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Lorsque le document est trop grand pour etre reproduit en un seul clich6, il est film6 d partir de Tangle sup^rieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 ^ f^- I i«iy»i ' H «ll ■ " ■*'i»wi! L I M^ff '^ ' - C A N A O A mTT|^ % II ijiiii II I I 1 . 1 >ii NUMBER AND JITURE OF VOWEL SOUNDS. \ ■ AN ESSAlY Kbad befork the CANADiiir Inoti TtrTBp»THI£lSTHorI?«!EMBER. 1884 BY ^^ MARTIN ItrTflfpBOrSE, \ '>/r //' / c ^>// /c-t ^>/^ ' y/lx.> ry-Zd-r^^v / ^ ft' essAy rpox THE NUMBER AND NATDllE OF VOIIfEL SOUNDS. To any one who has reflected at all upon his native language, it must have seemed strange indeed that so largo a number of vowel sounds is represented by five symbols. And when he first became acquainted with a foreign tongue, his surprise must have grown intense upon finding the same symbols doing duty for sounds hitherto unknown to him ; while, more curious still, a sound denoted in his own tongue by one of them would in the foreign tongue be denoted by another, and a sound hitherto known by that other sign he would now see represented by a third. Thus the ordinary sound given to a in English is represented by e in French; while the sound given to e in English is ti'ansferred to i in French. It would be highly interesting to discover how many vowel sounds are in existence \ and it would be practically useful to invent for them a set of representative symbols to be used in common by all nations. Not that one could expect the nations to change theii* spelling ; but in evei'y bilingual dictionary the vowel sounds in each word could be determined for the foreign reader by marks of reference to a table of common symbols. Nor would such a system be without its value in the ordinary defining and pronouncing dictionary of one language, especially if that language were English, in which one written vowel or vowel combination often indicates many kinds of sound, while one sound is often indicated by many vowels or vowel combinations. The discovery is our aim in this essay; the invention we leave to otlier writers. The i)ath has often been trodden before by English lexicographers and grammarians as a matter of necessity, and recently by some eminent Continental inquirers out of a thirst for discovery or as a branch of some other scientific track they were pursuing. All we can say of the system of the most renowned of tte Continental explorers, Helmholtz, which we have not had leisure to do more than glance at, is that, while most interesting as showing the musical character of certain of the vowel sounds, it is very far from a complete classification of them. If, on the other hand, we examine the English systems, we find that the earlier ones are very incomplete, and the later ones still ranch lackiiig in method. Amongst both Englishmen and foreigners there has been too little study of the pronunciation of other languages than their own. ^ We will not trouble our readers with a discussion of old Walkers classification, although either in his original dictionary or in dictionaries founded upon his it must have been referred to scores of times by every educated Englishman ; neither will we deal with Webster's, although it is more complete than Walker's. So many well-founded alterations have b een made in their plans by recent clussiiiers that I think no one now can be looking up to them as systems. But we would just say that Webster gives every sound save one existing in the English language, but abounds in reduplications ; while Walker is guilty of three omissions besides reduplications. The arrangements adopted by both writers and the repetitions that they make, prove that they intended rather to show the number of ways wherein each vowel sound could be written than the number and relation of the sounds them.selves. Let us rather take up an authority ten years younger than Webster and forty or fifty years younger than Walker which for two decades at least has been guide to the ears of a very large and quick-witted class of men, both in England and America— Isaac Pitman's Manual of Phonography. The following is his table of vowels and diphthongs :— ♦ LONG. Simple Vowels. SIGN.i 1. AH, as in half 2. EH, 3. EE, i< p«y she 4. AW, " thought 5. OH, " so 0. 