410 



CONSONANTS. 



sound, or, in some measure, as two, as the Italians 

 pronounce paura. In the Attic dialect, the propor- 

 tion of consonants to vowels was as 1 : 1-006. The 

 difference, then, between the Ionic and Attic dialect, 

 would be, 



Ionic, = 3:4=1: 1-333. . . 



Attic, 1 : 1-00 



0-327 



there would, therefore, be 0-327 more vowels in the 

 Ionic dialect a very great difference. In Latin, the 

 proportion of consonants to vowels was a little less 

 than 6:5; and in Italian, as 1 1 : 10 ; 



Latin, 

 Italian, 



i - . i 

 1-1:1 



which would show, if euphony depended altogether 

 upon this proportion, that the Italian language liad 

 added one-tenth to the euphony of the Latin. The 

 harmony of the Tuscan dialect was forcibly recalled 

 to the mind of the writer, while counting the letters, 

 by the great similarity in the number of letters in 

 each verse : a very uniform distribution of vowels and 

 consonants, therefore, exists in the beautiful and mu- 

 sical tongue of Ariosto and Dante. In Spanish (not 

 counting the h, and counting gu before e and i as one 

 letter, ch before e and t in Italian having also been 

 counted as one), the proportion of consonants to vow- 

 els, was found to be a little less than 1*24 : 1, or a 

 little more than 6 consonants to 5 vowels. It must 

 be observed here, that the Italian language has very 

 many double consonants, as opponer, volli, bellezza, 

 &c., which in respect to euphony, ought to be count- 

 ed only as one, because they are hardly heard as two, 

 and only give a peculiar sound to the preceding 

 vowel. But this would increase the proportion of 

 vowels in the language very much, particularly in 

 comparison with Spanish, which has thrown out al- 

 most all the double consonants except II. In Portu- 

 guese, the consonants were to the vowels as i'02 : 1. 

 This shows a greater quantity of vowels in the Por- 

 tuguese than in Spanish ; bxit the very frequent repe- 

 tition of nasal sounds in the former deprives it of 

 much of its musical character. Thus far the amount 

 of vowels and consonants was pretty easily ascertain- 

 ed, because the three languages of Latin descent, 

 whose proportions have been given, have so far sim- 

 plified their orthography, that little more is written 

 than the pronunciation requires: but how different 

 is the case in French and English ! What a differ- 

 ence, for instance, between the sounds and number 

 of letters in the third verse of the TAeoaide, 



Mes yeux depuis fix metis eloient ouerts aux larmes, 

 and in the first verse of Childe Harold, 



Oh thou, in Hellas deemed of heavenly birth I 

 In the specimens of these two languages, therefore, 

 the writer first counted all the written consonants 

 and vowels, and secondly, the consonantal and vocal 

 sounds, reckoning all the simple sounds, as th, sh, in 

 English, or eu, ou, in French, as one, and leaving out 

 the letters not pronounced at all, as gh in though, 

 or ent in etoient. The proportion ascertained by the 

 first enumeration maybe termed the orthographic pro- 

 portion ; that ascertained by the second, the phonic 

 proportion. The same way of counting was employ- 

 ed on German, not because, in this idiom, so many 

 letters are written, without being pronounced at all, 

 as in the two preceding languages, but because, hi 

 German, many simple sounds, as eu, au, sch, ch, &c. 

 are written with two characters. Every body sees, 

 that such a distinction between the orthographic and 

 phonic proportion was necessary, with a view to a 

 comparison' between these languages and those 

 before mentioned. A Greek would have written 



thottgh in tliis way, t*. In French, the orthographic 

 proportion of the consonants to the vowels was found 

 to be 1-27: I, and the phonic proportion, 1-34: 1 ; 

 so that, in French, more vowels are written and not 

 separately pronounced, or not at all, than conson- 

 ants. In English, the orthographic proportion of 

 the consonants to the vowels was 1-52: l.and the 

 phonic proportion, 1.51 : 1. In German, the ortho- 

 graphic proportion of consonants to vowels was 1.64 : 

 1, and the phonic proportion, 1*67 : 1. In Swedish, 

 the proportion was 1.64 : 1; in Dutch, the propor- 

 tion was 1-5 : 1, or 3 : 2. Of the two latter langua- 

 ges, the orthographic proportion only is given, as 

 the writer is not sufficiently acquainted with them to 

 decide, in regard to some letters, whether they 

 should be taken phonically as one or two. The lan- 

 guage of the Sandwich islands exhibited the uncom- 

 mon proportion of consonants to vowels 1 : 1-8, or 

 five consonants to nine vowels. The great propor- 

 tion of vowels to consonants, in this idiom, may be 

 seen in the following line, in which it ought to be 

 remembered that every letter is to be pronounced : 

 net au ia oukou ; ai no i ka olelo mat, i ka olelo a ke 

 Akua. 



This line is taken from the missionary spelling-book 

 above mentioned. In the Seneca Indian language, 

 into which the Gospel of St Luke was translated by 

 T. S. Harris, and published in New York, 1829, the 

 proportion of the consonants to the vowels was as 

 1-18 : 1 ; in Chahta Indian, or the language of the 

 Choctaws, the proportion was 1'2: 1. The phonic 

 proportion of consonants to vowels in Sanscrit was 

 1-12:1; in Malay, 1-33 : 1 ; in Persian, 1-33 : 1 ; in 

 Hebrew, 1-2 : 1, and in common Arabic, 1-08 : 1. If 

 we then arrange all these proportions hi a tabular 

 form, we shall have the following series : 



It is easily seen, that, in the languages of Latin ori- 

 gin, the proportion of consonants to vowels is much 

 smaller than in the Teutonic idioms. To compare 

 the proportions of consonants to vowels, in such dif- 

 ferent families of languages ; to show the proportions 

 of the gutturals, labials, &c., of the different idioms ; 

 and, again, the proportion of these letters in the 

 various families of languages, or according to the 

 different parts of the earth to which they belong, as 

 Asiatic, European, &c., languages, and many other 

 calculations might lead to very interesting conclu- 

 sions. This branch of philology might be compared 

 to the new department of stvchiometry in chemistry, 



* Those marked with are counted phonically. 



t It will be observed that Sanscrit, Latin, and Hebrew 

 appear to have the same proportion of consonants to vow. 

 els ; and yet what a total difference between the sou uds of 

 these languages 1 



| The Malay is always considered as ne of the sweetest 

 and most Italian-like languages, though the proportion of 

 letters would make it rank far behind the Italian. 



$ The many gutturals in Dutch, render the language 

 hard , though, according to the proportion only, it would be 

 softer than English. 



