o 
ON THE ALPHABET. fi 
(and near the teeth); the & a “palatal” or “ guttural,” because made against 
the palate, or near the throat, with the back part of the tongue. 
Then there are three other mutes, closely related to these, 6, d, and g; 
their examples are these: blab, dread, grog. 
They differ from the three preceding in that there is tone, audible 
sound, made in the throat during the continuance of the contact by which 
they are produced. They are, therefore, properly called the “sonant” 
mutes, while the others are called the ‘‘surd” or ‘‘non-sonant,” or ‘‘ tone- 
less” mutes—or some term equivalent to this; (the names “hard” and 
“soft,” and their like, are altogether to be rejected.) Usually a language 
has both the surd and sonant corresponding mutes—t and d, p and b, k and 
g—it it has either. 
All these sounds are called mutes because the mouth-organs are so 
closed in making them that no breath escapes until the closure is broken or 
exploded. 
The mutes, then, are— 
p t k b d g 
prop, trot, creak, blab, dread, grog. 
NASALS. 
If, now, with just the same positions of the mouth-organs, the breath is 
suffered to pass into or through the nose, the result is the so-called “nasal 
mutes,” or ‘nasal consonants,” or simply “‘nasals.” Generally, a language 
has a nasal corresponding to each pair of non-nasal mutes (surd and sonant). 
So, in English we hear the labial nasal m, the lingual nasal », and the 
palatal nasal in sing, bring, etc. This last is just as simple a sound as either 
of the others, but we have no simple sign for it, and write it with ng. If 
this double sign, or ‘‘digraph,” were adopted as its representative, we 
should have difficulty in distinguishing the simple nasal, as in s¢mger, from 
the nasal followed by a g-sound, as in finger. The best single substitute is 
f, because it is always to be found in the printing offices. 
The nasals, then, are— 
m n n 
mum, nun, sINngunrg. 
The nasal mutes are made, as above defined, with complete closure of 
the mouth-organs, and get their peculiar nasal quality from the ringing of 