00, " poor. SHORT. SIGN 1. a, as in that e, 3. i, 4. o. pen <s not. 5. u, " one 6. oo, " foot 'i 3 Diphthongs. ■• V I • -1 : I as in wi/ : OW ;is in iwiv ; 01 as in oil ; U as in ucn\ ' .'a : : 1 1 Two Sentences illusti-ating the EtFect of r upon a preceding Vowel : Long Vowels. —Aunt, spare me all those spoons. Short Vowels. — Are her f%s or furn good ] What strikes one first in looking at this table is that six simple vowels are given with their long and short forms respectively, anil not iive according to the tradition learnt in our infancy. WalkfM- liad even hinted at this, when in the preface to his dictionary he riglitly called the vowel sound in not the true short form of that heanl in naught ; but Pitman was apparently tho first writer who gave to tlie aw sound an equal footing with the recognized true vowels. Again, like Walker in his preface, he makes light of English symbols, and fixes the i of is as the short form of the e in sAe, or of the ea in ease ; and, going beyond his master, he rightly assigns the e of pen as companion to the a of pay or pane. But Pitman's classification is manifestly intended for English readers only ; for not only does he ignore the recondite foreign short sounds of a and o, but he makes no mention of the common French u. But more — why should this writer intensify an error of Walker's by calling the sound of o in one, the short form of its sound in so ? Substituting better pairs of pattern words, I appeal to your ears to decide whether so bears the same relation to son that naught does to not or ease to is. What, then, is the true short form of the o in so ; and what the long form of the o in one ? The first is, what the French, Germans, and Italians call short o (their long o being the same as ours) — that brief sound so difficult for Englishmen to discriminate heard in the French sot and the German sold. In English we have it too, but always in unaccented syllables, where its nature is not perceived. Listen, for instance, to the first syllable of ro-tdte and mo-rdlity, and to the second in dn-no-tate. As to the second, a common rule of English pronunciation is, that if you double an ensuing consonant, you shorten the vowel that precedes it ; and, conversely, that if you drop one con.sonant from a pair of the «arae kind, you lengthen the preceding vowel. With no consonant does this hold so good as with the letter r : compare harrow and ha/r, carry and car ; merry and mere, berry and here ; Torridge and Tor, borrow and hore, sorrow and sore. The change is not always made into the true correlative long sound : but if the original long or short .sound be the one commonly given to the letter in English, it changes into tlio short or long sound conimonlv given in English ; oi- if the long or .short Hoiind at first he the one; commonly hoard hct'orti r in our languagj!, it passes into the short or long sound commonly heard before V in our langinige. Thus the long sound of ft in har Hnds its true conelative in a foi'eign sound (hat we shall [H'eseutly mention, and not in the tirst vowel of hiirrow ; and to the sound of ti in merry we have already assigned with Pitman the sound of n in /kiii or iiuite for a correlative : hut just as the o, in barroi'- is the short sound always iieard i)efore /• in English, so is the a in htir the long sound always lieard ; aiul while the e of merri/ is the common English short e,. uttered before any consonant, so is the e of 7tiere the common J']uglish long e. Moreover, the word sm-e and its analogues actually contain the true correlative sound of the o in sorroiv and its analogues. Now, there are a large numbei- of English words in which the sotnul of O' in o)ie is represcnited either by <> or u followed by two vh ; and in every case where a word l)eginning with the .same s])elling can be' found but having one r in.stead of two, the vowel that precedes the r has one pai-ticular sound — that of the u in bui'u : thus worri/, with two ?''s, becomes word, irorhl, and ivorse with one r ; hurri/, with two, becomes hurt with one; nn-rij, with two, cur and curt with one. It is plain, then, that in practice we English folk treat the u of burn as the long foi-m of the o in one and son, or u in sun and bun ? Again, that a following r or any other special letter is not always' wanted to bring the ?f sound of burn into being is proved by the fact that the last letter of our few comnum nouns and numerous projjer nouns that end in a has that sound. Thus, we do not pronounce sofa, idea, Clara, and Augusta as if spelt so-faJi, ^-dyaJi, Clair-ah, Aiigust-ahy but as though written so-fur, i-dyur, Clair-ur, and Jugust-ur. But the truth is far more conspicuous in our neighbours' languages ; the final e of German words and final unaccented e of French ones having always this same sound. Pronoiuice, for example, laiife and stubs in German, and se and qiie in French. Therefore the sound is a specific one, not a mere shading.