ENGLISH VOWEL-SOUNDS.

NOTHING astonishes a German or a Frenchman, when beginning the study of English, more than our vowel-sounds, unless perhaps our consonant-sounds. The English language abounds in vowels which are little better than grunts. We have hosts of curt little vowels that seem to be the remnants of some full sounds which a continual press of business prevents us from ever completing. One of the most hybrid and unsatisfactory of these - to take an instance - is our short o, as in hot. It is quite interesting to speculate as to what the full sound can be which is swallowed before uttered in this case: is it a bark, a whoop, or a growl?

Heine had a very keen appreciation of anything extraordinary in sound, as is evident from his humorous treatment of Polish. He wrote a poem on the adventures of Krapulinski and Waschlapski, and he also made public the memoirs of Count Schnabelewopski, introducing the family servant, Prrschtzztwitsch, and other names, of which he says that, though they seem harsh in German, they are extremely melodious in Polish.

Since we find Heine's appreciation of the singularities of Slavonic names so great, we can hardly expect that he held his peace in regard to our extraordinary sounds. Accordingly, in his "History of German Religion and Philosophy" we find a very witty illustration which is quite to the point. He gives an account of a man fabricated by an English mechanician. This manufactured man did credit to the author of his being, lacking only a soul, A sort of feeling the creature had in its leathern breast; and this feeling, Heine maliciously observes, was not essentially different from the ordinary feelings of an Englishman. It could even communicate its sensations in articulate sounds, and the very rattle of its inside rollers, toothed wheels, and springs, as heard when it talked, imparted to its language a genuine English accent. Again, in one of his short stories, he describes English pronunciation and language as follows: "They take a dozen monosyllables into their mouth, chew them, crunch them, spit them out again - and this is what they call speaking."

It would be an easy matter to find similar remarks on English in the writings of French authors. M. Taine claims to appreciate our language and literature at least as fully as any of his countrymen; but in his remarks on Shakespeare you can see, if you examine at all closely, a lurking pity for the poor islanders who have found nothing better than an extremely improbable and barbarous language to express their ideas in.

It may be objected that the English language is no more peculiar in its sounds than any other; and certainly a man is inclined to find any language surprising and ridiculous which is not his own. This point is well illustrated by Montesquieu, who makes nis countrymen ask their visitor from the East, "Comment peut-on etre Persan?" But Heine, whom we quoted above, was above the influence of this prejudice, as he knew Italian and French very thoroughly, and never found anything ludicrous in the sound of these languages. Since this is so, we must conclude that there was to him something particularly unexpected about the sounds of English. In fact, there is as little in the sounds of the English language that indicates that it came, for the most part, from the same source with modern German, as there is in the formation of the coast of the English island to show that it was once joined to the mainland of Europe.

In bringing this host of new vowel-sounds into our language, we have not been entirely the losers, - indeed, we have kept most of the old full vowels, using them, however, infrequently. The only sound that seems irrevocably gone from our tongue is a full sonorous o, such as is found in Italian and German, and, though a little shorter, in French as well.

L. D.