296 ANALYTIC ORTHOGRAPHY. 
prairie in three syllables, or road dilated into rode, making swmmerode (sumr‘ode,) out of 
some road, su dnly or sud“nly out of sudun’ly, prismatic out of prismatic, &e. The words 
batl"ing, butn’ing, have three syllables, and ban’tling two, but most persons would write 
the latter bant’ling, guided by the etymologic rather than the phonetic syllabication. In 
these cases the separating mark is required but once, because sudn cannot be made a mo- 
nosyllable as long as ‘n’ is n. 
169. The finals in batl, batr, banr, sudn, prism, &c., are not essentially different, (J, 7, 
have more aperture,) from those of full, bar, den, aim, and they do not require to be 
marked to indicate the formation of syllable without vowels, except in rare cases, as in 
$168. The Grebo has a word m (five,) Chinese has m (aunt) and ng (five) as in sing, 
and if we write may and aim with ‘m’ why not m with the ay or (az) omitted? Bohe- 
mian has consonant syllables, as drt sawdust, smrt death, blk fire, blb a clown, frk foam, Ke. 
170. The following are old Nordish—akr acre, backstr a baking (a proper name in Eng- 
lish,) aftr after, fingr finger, bitr biting, eign own, gagn gain, gegn against, Oxl shoulder, 
6xn oxen, avalr bowed, fullr full, greipr crooked, armr arm, flatr flat, arligr early, and many 
more, which would probably be admitted as English forms, were it not that grammarians 
have been accustomed to use the note of exclamation when discussing syllables without 
vowels. This, and poetic orthographies like Heav’n, sev’n (which no writing can mono- 
syllabise,) may have fostered the use of the apostrophe, as if there were something present 
in the nature of a vowel. But that something (n or vn) is equally present in nv, nva, una. 
171. But this attention to syllables is neglected in the dissyllables pat, tap, the final un- 
written breath of which (pa-t’, tap’, bad‘, bug“) makes a syllable with the antecedent con- 
sonant, a fact which is partially recognised by the more rhythmic and delicate French 
ear. The Chinese word for siz is precisely the English word Zuck, but it is a monosyllable, 
the breath being retained by the closed organs, making luck.— Hald., Proceedings of the 
Am. Acad., 1842, p. 179. 
172. Synéresis is the change of a guttural or labial vowel into acoalescent. It is usually 
regarded as the union of two vowels into a diphthong, which implies an impossibility. It 
may be indicated by (*) a reversed diéresis mark, as in the Latin penNa‘E, with the dots 
superimposed. The coalescent letters should be formed on a consonant basis, as in AJL 
for aisle, and A‘vu for owl. A consonant basis will give to languages like Latin and Greek, 
a vowel to every syllable. 
173. The separation of the coalescents from the vowels, being quite modern, their differ- 
ence is seldom recognised in alphabets. This is a grave defect. 