* Lastly, we can finrl no long sound that bears a resemblance to the of one or son, or the u of bun, other than the ti of bicrn ; nor, recipi'ocally, can we find any short sound corresi)onding to this save what is heard in one, so)/, and bun. We therefore make a final appeal to your ears : is not bun clearly the short way of pronouncing burn, ton of ])i'onouncing turn, hut of hurt, and cut of curt ? In the speech of the Lowland Scotch both the contrast and the correlation are well displayed ; since for loorld they say wicrruld, and for murmur, murr-murr. (Mr. Pitman does mention the sound of n in burn in the pair of typical .sentences whereby he illustrates the effect of r upon a foregoing, * The preceding argument was added after the essay had been read. 1 ♦ vowel. But he gives it no distinct footing ; leaving his |m])il3 to represent it in either of two ways, according as it is spelt with n and r, or, as is often the case, witU e and r. Compare '^/lus" and ''her" in the couplet.) Followhig Walker but not Wehster, Pitman omits from his catalogue the sound of a. in s/xtre or cdre, or of ea in bear or ni in jmir. In his couplet ho treats it merely as a subordinate or slightly shaded form of the a or ai in Spain, cane, ba)ie, and pane or pain, ))roduced by the influence of the succeedinaf r. But, for that matter, I'itmau's is the view commoidy taken u]) to the jiresent time by the graunnarians and lexicographers of England, France, and Italy, if not of Germany also, Ollendorff s French- Italian grammar, for instance, gives to the e in the second syllalije of credcte the same sound as to tliat in the secojid syllable of credere ; Noel and Ohapsal, taking their stand wholly upon accent-marks, would make the uttered vowel of gr^ve identical with tlie uttered vowel of /re re. Yet let us look again at the effect of r upon certain vowels that it follows. Walker calls the a in 7nart the long Italian a soinid, and the a in the French word matin (as it truly is) the corresponding short sound ; and he also treats the o in corn as the long form of the o in co}i. By analogy and an a[)peal to sensitive ears, we have further concluded that the n, in burti is the long form of the u in bun. Now, in not one of the long-sounding words here given is the r pro- nounced at all ; it simply effects the exchange of a short vowel for its correlative long one. But no more is it pronounced in ca,re, bear, and 2xdr or their cognates ; and by substituting i)articipial forms of the same words or of words having the same sound, we get cared, bared, and ■pared, M'hich are in j)erfect analogy with viart, corn, and burn. We ask our readers to conclude that cared, bared, and pared, or care, bear, and ^jrtt?', contain the respective long forms of the vowels heard in cad, bad, and pad, or carry, Barrij, and parry. Is the sound heard in care a simple vowel or diphthong? We answer, a diphthong — composed of the short e in met, followed by the short it in bun. Utter them quickly together, and judge for yourself It is remarkable that in Anglo-Saxon many words to the vowels of which we now give the sound of a in carry were written with ae di])h thong, which is the way wherein the Germans now represent the sound of a in care (at least when a word begins with a capital letter — otherwise by a). Thus at, back, bast, and cap were originally aet, baeck, baest, and caeppe ; and our great Alfred's name was written Alfred. If our word had, in the sense of ordered, be descended from hatan to bid, and have in the present tense for order be a corruption, then the inscription round the jewel found near the lale 6 of Atliolney iiml preserved at Oxford, "yKlfred Imedde nie gewercan,"" would road in modern English nlnio.st identically, " Alfred liad me woik.