ed or inclined to offer any opinion; I
criticise him only so far as he strikes at grammatical principles long
established, and worthy still to be maintained.

[96] Dr. Comstock, by enumerating as elementary the sound of the diphthong
_ou_, as in _our_, and the complex power of _wh_, as in _what_, (which
sounds ought not to be so reckoned,) makes the whole number of vocal
elements in English to be "_thirty-eight_." See _Comstock's Elocution_, p.
19.

[97] This word is commonly heard in two syllables, _yune'yun_; but if
Walker is right in making it three, _yu'ne-un_, the sound of _y_ consonant
is heard in it but once. Worcester's notation is "_y=un'yun_." The long
sound of _u_ is _yu_; hence Walker calls the letter, when thus sounded, a
"semi-consonant diphthong."

[98] Children ought to be accustomed to speak loud, and to pronounce all
possible sounds and articulations, even those of such foreign languages as
they will be obliged to learn; for almost every language has its particular
sounds which we pronounce with difficulty, if we have not been early
accustomed to them. Accordingly, nations who have the greatest number of
sounds in their speech, learn the most easily to pronounce foreign
languages, since they know their articulations by having met with similar
sounds in their own language."--_Spurzheim, on Education_, p. 159.

[99] If it be admitted that the two semivowels _l_ and _n_ have vocality
enough of their own to form a very feeble syllable, it will prove only that
there are these exceptions to an important general rule. If the name of
_Haydn_ rhymes with _maiden_, it makes one exception to the rule of
writing; but it is no part of the English language. The obscure sound of
which I speak, is sometimes improperly confounded with that of short _u_;
thus a recent writer, who professes great skill in respect to such matters,
says, "One of the most common sounds in our language is that of the vowel
_u_, as in the word _urn_, or as the diphthong _ea_ in the word _earth_,
for which we have no character. Writers have made various efforts to
express it, as in _earth, berth, mirth, worth, turf_, in which all the
vowels are indiscriminately used in turn. [Fist] _This defect has led_ to
the absurd method of placing the vowel after the consonants, instead of
between them, when a word _terminates with this sound_; as in the
following, _Bible, pure, centre, circle_, instead of _Bibel, puer, center,
cirkel_."--_Gardiner's Mu