thong i, and this I can affert upon repeated experience. The inhabitants of Scotland in general, and many natives of Ireland, substitute a poor founding diphthong in the room of this, compofed of a e, in which the jaws are brought more close, and the found confequently lefs full. Thus for my 2 2 3 2 they fay my, for fine fine; and this may eafily be cured by following the method before mentioned. 3 3 The diphthong u is formed of the founds 3 e and o; the former fo rapidly uttered and 3 falling fo quickly into the found o, that its own distinct power is not heard; and thus ́ a third found or diphthong is formed by the junction of the two vowels. The diphthong oi is formed by a union 2 3 3 of the fame vowels as i, a e, with this dif 3 ference that the firft vowel a being dwelt upon is diftinctly heard before its found is 2 changed changed by its junction with the latter 3 vowel e; as oi, boy, noife. This diphthong is generally marked in our tongue by the characters oi, or oy, which makes people imagine that it is really composed of the founds which those letters represent; whereas the ear evidently perceives that it 3 3 is a not o which is the first found, and e noti which is the laft. But the truth is that having no peculiar letters in our al 3 3 phabet to mark the founds a and e, their powers were transferred in a manner fomewhat arbitrary to different vowels; and this should make us, in judging of the true formation of the diphthongs, attentive not to the letters which reprefent them to the in fpelling, but to the real founds offered to the ear. eye The diphthong ou is composed of the 3 3 founds a and o-and is formed much in the fame 21 feme manner as i; the mouth being at first 3 in the position of founding a, but before it is perfected, by a motion of the under jaw, and lips to the pofition of founding o, the 3 3 first found a is checked and blended with Out of these four diphthongs there have been two difcovered which have hitherto been concealed under the difguife of fimple vowels. But what fhall we fay to the large tribe yet remaining, not lefs than nineteen in number, which our fagacious grammarians have never yet been able to find out? In order to fhew the cause of this extraordinary blindness in them, it will be necefsary to observe, that we find in our alphabet two characters called y and w, which exceedingly puzzled our early grammarians, in confidering to what clafs they should be referred. At laft Wallis, who writ some what what more than a century ago, and whose grammar, except where he treats of the article of founds, is one of the best that has been produced on our language, determined that they were of an amphibious kind, being fometimes vowels, and fometimes confonants: vowels when they ended a fyllable, confonants when they began one: and this wife determination has been adopted by all grammarians from his days down to our own, as is to be seen in Johnson, the author of the late English grammar and dictionary. So grofs an abfurdity could never have paffed upon any, but such as were blinded by literary vanity, so far as to think that skill in letters of course produced fkill in founds. Ought it not to have ftruck them that it is the very nature of a confonant, that its found fhall be diftinctly perceived, in union with every vowel, either before or after it; and when they could could produce no fuch found after any Vow el, ought they not to have concluded that they could not poffibly be confonants? The truth is, their perplexity feems to have arisen more from the names given to these letters, y and w, than any thing else; for had they been called, as they should 3 3 have been, e and o, which marks their true powers, there could have been no doubt about them. It is to be here obferved, that by adopting the Roman alphabet, we had but five marks for the nine vowels which were in our tongue, and 3 3 among others the vowels e and o had ee 00 no peculiar characters to represent them; |