Syllabary

“ II. That, by a laxity of language, the vowel may be said to have changed its quantity, whilst it is the syllable alone that has been altered.
III. That, if one person measures his quantities by the vowels, and another by the syllables, what is short to the one, shall be long to the other, and vice versâ. The same is the case with nations.
IV. That one of the most essential differences between the English and the classical languages is that the quantities (as far as they go) of the first are measured by the vowel, those of the latter by the syllable. ”

“ A syllable is called short, when the accent lies on the consonant, so that the vowel is quickly joined to the succeeding letter: as “Crăck, lĭttle, dĕvil.”
The pronunciation of a long syllable commonly occupies double the time of a short one: thus, “Pāte,” and “Brōke,” must be pronounced as slowly again as “Păt,” and “Knŏck.”
We have remarked a curious tendency in the more youthful students of Grammar to regard the quantity of words (in their lessons) more as being “small” or “great” than as coming under the head of “long” or “short.” ”

“ The roots of the other class, those of action or quality, are very much more numerous, being reckoned by hundreds; and, they are of more complicated structure, illustrating every variety of the syllable, from the pure single vowel to the vowel preceded or followed, or both, by one consonant, or even by more than one. ”

“ A knowledge of about three dozen different elementary sounds is implied in the faculty of speech. The power of producing these sounds with distinctness, and of adapting them to the purposes for which language is used, constitutes perfection of utterance. Had we a perfect alphabet, consisting of one symbol, and only one, for each elementary sound; and a perfect method of spelling, freed from silent letters, and precisely adjusted to the most correct pronunciation of words; the process of learning to read would doubtless be greatly facilitated. ”

“ Trissyllables ending in ator or atour, as creátour; or having in the middle syllable a diphthong, as endeávour; or a vowel before two consonants, as doméstick; accent the middle syllable.
15. Trissyllables that have their accent on the last syllable are commonly French, as acquiésce, repartée, magazíne, or words formed by prefixing one or two syllables to an acute syllable, as immatúre, overchárge.
16. Polysyllables, or words of more than three syllables, follow the accent of the words from which they are derived, as árrogating, cóntinency, incóntinently, comméndable, commúnicableness. ”

“ In the simplest combination of a consonant and vowel, as sa, se, si, so, su, if the combining power is only one way and never another, as as, es, is, os, us, the number of syllables that can be formed in such a language are few, and the number of signs to express these are consequently limited. ”

“ It is no more than fair to give him a taste of their daily vicissitudes. All teachers know how children are daily lost in the mazes of syllabification. It would be well to avert this evil, and lead to a more helpful reading of the dictionary, by giving lessons whose object is the mastery of syllables. Separating familiar words into their syllables and pronouncing by syllable at sight are excellent exercises, and they may well displace some of the formal and mechanical study of never-to-be-used lists of words. ”

“ The chief compensations of the language are its simple and unvarying rules of pronunciation, every syllable being evenly accented, every vowel making a syllable, and, pronounced as continental vowels are, giving music to every word. ”

“ And as I cannot suppose words to represent external things, I have said "A Word is one or more syllables spoken or written as the sign of some idea." But of what ideas are the words of our language significant? Are we to say, "Of all ideas;" and to recognize as an English word every syllable, or combination of syllables, to which we know a meaning is attached? No. For this, in the first place, would confound one language with an other; and destroy a distinction which must ever be practically recognized, till all men shall again speak one language. ”

“ Language in general includes the following parts:—Letter, Syllable, Connecting word, Noun, Verb, Inflexion or Case, Sentence or Phrase.
A Letter is an indivisible sound, yet not every such sound, but only one which can form part of a group of sounds. For even brutes utter indivisible sounds, none of which I call a letter. The sound I mean may be either a vowel, a semi-vowel, or a mute. A vowel is that which without impact of tongue or lip has an audible sound. ”

“ A syllable, whether it constitute a word or part of a word, is a sound, either simple or compound, produced by one effort of the voice, as, "O!, what, a, lark!—Here, we, are!"
Spelling is the art of putting together the letters which compose a syllable, or the syllables which compose a word. ”

“ First have the pupils recite individually and then in concert the Latin exercise in §10. Then, using the word list, let the pupils divide the words into syllables, give the length of each syllable, and pronounce the words. Pupils always confound length of vowel and length of syllable (cf. §13.2, note) . Dwell on this point until the distinction is clear to all.
Spend the fifth class period in reviewing the whole subject of pronunciation and on the reading of the poem (§18) . ”

“ The existence of quantity in our language; the dependence of our rhythms on the division of syllables into long and short; the concurrence of our accent, (except in some rare and questionable instances,) with long quantity only; the constant effect of emphasis to lengthen quantity; the limitation of quantity to mere duration of sound; the doctrine that quantity pertains to all syllables as such, and not merely to vowel sounds; the recognition of the same general principles of syllabication in poetry as in prose ”

“ The mastery of the alphabetical arrangement and syllabification and pronunciation being assured, there remains the study of the grouped meanings and the derivation, with attention to grammatical use. As soon as the pupil knows the parts of speech, the various uses of words are made plain to him, and he intelligently follows the dictionary column which exhibits a word as noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. If his object is to discover the verb meaning, he passes the others. ”

“ A syllable, in modern verse, is heavy or light, according as it is accented or unaccented—that is to say, according as it receives stress from the voice or not. In the word “tulip,” for instance, the syllables are of equal length, but the accent is strongly upon the first. ”

