these experiments in a company of silent people, we should make noise enough to attract attention. But the sounds would not be uttered at the ordinary pitch of the voice. Conversation across the table in these tones would be inaudible, and a speech in so low a key to a public meeting would be no better than dumb-show. Add a vowel to these silent letters however; say pay, be, toe, daw, and you can make yourself heard a hundred yards away. But let us try the combination of p, b, t, d, with those other consonants which we saw could be uttered by themselves, f, v, s, sh, l, m, n, r. If we place together pr, bn, tl, dz, we shall not find that we have obtained a combination which can be pronounced at the natural pitch of the voice. Instead of saying, therefore, that vowels are sounds which can be uttered alone, and consonants are sounds which can be uttered only by the aid of a vowel, let us put the matter thus:

Vowels are sounds by the aid of which any consonantal sound can be audibly produced.

Consonants are sounds which will not enable us to produce audibly sounds which are by themselves almost inaudible.

44. This account of the difference between vowels and consonants does not agree with the account which is usually given. It is commonly said that vowels are sounds which can be produced alone, and that consonants are sounds which can be produced only by the aid of a vowel. But though this statement of the matter suits the derivation of the words, -for vowel comes from vocalis, which means 'capable of being sounded,' and consonant comes from cum, 'together,' and sonans, 'sounding,' i.c. 'what is sounded along with something else,'—it does not seem to suit the facts of the case. If a public speaker incurs the hostility of his audience, the ssss...of their disapproval can be heard very well without the addition of any vowel to aid its pronunciation. The sh...! with which ill-mannered people are rebuked for chattering at a concert; the mmm? with which we express our hesitation when an acquaintance makes a statement or a proposal which does not commend itself to our favour, are consonantal sounds which are audible enough when they stand alone.

Then again it is sometimes said that vowels are open sounds and

consonants closer and less musical sounds, but this distinction does not seem to throw much light on the subject. Or we are told that vowels are formed without the stoppage of the breath, and that consonants are formed by stopping or by squeezing the breath. All this is interesting, no doubt, to us as physiologists, but it is no concern of ours as grammarians whether we stop our breath or only squeeze it, whether we vibrate our vocal chords or do something with our larynx or pharynx. This is physiology, not grammar. Our business is to distinguish the sounds when produced, not to determine the mode of their production.

45. Classification of Consonantal Sounds. Let us now take the consonantal sounds and consider some broad distinctions between them. Compare the four sounds of d', t', dh', th', as represented in the words din, tin, thine, thin, remembering, as before, to make these sounds by beginning to utter the words and stopping short before the vowel is reached. Now in these four sounds, there are two important distinctions to be noticed :

46. Sonants and Surds. (1) In the first place, if we compare d' with t' and dh' with th', we shall observe that although the d' and dh' are not audible at the ordinary pitch of the voice, still they can be just heard, if an effort is made, while the ' and th' are scarcely to be heard at all. The same contrast may be noticed in other pairs of sounds: g, if pronounced when isolated from its vowel, is audible, k' is less so. The sound of j' in jest is audible when it stands alone; ch' in chest is less so. The sound of b' is just audible; p' is almost silent. Various names have been used to express this distinction. Some writers call one set of sounds Hard and the other Soft; others call one set Sharp and the other Flat. Let us compare once more b' and p' and ask ourselves which is hard and which is soft, which is sharp and which is flat. If it strikes us that the application of these metaphors is obvious,-if these terms at once convey their appropriate meaning to our minds,-by all means let us continue to make use of them. Possibly however we may not be struck by the suitability of the

epithets, and in that case the old words Sonant and Surd will express the difference more plainly for us. Sonant means sounding, surd means noiseless. Supposing that we fail to see the fitness of calling hard or sharp and b soft or flat, we can see the fitness of calling p surd and b sonant, for we have only to pronounce both letters and observe which of the two we can hear most of. By continuing the experiment, we can distribute all the sonants and surds in their right classes, and this is a much better plan than learning the lists by heart and then putting the wrong names at the top. If we pronounce b, g, d, j, dh, z, zh, v, w, without an accompanying vowel, we can hear them. These we call sonants. If we pronounce their correlatives p, k, t, ch, th, s, sh, f, wh, without a vowel, they are almost inaudible. These we call surds.

