ON THE ALPHABET. 9 
tional organ, the teeth. In English we have no palatal spirants, but they 
are found in many languages. The German, for example, has two: one in 
words like ich and milch, formed farther forward on the tongue; the other, 
in ach, doch, ete., farther back—more gutturally. They are both surd, and 
the corresponding sonant is nearly the Arabic ‘“ ghain.” As we have no 
other use for g and 2, these characters may be used in representing them. 
If a surd palatal spirant is found, let it be represented by gq, and if a sonant 
is found, by 2. 
The spirants, then, are— 
af v g t @ qd s 
jife, valve, thin, then, ich and ach, x= Arab. ghain 
SIBILANTS. 
We come now to the class of “ sibilants,” or hissing sounds. Our 
common English s and z need no explanation; they, too, are corresponding 
surd and sonant. But our sh-sound is just as much a simple sound as s, 
although we use two letters to write it; and it, as a surd, has its corre- 
sponding sonant in azure and pleasure, in fusion and adhesion, and their like. 
As we have no other use for ¢ and 7 let the first, the surd, be represented 
by ¢, and its corresponding sonant by 7. 
The ch and j sounds in church and judge are compound, having for their 
last part the sh and zh sounds, with a ¢ prefixed to the one and ad to the 
other; the ¢ and d, however, formed in a somewhat different way from our 
usual ones—namely, farther back in the mouth, and with the flat of the 
tongue. These compound sounds should be written by ée and dj. 
Thus, the sibilants are— 
8 z c 4} te dj 
sauce. zones. shrewish. azure. church. judge. 
W, Y, BR, L, AND H. 
The sounds of our y and w, as in you and we, should be written with 
these letters. The same with an h-sound prefixed to them—as in when 
(=hwen) and hue (=hyu)—should be written as pronounced: that is, hw 
and hy. Some hold, to be sure, that these sounds are not w and y with an 
h prefixed, but rather are the corresponding surds to w and y; in either 
case, however, the hw and hy signs are the best, and unobjectionable. 