“ In verses consisting only of a certain number of syllables, nothing can be of more ease, or greater use to poets, than the retaining or cutting off a syllable from a verse, according as the measure of it requires; and therefore it is requisite to treat of the elisions that are allowable in our poetry, some of which have been already taken notice of in the preceding section.
By elision I mean the cutting off one or more letters from a word, whereby two syllables come to be contracted into one, or the taking away an entire syllable. ”

“ When we place the accent on the first syllable, say our opponents, we give a kind of subordinate stress to the third syllable graph: by which means the word is divided into its primitives ορθὸς and γράφω, and those distinct ideas it contains, are preserved, which must necessarily be confounded by the contrary mode; and that pronunciation of compounds, say they, must certainly be the best which best preserves the import of the simples. ”

“ Exceptions: words ending in -able and -ible, which should carry the vowel over into the next line.
7. The letters c and g must never be separated from the vowels e, i, and y upon which their soft sound depends: e.g., re-li-gion, ca-pa-ci-ty, etc.
8. X must never begin a syllable, j must never end one, and q must not be separated from u, which invariably follows it.
9. When used as terminations, ing, en, ed, er, est, and the plural es are considered as syllables, except when the preceding consonant is doubled, or when they follow c or g soft: e.g., speak-ing, tak-en, long-er ”

“ A syllable of this kind may retain its full value, so as to form by itself the entire thesis of a foot. (2) It may be slurred, so that it combines with another unaccented syllable to form a thesis. (3) It may lose its syllabic value altogether, its vowel being elided and its consonantal part (if it has any) being attracted to the root-syllable. By the last-mentioned process, as is well known, the number of inflexional syllables has been greatly reduced in Modern as compared with Middle and Old English. ”

“ Wherever a word differs from the modern word only in spelling, I have, for the sake of readier comprehension, substituted the modern form, with the following exception:—Where the spelling indicates a different pronunciation, necessary for the rhyme or the measure, I retain such part of the older form, marking with an acute accent any vowel now silent which must be sounded. ”

“ Let the learner therefore be on his guard, remembering that grammar, both in its study and in its practice, requires the constant exercise of a rational discernment. Those letters which name themselves, take for their names those sounds which they usually represent at the end of an accented syllable; thus the names, A, E, I, O, U, are uttered with the sounds given to the same letters in the first syllables of the other names, Abel, Enoch, Isaac, Obed, Urim; or in the first syllables of the common words, paper, penal, pilot, potent, pupil. ”

“ The following admirable observations on emphasis are worthy of attention.
“In every sentence, and clause of a sentence, there is one or more words which require to be pronounced with a greater degree of force than the other words. Without knowing and marking the accented syllables in words, we cannot give them their proper pronunciation; nor can we bring out the full meaning of a sentence, unless we know and mark the emphatic words. The accented syllables of words we learn by imitating the pronunciation of correct speakers ”

“ In our language there are so many silent letters in words, so many sounds for each vowel, and the alphabetic sound of the consonants is so different from their sound in words, that I do not care how late the analysis is put off. ”

“ We are going to the zoological gardens; pronounce zoological in five syllables, and place the accent on log in logical. Sound log like lodge, and the first two o's in distinct syllables. Never make zool one syllable.
115. He always preaches extempore; pronounce [107] extempore in four syllables, with the accent on tem, and never in three, making pore to rhyme with sore.
116. Naught and aught; never spell these words nought and ought. There is no such word as nought, and ought is a verb. ”

“ Our long syllables are chiefly those which, having sounds naturally capable of being lengthened at pleasure, are made long by falling under some stress either of accent or of emphasis. Our short syllables are the weaker sounds, which, being the less significant words, or parts of words, are uttered without peculiar stress.
OBS.—As quantity is chiefly to be regarded in the utterance of poetical compositions, this subject will be farther considered under the head of Versification. ”

“ When one word in a sentence is distinguished by a stress, as more important than the rest, we may say that it is emphatical, or that an emphasis is laid upon it. When one syllable in a word is distinguished by a stress, and more audible than the rest, we say that it is accented, or that an accent is put upon it. Accent, therefore, is to syllables what emphasis is to sentences ”

“ This important property of syllables,—their quantity, or relative time,—which is the basis of all rhythm, is, as my readers have seen, very variously treated, and in general but ill appreciated, by our English prosodists, who ought, at least in this their own province, to understand it all alike, and as it is; and so common among the erudite is the confession of Walker, that "the accent and quantity of the ancients" are, to modern readers, "obscure and mysterious," that it will be taken as a sign of arrogance and superficiality, to pretend to a very certain knowledge of them. ”

“ The quantity of a syllable, whether long or short, does not depend on what is called the long or the short sound of a vowel or diphthong, or on a supposed distinction of accent as affecting vowels in some cases and consonants in others, but principally on the degree of energy or loudness with which the syllable is uttered, whereby a greater or less portion of time is employed. ”

“ This practice is a feature which distinguishes early English and German poetry, not only from the classical poetry, in which a foot or measure must consist of at least two syllables, but also from that of the Romanic, modern German, and modern English languages, which has been influenced by classical example, and in which, accordingly, a foot must contain one accented and at least one unaccented syllable following one another in a regular order. ”

“ A good articulation consists in giving every letter in a syllable its due proportion of sound, according to the most approved custom of pronouncing it; and in making such a distinction between the syllables of which words are composed, that the ear shall without difficulty acknowledge their number ”

“ However, this feature of our verse has been far from stamping it with anything like sameness. Though our bards have habitually measured their verses by the syllabic scale—with the exception of our old ballad writers, and a few moderns, who have written professedly after their exemplars—yet no language in the world contains stores of poetry more varied than the English in respect of construction. Lines of all lengths, containing from three syllables to twenty, have been tried by our poets, and, in general, pleasingly and successfully. ”