To make this distinction clear, we will give these pairs of sounds in two columns with a word to illustrate each. They are variously distinguished as

The sound represented by wh is pronounced by Scotchmen and Irishmen, but is vulgarly neglected in southern England. Many people make no difference in sound between what and wot, when and wen, where and were, while and wile.

The surd corresponding to the sonant y resembles the German ich sound. It may be heard occasionally in such English words as hue,

human.

The letters w and y are used sometimes with the force of consonants, and sometimes with the force of vowels. In wit and yes they are consonants: in few and they, vowels. Hence they are called semivowels. In the sound given to w at the beginning of a word you may detect a close resemblance to the vowel-sound in cool or rude. Pronounce slowly oo-it, oo-et: then increase the speed as you repeat the word, and you will find that you are saying wit, wet. Again, take a word beginning with a y, such as yes, pronounce it slowly, and you will recognise in the sound of its first letter the long vowel sound in feed. A person who gives a hesitating 'yes' in reply to a question says ee-es.

By some writers h is not admitted to a place among the consonants, but is regarded as merely an audible emission of breath before vowels or semi-vowels, and called the 'aspiration.' Thus in Greek the original h ceased to be a letter and became simply a 'rough breathing.'

Now let us return to our four sounds d, t, dh, th, and observe what other distinction can be drawn between them, besides the distinction of sonant and surd.

47. Stops and Continuants. (2) The sounds d and are sudden, abrupt, instantaneous, explosive: it is impossible to prolong them. The sounds dh, th (as in thine and thin, for we often make the sound of dh, though we never use this sign for it) are continuous: they can be prolonged if we keep on breathing. Hence they are called Continuants or Spirants (from the Latin spiro, 'I breathe'). The letters p, b, k, g, t, d, are called Stops or Mutes, because the sounds are silenced with a sudden halt. From the same circumstance they are also called Checks, or Explosives. Grammarians have exercised much ingenuity in finding a variety of terms to express the same distinction, thereby rendering the matter more difficult than it naturally is.

We will now make a second list of consonantal sounds, classified according as they are Stops or Continuants:

Stops, Mutes, Checks, Explosives: p, b, k, g, t, d.

Continuants, Spirants: ch, j, th, dh, s, z, sh, zh, f, v, wh, w, y, h. With the exception of ch and j all these sounds are simple or elementary: ch, pronounced as in church, t+sh,

Liquids

=

tshurtsh, and j, as in jest, d+zh, dzhest. These two composite sounds have been called consonantal diphthongs.

48. To complete the number of our elementary consonantal sounds we must add the Liquids, viz. l, m, n, r, and ng (pronounced as in sing). These are all sonants in English. Owing to the fact that the sounds of l, m, n, r flowed smoothly on and readily combined with other consonants, the Greek grammarians two thousand years ago called them 'fluid' or 'pliant' letters, and this epithet the Latin grammarians translated as 'liquid.'

49. The following list' contains all the simple or elementary consonantal sounds in English:

The reader must keep clearly in mind the fact that we are dealing with elementary sounds, not with our way of writing them. Owing to the deficiencies of our alphabet we are obliged to use combinations of two letters,-digraphs, as grammarians call them,—to represent six of these con

1 Adopted, as is also the table of Vowel-sounds on p. 45, from Miss Soames's Introduction to the Study of Phonetics. In these sections much use has been made of Miss Soames's book, and also of Mr Nesfield's English Grammar Past and Present, pp. 277-282, to which the student is referred for a more detailed treatment of the subject. At the end of Mr Nesfield's book a note by Professor Skeat on Vocalic Sounds in Modern English has been reprinted.