-d." NVIiy should the sound of eio in )H'ri) he treated hy Titman iis ii di|iht]ioiig ] Why more than the comhinations of »/ with other vowel.s heard in yar^i, yea, yeast, yaion, and yoke, yam, yea, yo)i, at)d young 1 NV'c Just now styled the Continental short o, and o recondite sounds i and. iiuleed, they are usually seized \^lth niucli ditHculty by Englisli- nit'H— the o because, as we have already said, it is only found in English in unncoented syllables, the a because it does not exist in our lanminge at all. The French lidjipe is not our liap, nor the (ternifiiii woi'il matt our viat ; nor is the Italian a)iiw to be pronounced as the last )iart of piatio is by the English : yet by far the greater number of I'nglishnien who can conver.se in French, German, or Italian utter the words after this fashion. Ilappe is really the brief way of aiticulating our harp, matt of ov'r mart, and anno of the river Arini after di'0])iiing the r. Tilt* wi'iter is doubtless giving an .experience like that of many others when he tells how, after spending a year and a half iu' Switzerland between the ages of twelve and fourteen, having thought in French for a year past, and being able to s|)eak ami write fluently in the language, he one day Ijegan I'epeating to a tiny Swiss }ioy the- words of the song — " J'ai du T)on tabac," i^c. when the youngster mockingly cut me .short with, " Que.st-ce que tu dis, done i" " J'jii du bou tapin.'" Possibly if we had had fewer English and more French associates, we should not have made the mistake. The Germans and Italians, on the other hand, do not possess our common short sound of a ; and the French have it only in their nasal forms in, ain, or ein, as the little boy shov^^ed by his inquiry. The Fi-ench vin, pain, and teint each really contain the same vowel as our rail, pan, and tan ; and in keening with what we have already said as to the long form of this vowel, vvarent and tinrent will be found stepping stones from vin and teint to the French verre and terre, or to our vary and tare. Let us now, the better to substantiate our charges against previoiis- classifiers, and the more firmly to build up our own system, pass a few criticisms upon the favourite English lexicographer of the present day, Mr. Austin Nnttall. V Tliis wi-itcr, cHii<];iii<,' to oM tiinlitioii, ro))ifts<*nts the tir.st vowel sound in (v/r// uiid irari/ ami llioir aii.ilogur.s in tin* .siiiiie wiiy iis the first ill )iinkiiig and takhig — rtjwriting these examples ])h(»netieally vd-re, wd-re, tnd-kUuj, and (d-kliii/. H<! also drawn ;i false distinction lietween tli(^ sound of no in ii'ainl and /''oo/ and that of n in /id/ or />k//. Is there any dillerence to the ear, I ask, lietween nil in pull, which ho writes j)n/, and ool in ivool, which he writes ii'odI / Surely nn pull '\h U) jinop so is tntitl to tooof. In confusion our author at last writes vuidd kud, and icotdd tvOod. Lastly, Mr. Nuttall wrongly declares the a in the sutlix -ahh' to 1)0 the short Italian a— the ^sllorl sound corresponding to the long a ill fat/in' ; whereas it really has no sound of a at all, but the one so commonly occurring in unaccented syllables hoard in Imu on the ono hand and /iidian and opudon on the other. Say " Fre /, )/()ur riib'll kill that tly," an 1 you titter tht word diwdbh with a inert' diderenco ill the stress; wliile readalAe is just redoubl-i witli tlie accent on tho first syllable instead of the second. Even were Nuttall's dictionary without the- and otlier flaws besides, and were its system so far altennl as i.uv;iriably to represent a particular sound by a particulav letter or ^ oup <>f letters' it would onl}' ijo a classification of J/.glish sounds .ater all. ■^^ iiat we are mak' lur goal here is the co(iip](>to tabling of ail the vowels and vowel conipomuls uttei'ed by ilie diderent nations- mi tiif world. It is true that for this purpose we have only exuminr-u four languages of westei-n Europe ; yet from what we have hea -1 concerning the pronunciati(jn of other tongues and from ceitaiu striking f(vduros of perfeetion that the iiuml)ers in our collection present, we are led to the conclusion that we have discovered and arranged all the simple vowels that exist. In the following table, for the composition of which we have thoroughly prei)ared the reader, we have arranged ty|)ical words from each language containing the same sound (where any such exist) in one horizontal line ; the words showing the long and short form thereof being placed side by side in ])airs. We have underlined in each word the sound exemplitied ; and further, where the word is polysyllabic we have marked with a thick accent the syllable on which the stress is laid, if it affects the length or species of a vowel in the same syllable or another. We have numbered all the simple sounds in the first double column, or the blanks therein corresponding to sounds in the other columns, by pairs ; giving a figure with the long mark over it to each long vowel, and the same figure with a short mark to the corresponding short vowel. Lastly, we have used the same numbers to identify the simple sounds that take part in forming each diphthong. (The stress is marked with au accent thicker than the conventional onorj.) mm ^mm^^^mmmi' 8 Table op the Vowel Sounds used in the Four Languages of Western Europe. Simple. KNGLTSH. FRENCH. GERMAN. ITALIAN. 