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24S Mr, Pickering on the Pronunciation 



this eaoic sound. And if we take into view the unaccented syl- 

 lables of English words, we find, that the whole list of vowels 

 a, e, i, 0, tf, y, and some of the diphthongs are, in a great part of 

 your language pronounced exactly alike I* 



Such would have been the reasoning of this Greek in respect 



Enjrlish lansruase : And if 



s""^"'" '""a""-, 



for 



French 



where innumerable words and phrases of different significations 

 have precisely the same sound, and, though different to the eye 



the same to the 



be much more forcibly struck 



with the futility of this objection. How absurd does it appear 

 us, for instance, that ^, ai, oi, ait, oit, aient and oient in that Ian- 

 guage should all have the same sound, that of the letter a in Eng- 

 lish. How, again we may ask (as Wintertou did the Greek) 

 could any one distinguish in French between the third person sin. 

 gular and the third person plural of nearly all the verbs in the 

 language, (except those which be-in with a vowel or h mnfp n.. 



followed by words that beg 



1 



freq 



peaking the language? To de 



scend to particulars; how could any one determine when 

 Frenchman means to say, he should be, p7 seroit,) or they i 

 be, (-ih seroient,) he speaks, (il parle,} or they speak, (lis pa 

 he was speaking, (il parloit,) or they were speaking, (ils parh 

 &c. with innumerable other expressions, which occur in' 

 French sentence he utters ? The answer is obvious ; by th 

 struction, as the Greek observed to M^interton ; or in other words. 



m 



* I have been the better enabled to collect these various combinations of let- 



a 



very 

 con- 



langiiag 

 lish Phojiology, before cited. 





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 ^ 



