a consonant; as, _ab, eb, ib, ob, ub_"--_Brown's
Institutes_, p. 285.

I. OF THE LETTER A.

The vowel A has _four_ sounds properly its own; they are named by various
epithets: as,

1. The English, open, full, long, or slender _a_; as in _aid, fame, favour,
efficacious_.

2. The French, close, curt, short, or stopped _a_; as in _bat, banner,
balance, carrying_.

3. The Italian, broadish, grave, or middle _a_; as in _far, father, aha,
comma, scoria, sofa_.

4. The Dutch, German, Old-Saxon, or broad _a_; as in _wall, haul, walk,
warm, water_.

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.--Concerning the number of sounds pertaining to the vowel _a_, or to
certain other particular letters, and consequently in regard to the whole
number of the sounds which constitute the oral elements of the English
language, our educational literati,--the grammarians, orthoepists
[sic--KTH], orthographers, elocutionists, phonographers, and
lexicographers,--are found to have entertained and inculcated a great
variety of opinions. In their different countings, the number of our
phonical elements varies from twenty-six to more than forty. Wells says
there are "_about forty_ elementary sounds."--_School Gram._, Sec.64. His
first edition was more positive, and stated them at "_forty-one_." See the
last and very erroneous passage which I have cited at the foot of page 162.
In Worcester's Universal and Critical Dictionary, there appear to be noted
several _more_ than _forty-one_, but I know not whether this author, or
Walker either, has anywhere told us how many of his marked sounds he
considered to be severally different from all others. Sheridan and Jones
admitted _twenty-eight_. Churchill acknowledges, as undisputed and
indisputable, only _twenty-six_; though he enumerates, "Of simple vowel
sounds, _twelve_, or _perhaps thirteen_" (New Grammar, p. 5,) and says,
"The consonant sounds in the English language, are _nineteen_, or _rather
twenty_."--P. 13.

OBS. 2.--Thus, while Pitman, Comstock, and others, are amusing themselves
with the folly of inventing new "Phonetic Alphabets," or of overturning all
orthography to furnish "a character for each of the 38 elementary sounds,"
more or fewer, one of the acutest observers among our grammarians can fix
on no number more definite or more considerable than _thirty-one,
thirty-two_, or _thirty-three_; and the finding of these he announces with
a "_perhaps_," and the admission that other writers object to as ma