1 boom T bush boue, bourre kidi, kund piu,+ fanciuUa . "2 mote ^ morAlity maux (pi.) mot so, sold* no. poeta 3 dawn 3 don corps, correcte dort, dotter fu6ri,:l : porre 4 path 4 pate, patte kahn, kann ma. Anno 5* bum 5 bun de, liebe, liebes. (j age 6 edge d£. dette spiit, speck tre. bello ^ suspendre inuocent IfiiVil KiiimTipl 7 7 "S keen ^ kin vigne, uie, nicht si, Agio C'uiiijxjniid. 4+T cow • frail ^ + 8 boy neu 0'+5 pare, parry p^re taille. sehr frei sera 4 + S nice --^ s^ deux ol 5 + / ' A Triphthong. — The North Geniians add their sound of il to our «(/ ill ju-ououiiciiig PAi ; and we quesiion whether all educated Germans out of 8wabia do not give this pronunciation to an,, as in gehdade for instance. Remarks. — In uttering the king form and the short form^ of the same vowel the lips and tongue are placed in the same position, the difterence being produced with the throat only. * Tills instance of the second short sound has been chaiiged to one given in the body of the essay, as the fruit of criticism at the Institute. + Mouosylhibic. t Dissyllabic. I s<i' rmmir^ r 9 Diphthongs are compounded of -hort vowels, not of long ones : long vowels will not coalesce, but continue to be separately heard, producing such sounds as the di and e (e + e) in the French words naif and oneme, and the au in the Italian hau-e. The Italians make it a principle to sound every written vowel ; hence they would have no diphthongs, but that they have failed to observe that subtle r, when brought in after e, will always change it into a diphthong. W and y do not make true diphthongs or triphthongs with the sounds that follow them. In true dii)hthongs and triphthongs each vowel is sounded to the same degree, and hence the blending is complete ; whereas when to or ij precedes a vowel or cluster of ^ vowels, the w or y is heard much more faintly than the other part of the combination. W and y may be compared to grace notes in music ; whereas diphthongs are like chords. W and y are formed by bringing the lips and tongue into the same position as for sounds 1 and 8 ; but they are not uttered until the instant that the vowel or diphthong following is ready for utterance, when the breath is jerked from them on to it. all the pause and sti-ess being thrown upon it, none upon 10 or y. We find lo in English attached to sixteen different sounds, which in the order of our list are shown as follows : — woo, tooke, loarn, waft, world, toane, ween ; wool, ivan, won, went, win ; woimd (past tense), loare, wise, loax, Y, again, combines with eleven sounds, as heard in youth, yoke, yawn, yarn, yearn, yea, yield, occ//pied (=okyupied), yon, young, yes ; besides yon,p (vulgar), and yare (obsolete). The French sound of ou, equivalent to our id, and of II and gn, equivalents to our y and ny, are probably heard before an equally large proportion of vowels and diphthongs ; though on is not heard before its own true vowel sound whether long or short, as lo is in the English combinations looo and wool, while II and gn, of course, do nob occur nearly so often as the consonantal y. The Gci mans have no equivalent of 10 ; but their y, which has the sime effect in introducing a syllable as our ?/, is probably heard before as many of their vowels and diphthongs. The French also form a kind of w from sound 7 in such words as liuit and huile. If we now count up the sounds arranged in each double column of the table, we shall find that Italian possesses twelve simple vowels and one dii)hthong ; French, fifteen simple vowels and three diphthongs ; Englisli, chirteen ar.d five respectively, and German, the full sixteen and five (besides one triphthong). ssBsm mmmm 10 German is thus far richer than any of the other three tongues in vowel utterances ; and this, to our thinking, is one reason why German sounds so peculiarly grand when sung, the other reason being that the gutturals give vigour to the music while being somewhat toned down by it. Gutturals, when not too frequent or too loud, resemble the rough blast of a trumpet intermingling with the soft, rich melody of a harp, and the plaintive warbling of a flute, to which the other consonants and the vowels might, in turn, be likened. Still, as spoken, English and French are not disfigured by the constant repetition of the harsh ch sound, nor, wo may add, by the Loo frequent sibilants chai'acteristic