52 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



■uncertainty attends all the vowels, though the variations are most 

 numerous in the case cited. This leads to the extraordinary phe- 

 nomenon of representing about fifteen elementary vowel sounds 

 in about forty-seven different ways in the same language. The 

 consonants afford but little relief, the simple surd palatal sibilant 

 being represented in twenty-two ways, requiring in all forty-seven 

 letters. The language affords many examples of sounds variously 

 represented by dissimilar characters, among both vowels and con- 

 sonants. The habit of representing simple sounds by digraphs 

 like 73/i, sh, th, ng, ivh, ah, aio, etc., is very expensive and by no 

 means luxurious. The various spellings of the same syllables, as 

 in tion, sion, cion and shun ; the various pronunciation of the same 

 combinations of letter, as ough in though, through, hought, jylourjh, 

 cough and enough ; and the hundred and twenty-four silent letters 

 out of every thousand in an average book, constitute a material 

 and moral burden that the age can ill aft'ord to carry. 



Our alphabet could be employed to far better advantage than 

 at present ; but its crudeness discourages all refinement in its use. 

 It is barbarous in both its origin and its character. It mingles 

 surds, sonants, gutterals, dentals, labials, and vowels and conson- 

 ants in such perfect confusion that to inquire for their principle of 

 arrangement could be understood only as a jest. 



A startling statement has been made by Mr. James W. Shearer, 

 that only five words in the English language are pronounced as 

 they are spelled. The word no is among the number. It has a 

 consonant that is nearly, though not quite, uniform in its use. 

 But the vowel as heard in this word, represents two elementary 

 vowel sounds — the first being the exact contenental and the 

 other a short vanishing u, like the vowel of raoon. This combi- 

 nation corresponds with the name of the letier and its popular 

 " long " sound. 



In this word, the sound of o, which Mr. Shearer, in all proba- 

 bility, has set down as the proper sound occurs, according to Pro- 

 fessor Whitney's table of frequency, only one hundred and sev- 

 enty-six times in ten thousand words, while " short 0," as in not, 

 occurs two hundred and fifty-nine times. Strictly speaking, there 

 is no knowing when a word is " pronounced as spelled " in our 



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