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338 Mr. Pickering on the Orthography of the 



our words thiSf that, &c. and for which our Saxon ancestors had 

 an appropriate character, but for want of which we should be 

 obliged to write the same words, dhis, dhat &c.* 



Ds or Dz will probably be wanted in some cases, to denote 

 the J?at sounds corresponding to fs/ which last is very common 

 in the Indian languages (though often corrupted into our chj 

 and is expressed by the German writers by a simple Z; a letter 

 which in their own language, as is well known, has the power of 

 ts or tz in English, 



J)jf JDsh or Bzh may be employed to express the sound of 



* 



our J; which, for the reasons that will be given under that let- 



ter, it seems necessary to reject from the proposed system of 

 orthography. 



The^af sound of fft. Nothing can be more unsettled and imperfect than 

 our technical language in Grammar and Rhetoric ; and this circumstance has 

 much retarded the progress of accurate investigation in those two branches of our 

 studies. So far as respects sotiKt/s, we cannot do better than to borrow terms 

 from Music, which is the Science of sounds ; and I have accordingly used the 

 terras ^flf and sAar;? (or ^rfli'e and acM/eJ which I believe were first employed 

 systeraalicallj in Wallcer's Pronouncing Dictionary, to designate the two classes 

 of consonants often called mutes and semi-mutes, as 6, d, v, and p, t, f, &c. 

 Mr. Da Ponceau observes, that this distinction may be as good as any other j 

 but he suggests, whether that oHnspirates and ejcspirates would not be preferable ; 

 applying the former of these terms to the flat consonants, and the latter to the 

 sharp ones 5 so that B will be called an inspirate, and P, gn exspirate, &c. He 

 IS of opinion that « in pronouncing these two classes of letters, the or^^an in the 

 one case expels the breath, and in the other draws it in The exspiration, in 



/, jp, &:c. (he remarks) 



the inspi- 



ration in their correlatives, perhaps not quite so much. To me it seems, that 

 when you say thunder, you push the air out, when you say that, you draw or 

 keep the air in as much as is pos&ible in uttering a consonant." 