of German ; while, on the other hand, they have a far more copious assortment than Italian of vowels and diphthongs, and make up for falling short of German in this respect by possessing what German is without, a large number of combinations with w. We have left nasal vowel sounds out of account in our table, they being on a distinct footing. In uttering nasal vowels the mouth is opened in exactly the same way for each as for true oral vowels ; but half tlie breath is allowed to pass down the nose. The different nasal vowels in use in French are heard in the words 7Uon, san{g), brun, main, (the last answering, as we have already ])ointed out, to our true oral sound in man). But we are inclined to consider nasal vowels as corrupt forms, and cannot see that the number of sounds thus added to the French categoiy increase the beauty of the language. The natural melody and harmony of French, German, and English may well be comjjared by examining three of the choicest extracts culled from the poets of the three nations. Such are the following. In each we have marked the vowel sound, simple or compound, where it occurs for the first time, by the figures placed op]70site it in the table. La mort a des rigueurs k nul autre pareilles : 4 3 G 8" 5 + 7 f 2 4' On a beau la prier ; 3 La cruel le qu'elle est se bouche les oreilles, 76 . ^ ^ 2 Et nous laisse crier. Lo pauvre dans sa cabane, ou le chaume le couvre. Est sujet a ses lois ; Et le garde qui veille aux barrieres du Louvre N'en defend point nos rois. — Malherhe. I 11 Komm hcrab dii schone holde, 3 64 T 5 + 75 2 Und verlass dein stolzes Schloss. 1 4 + 8 5" Blumen die der Leiiz geboren 8 6 + 5 3" Streu ich dir in deinen Schooss. 3 + 88 "2 Horch ! der Hain ei-scballt von Liedern, Und die Quelle rieselt klar ; Rauin ist in dev kleinsten Hiitte Fiir oin gliicklich Liebenyjaar. Can storied urn or animated bust 6 + 5 3 8 5 6" 5 Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath ] T 8 6 Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust ; ~3 3 + 8 2 2 4 + 8 Or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death ? r — Goethe; — Gray. In the French stanzas there are fourteen different vowel sounds in the first forty syllables and twelve in the last forty ; in the German verse sixteen in" the first forty and seventeen in the last ; and in the forty syllables that make up the English verse fifteen. In variety of vowels German here plainly excels both the other languages, while English outvies French. English and German, again, are equally shown to be much richer than French in diphthongs, which are the chords of the musical rhythm. And lastly, the English verse is not blemished like the French stanzas by luonotonies such as '• crueile qu'elle" or " dans sa cabane," while a closer inspection would reveal that a few sounds recur much oftener in the French poetry than in the English; nor is the smoothness of the English numbers marred by the harsh repetition of sibilants which appears in its German rival (we allude, of course, to the second line of the German verse). Two more instances will helj) to show how well distributed the various vowel sounds are among English words. A couplet of Macaulay's Horatius begins with six difi"erent long vowel sounds in close succession ; nor will any sameness be found in the rest of its. melody : " Tall are the oaks whose acorns 3 4 Drop 3 8 2 in dark 8 1 6 Ausei-'s rill." 6 12 How varied! How stately! And how rich again both in single sounds and chords is the music in that line of Longfellow's Ode to the Night : "Thou lay'st thy fingers on the lips of care." 4+1 6 4 + 8 8 5 3 5 6 + 5 Our x'eaders may have been struck with the number of simple sounds that we have been able to collect — eight. It I'eminds one of the number of notes in the octave. Can there be any connection between the two 1 For some years past the attention of scientific men has been turned to the discovery of a musical pitch in vowels. Graham Bell was led to the invention of the telephone by researches of this nature, in the course of which he found that tuning forks of certain pitches were reinforced by the breathing of certain vowels upon them ; but he was perplexed by finding that some vowels had apparently a double musical pitch. At the same time Helmholtz, making similar researches, met with the same difficulty ; but, discovering the secondary pitches, he reproduced some of the vowels by an electric current passing through two forks at the same instant. Yet Helmholtz, whose grand book we have recently examined, has