ANALYTIC ORTHOGRAPHY. 351 
Y, y, ¥, (Y% »,) Gr.; Dan., Swed., Y. 
435. If there is any difference between French wu and German ii, it is that the latter has 
a tendency towards I. It is long in the French buse, vue, mir (ripe,) and short in mur 
(a wall,) vu, une, fut. It is long in German tbel, giite, natiirlich; and short in glick, 
kiiche, kiissen. We are unable to give an opinion whether the Danish and Swedish y, 
and Belgian wu are exactly identic with the French sound. 
436. The historic character is Y, often used in Greek typography. Max Miiller uses ti; 
Lepsius the same, with the dots below; and Comstock Y. . 
ry 
u 
437. Dr. Rapp uses this character (4, 114,) for a vowel between 6 and &, occurring in 
the German of Hlsess (Alsace,) and unknown to us. 
u? 
438. This letter is used by Castrén (§ 11,) for a “close w” in Samojedic dialects. 
lu. 
439. Welsh wu (y,) long and short, a distinct vowel according to Ellis, and made “ with 
the tongue between the teeth.” y 
440. The Swedish wis pinched, and is between a and it. Castrén mentions it as an Ostjac 
sound. In the ordinary alphabet, y is at hand for it, as in Islandic Gya, God. a. Mr. 
Pitman has a reversed wu, a tailed w, and several other forms of these letters, which could 
be distributed as required, among the vowels of $$ 437-40. See §§ 409-22. 
441. The following table (§444) is compiled from Rapp (2, 119, 140, 150, 152, 171, 
180;—8, 161, 223, 265, 308, 312;—4, 7, 111, 115, 118, 119, 127, 130, 134, 144,) and is 
in his notation, the circumflex indicating length and not quality; é being the vowel of 
they, and a of there. His key word for the fifth column is ‘broad, which does not suit 
English, the vowel being awe and not 0; but as it suits other vowels, it is not altered. 
442. This table shows the absurdity of what is falsely called etymologic orthography, and 
the impossibility of giving the history of a word in any single spelling. It shows that a 
phonetic representation of the various phases constitutes the etymology and distinguishes 
the newer from the older forms, and that in using the present alphabet, LIF, and JIR, 
are the only proper representatives of leaf and year; and farther, it shows that the 
vowel of vein has no more right to an a-character than o or 7 have, for if the original A 
became E in Gothic, it equally became awe and o in other dialects. 
443. Hichhoff’s table of mutation (Paralléle des Langues, p. 91,) shows a similar result, 
the short Sanscrit A being represented by A, 5, I, 0, U, in Greek, Latin, Gothic, German, 
Lithuanian, Russian, and C*eltic. 
