palatics, y, , % : or, 



2, according to their qualities, into 



Semi- vowels, > , ^,v, j , called, also, li- 

 quids, and the sibilant a : and 



Mutes, which are 

 Aspirates, if, %, S ; 

 Medials, /3, y, S ; 



Soft, , X, T. 



It is a matter of the greatest interest to investigate 

 the different relations of consonants, and to observe 

 how they run into each other, both in words of the 

 same language, and in words transferred from one lan- 

 guage to another. This is of particular use in 

 learning languages derived from Latin ; for instance, 

 the Latin / was pronounced, by the Spaniards, so 

 oft, that it became an h, and at last vanished, in pro- 

 nunciation, entirely, so that facere became hacer. 

 The circumstance that consonants cannot be pro- 

 nounced by themselves, and that there is an almost 

 infinite variety of shades between the different con- 

 sonants, and even in the pronunciation of the same 

 consonant, is the reason that there is much more 

 difference between different languages hi regard 

 to the pronunciation of consonants than that of vow- 

 els, and that hardly an alphabet exists which provides 

 for every organic sound or consonant by a proper let- 

 ter ; almost all contrive, in a conventional way, to 

 designate certain consonants peculiar to them. It 

 ought, however, not to be forgotten, that one reason 

 of this circumstance is, that most nations did not in- 

 vent the alphabet which they use, but received that 

 of -a more cultivated nation, adapted to a more im- 



proved language. The Greek alphabet is one of 

 the purest ; we mean one which needs the fewest ar- 

 tificial contrivances, in order to designate its various 

 sounds, though it has to denote many. The alphabet 

 now used for the Sandwich island language may, in- 

 deed, be called purer ; but it has to designate only 9 

 few elementary sounds, compared with the alphabets 

 of other languages. We must direct our reader's at- 

 tention to Mr John Pickering's Essay on a Uniform 

 Orthography for the Indian Languages of North 

 America, hi the Transactions of the American 

 Academy, and published by itself, Cambridge, Mass., 

 1820, according to which the missionaries have al- 

 ready printed several works in those languages. See 

 Orthography. 



The melodious sound or music of a language de- 

 pends, in part, upon the proportion of the vowels to 

 the consonants, a language becoming too hard ir 

 there are too many consonants. We do not say that 

 the euphony of a language depends entirely on this 

 proportion, and that it becomes the more melodious 

 according as the proportion of vowels is greater. In 

 this, as in everything else, much of the effect de- 

 pends on the distribution of the elements. The pro- 

 per disposition of the vowels and consonants, the 

 happy mingling of the long and short, of the accent- 

 ed and unaccented vowels, produces the sweet har- 

 mony of a tongue. Many savage idioms, which sound 

 little better than the inarticulate cries of animals, are 

 full of vowels ; indeed, the cry of animals itself is 

 mostly composed of vocal sounds. The euphony of 

 a phrase is not unfrequently produced by a consonant, 

 as hi the way in which a hiatus is avoided hi Greek. 

 So, too, the French for the sake of euphony, sound 

 the s in such connexion as les ans ; while they omit 

 sounding that letter in cases where it immediately 

 precedes a consonant, as in les chevaux. There are 

 several other things required to give harmony to the 

 sound of a language; for instance, the clear pro- 

 nunciation of the vowels, if they are hi abundance. 



It occurred to the writer, while preparing this ar- 

 ticle, that it would lead to interesting results, if the 

 proportion of the vowels and consonants, hi the differ- 

 ent languages, could be ascertained ; but the con- 

 clusions, to which he has been led by such investiga- 

 tion as he has bestowed on the subject, are rather to 

 be regarded as indications of what might be learned 

 from more thorough inquiries, than as facts from 

 which general deductions can be safely drawn. In 

 making the comparison, passages have been taken 

 from the popular poets of different countries. The 

 different passages were hi the same measure, or hi 

 measures very similar, so that the number of syllables 

 hi each would be very nearly the same. For Eng- 

 lish, Italian, German, Portuguese, and Spanish, three 

 stanzas have been taken from each of the following 

 poems respectively the beginning of Childe Harold, 

 Jerusalem Delivered, the Dedication of Goethe prefix- 

 ed to his Faust, the Luisiada of Camoens, and the 

 Araucana ; for French, 24 lines of the beginning of 

 the Thebaide of Racine; for Greek (Ionic), 24 hex- 

 ameters of the beginning of the Odyssey, and for the 

 Attic dialect, the oeginning of the Anabasis ; and for 

 Latin, the 24 first hexameters of Ovid. To give any- 

 thing like accuracy to such investigations, it is obvious 

 that the results ought to be taken both from prose and 

 poetry, also from many different writers, and the lan- 

 guage of conversation. In the beginning of the Odys- 

 sey, the proportion of consonants to vowels was found 

 to be as 3 : 4 a very melodious proportion, as will 

 soon be seen. It ought, however, not to be forgot- 

 ten, that the Greek language is full of diphthongs, 

 which, in counting, were reckoned always as two let- 

 ters, because, with regard to many, it is not easy to 

 say whether they were pronounced altogether as one 