not succeeded in making a • complete scale of the vowels ; nor has any other writer that we are aware of. And our examination of what Helmholtz says of his own labours and those of other continental inquirers, makes us think thai they are unlikely to do so, through an imperfect scrutiny on their part of a language whose pronunciation was strange to them, namely, our own. After many experiments, and sus))ecting from the outset an analogy between music and speech (creation is full of such beautiful analogies), we discovered at length the eight long simple vowels enumerated in our tables ; and we were able to arrange them in an ascending musical order which, when whispered, they plainly followed to our ear. We whispered them because we had read that Bell did so in his experiments; and we attempted to make piano wires answer to our breathing, but in vain. Then by repeating our ascending scale over and over again until our ears rang with it, and patiently ])lodding at the pianoforte until we thought we had matched it, we actually did ascertain our key-note (the pitch of the sound of oo), and seemed likewise to ascertain the intervals between our others. This key-note in our adult male voice is the first e below the bass stave upon high- pitched pianos, or they* next above it upon low-pitched ones. The intervals which we suggest for our readers' confirmation ai'e 13 1 m '^~ -1 -^- S^l zit: 19- oo oh aw ah u(r) eh ii ee Italian or German : ii 6 o(r) a e(r) e ii I French: ou o o(r) ae(tinal)e u I. At the same time (in keeping with what has been stated and proved by Helmholtz and Bell as to vowels having a double pitch) we have perceived a secondary descending scale of fainter sounds, proceeding concurrently with the ascending scale and reversing its intervals ; at least we sometimes seem to trace this descending gamut from the keynote throughout, but it is especially conspicuous with the last three vowels — numbers 6, 7, and 8 of our table, doubtless because in uttering them more of the breath escapes at the side of the tongue. Thus our whole harmony would run — rt)f .s>-^:€^-. ^--p-_zt: 11 -^9- 00 oh aw ah u(r) eh ii ee 1^=^ It -&- We then bethought oui-selves of trying the vowels as spoken instead' of as whis})ered. They seemed to be chromatic ; but that clashed with their whispered form, so we could scarcely credit it. Dropping the study for some time, we tried once more ; and we were convinced that chromatic they were. Thus an impression that we, and doubtless many besides ourselves, have had in childhood, that a chromatic scale sounded like people talking, is fully explained. The keynote for the spoken vowels we find to be the same as for the whispered ones. But now comes a strange discovery. Whereas if all the notes on the keyboard, black and white, be played from e natural to b natural, all our long simple vowels are sounded, if only the white notes be played, the vowel sounds that alone bear a name in most European languages — the German and Italian a, e, i, o, u — will be heard and no others. Thus, marking the spoken sounds by their most common symbols, we find that their correspondence in musical characters is — ^ 1 na 14 Qi. •i9- u '^■^=5^S^H^-1J^^ -4- o(r) ^ e(r) Lastly, whether whispered or spoken, we discriminate the short ■form of each vowel to be a tone and a half above the long form. There is another discovery of a different nature that we have made in the course of our study of vowel sounds. It is a strange fact that many nations of the world dwelling far apart and s|)eaking tongues very unlike each other, possess certain interjections in common. Thus the English, the French, the Germans, the Hindoos, and the Japanese use oh ! to express surprise, and ah ! or ach ! to betoken sorrow ; the Englisli, the French, and the Japanese use eh ! to enforce a question ; and while the boys of England use aw ! to show extreme wonder, the men of Japan have recoui-se to aioee ! for the same ])urpose. May not these interjections be the remnant of a language that the peoples of the earth had in common before they wei"e dispersed at the building of Babel, and which they were suflfered to retain as evidence of their community of speech ] Do not they help to prove the oneness of the human race, like the nodding of the head for ' yes ' and tl e shaking of it for ' no,' common to so many widely severed and ali^n races, and like the division of the day into twelve hours, practised by the Hindoos and Japanese equally with ourselves 1 But a special discovery, with a record of