Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Idters denoting the Words enntainine (be simpte sounds. Miiijilr souiiits. g as in egg, go. b as in hop, ho. k os in kill, sake. I as I'n lap, all. m as in my, mum. n as in no, on. p as in pin, nap. r as in rap, cry. .8 as in so, lass, z as in zed, buzz. t as in top, mat. w as in wo, will." All children who have learned their letters know that there are twenty-six of them, and that their collective name is alphabet. Letters are divided into vowels and consonants. A vowel is a letter formed by the position of the organs, without any action of one of them on another; as, a, o, etc. A consonant is a letter formed by the position of the organs, and the action of one of them on another ; as, d, which is formed by the action of the tongue on the palate. The vowels are a, e, i, o, u, and y. The remaining twenty letters are consonants. As there can be no word or syllable without a vowel, let any grammarian who says that w is a vowel, point out any word or syllable in which it is the only vowel. Ve can give as many examples as may be required, in which any of the foregoing vowels is the only one in the syllable; as, fat, pet, pit, pot, put, fly, etc. The reader will easily perceive by a slight glance at any of our pronouncing dictionaries, that writing and speaking, or orthography and pronunciation, are very different in their constituent letters. We do not wonder that grammarians, who overlook this difference, and confound one language withthe oilier, should differ in opinion and draw absurd conclusions. Mr. Walker, in his pronouncing dictionary, page 22, says, " that Ib and y are consonants when they begin a word, and vowels when they end one, is generally acknowledged by the best grammarians; and yet Dr. Lowth has told us that ...