ANALYTIC ORTHOGRAPHY. 343 
skirt, thirty, verge,—using the vowel of ebb in very, discovery, another, interest, and that 
of up in worse; so that he can hardly have the Ivish dialect in view. Graham proposes 
a peculiar ‘e’ for her, bird. 
392c. With Rapp, we assign this vowel to German, as in welches, verlieren, verlassen 
(or even frlasn.) ‘The vowel of wp is not admissible in normal German, although it is 
common enough in dialects, and associated with short 0, as in kop/, toll. In our examples, 
the theoretical vowel is that of ebd. 
Y, the Russian 51. (g, in Turkish.) 
393. This vowel strikes the ear like the pinched German 6, ti, to which series it may 
belong; but the lips are not pursed, the effect being due to the enlarged cavity of the 
mouth. The quality is perhaps nearest to the vowel of if, but the jaws are more 
separated, and the lips are retracted as for I. It is long and short, and is said to be the 
sound represented in Polish by y. Hichhoff (1836) uses ‘y’ for it; Castrén (1854) the 
same, with an angular circumflex when long; and Ellis uses a small capital y. We 
propose a character formed from inverted fi, which is sufficiently distinct, whilst it bears 
some resemblance to the Russian and Polish forms—and ‘y’ must be restricted to its 
historic value. 
393a. Castrén mentions this as a Samojédic vowel, and he says that in making it, the 
end of the tongue is prest against the base of the lower teeth. $544. He states that in 
several dialects, ‘i,’ in certain conditions, has something of this sound. 
394. This Slavonic vowel occurs in Jakutish (Bohtlingk,) and is probably the key to an 
Altai-Tatar infusion, as it is said by Redhouse and Bohtlingk to occur in Turkish. But 
Svuftic’, who quotes Turkish very freely, in illustration of the elements, does not admit it. 
We have not been able to compare the two, having heard them with an interval of six 
years. ‘They are closely allied, and our impression is that the Russian phase is based on 
ooze, and the Turkish on is. 
; U, in pit. 
395. The English vowel of it, pit, pin, &c., frequently formed out of a shortened I, and 
as ‘e’ is one of its equivalents, it often takes the secondary power, as in bélieve, régret, 
déscend, which cannot differ from dispose;* and we find in old English—biginnan, 1250; 
began, bithoute, 1280, without the unenglish gh; and Chaucer uses dispise, discent. 
396. It is the German vowel of kinn (chin,) hitzig, billig, will, bild; and the initial of 
the Belgian diphthong ieww (and perhaps, in some cases, the Welsh ww.) It is adopted 
for the English w in tube, (tiwb) in Comstock’s alphabet—a diphthong known to the writer. 
*See the Phonotypic Journal, 1846, for this vowel in select, secure, review, degree, defect, desire, disease, 
denote, prepare, December, and many more. 