which we will close this essay, is, that each of the eight long simple vowels that we have dis- criminated is used in English as an interjection with a distinctive meaning (albeit sometimes with the help of a guttural attached to it). Thus oogh! oh! aw I ah! urgh ! eh! ueh ! eegh ! expresses anger, surprise, wonder, sorrow, disgust, inquiry, contempt, pain. In conclusion the writer would say that if, as he is daily growing ■more assured, his alleged discoveries are real, he will rejoice at having added another to the many known instances of symmetry in the Creator's handiwork — a common plan underlying two branches of creation long thought to be fai apart. M. L. ROUSE. f J 15 Since tha public reading of this essay the fdllowing symbols have occurred to the writer's mind as simply yet sufficiently distinguishing the three kinds of vowel added to the received list, namely, for the vowel in dawn and c/on O, © ; for the vowel in burn and bu7i 31 9B i for the vowel in kiifil, or first vowel in kiimmel, U,\I • It will be seen that these symbols by their form mostly give to the new vowels their true relative position on the vowel scale (that they do not do so altogether is due to the writer's desire to avoid confusion). Thus the a?o sound <!omes between the real o and real a sounds, the ur sound just before the real e, and the German ii sound just before the real i (while bearing a general resemblance to the real u). And this in turn corresponds with their comparative affinity, as shown by the changes that they undergo in dialects or by lapse of time. Thus hiUl, call, and fall, are pronounced hnh'l, cah'l, and fah'l, in Scotch, or perliaps more commonly still, hah, cah, and fah ; while Htorij and <jli>rij, on the other hand, are pronounced stoh-nj and (jloh-ry : and a great many Torontonians turn box, locks, xockii, and the like into hax, sax, and lacti, with the foreign short sound of a. So, again, the final German e'a, occurring for example in bitte, klcine and hase have in Swabia the true short sound of e given to them instead of the sound heard in burn. And so, lastly, is the sound of kiihl or schwuhl turned into the long sound of i over a good part of southern Germany. The short sound, witii these symbols as with all the rest, might satisfactorily be distinguished from its long correlative by using tlie classic marks ; and the whole vowel alphabet would tlien read : U, O, CDiA,a:,£:, U,I . / \u,o,a),ai,de.e,4.i. Finally, since under such a phonogrAphic system there would be no other double letters to confound with them, the diphthongs miglit each be written in full, showing the vowels tliat make them up ; the double sh(jrt mark over all being dispensed with as superfluous. Thus — cow, boy, pare, parry, nice, deux. would be written- kau, i)©i,peaeT, peaeri, Ixai5,d^ewi■ where, again, two vowels coming together formed no diphthong but were heard separately, their concurrences would be distinguished from true diphthongs by giving each vowel its own mark of quantity. caique, niais, baide, assai,/ah{g, thuest, imyer, and seeing, would stand — kdlk, me, hdule, asai,felhk, tuest, pe^, and sling. It will have been observed that we found no place in our catalogue for what Worcester calls the intermediate sound of a. We think this a vain attempt at a compromise between the two principal ways in which the first vowel is uttered in such worda as branch, cantle, glass, lance, and past — namely, either as our a or as our ex, of which the first is adopted by most Englishmen south m* wmm 16 of the Humbcr and the second by most Yorkshiremen and Americana. A few uncnltured Americans utter it as eoi, with a nasal twang to boot. Many iScotclunen and Lancaahiremen, again, pronounce it as 2 ; and Webster asserts that Fulton and Knight, wlioni Worcester claims as his supporters, really treated it as a short form of the Italian «, or in other words as our <i, Webster himself sustaining this view. But in sustaining it, he states that Thackeray in his lectures always pronounced the a in such words with the long Italian souncl, that by report all the chief English preachers, statesmen, and noblemen ()f liia time so uttered it, and that educated Englishmen in general rendered it thus down to the close of last century, when Walker, in his zeal to avoid a drawl, brought the short sound heard in fat {ixi) into fashion. The last fact, coupled with a desire to conform l-higlish pronunciation as far as possiljle to tiie typical system, makes us lean in these words to the long Italian sound — our d. M. L. R.