nasal."
[95] The _dentals_ are those consonants which are referred to the teeth;
the _nasals_ are those which are affected by the nose; and the _palatals_
are those which compress the palate, as _k_ and hard _g_. But these
last-named classes are not of much importance; nor have I thought it worth
while to notice _minutely_ the opinions of writers respecting the others,
as whether _h_ is a semivowel, or a mute, or neither.

OBS. 7.--The Cherokee alphabet, which was invented in 1821, by See-quo-yah,
or George Guess, an ingenious but wholly illiterate Indian, contains
eighty-five letters, or characters. But the sounds of the language are much
fewer than ours; for the characters represent, not simple tones and
articulations, but _syllabic sounds_, and this number is said to be
sufficient to denote them all. But the different syllabic sounds in our
language amount to some thousands. I suppose, from the account, that
_See-quo-yah_ writes his name, in his own language, with three letters; and
that characters so used, would not require, and probably would not admit,
such a division as that of vowels and consonants. One of the Cherokees, in
a letter to the American Lyceum, states, that a knowledge of this mode of
writing is so easily acquired, that one who understands and speaks the
language, "can learn to read in a day; and, indeed," continues the writer,
"I have known some to acquire the art in a single evening. It is only
necessary to learn the different sounds of the characters, to be enabled to
read at once. In the English language, we must not only first learn the
letters, but to spell, before reading; but in Cherokee, all that is
required, is, to learn the letters; for they have _syllabic sounds_, and by
connecting different ones together, a word is formed: in which there is no
art. All who understand the language can do so, and both read and write, so
soon as they can learn to trace with their fingers the forms of the
characters. I suppose that more than one half of the Cherokees can read
their own language, and are thereby enabled to acquire much valuable
information, with which they otherwise would never have been blessed."--_W.
S. Coodey_, 1831.

OBS. 8.--From the foregoing account, it would appear that the Cherokee
language is a very peculiar one: its words must either be very few, or the
proportion of polysyllables very great. The characters used in China and
Japan, stand severally for _words_; and their number is