after he has laid aside his spelling-book. We have already got Baby-books and Primers, for every science and every tongue: I have not been ambitious to add to the number. In the composition of this work, I have made liberal use of the Introduction to my Analytical Dictionary. I have borrowed very little from any other source, and nothing without acknowledgement. Charlotte-street, Bloomsbury, Jan. 2, 1837. DAVID BOOTH. CONTENTS. II. Organs of Speech-Of Alphabets III. Of Vowels and their sounds-Of Diphthongs and Triphthongs-Use of the final c-Of the Dupli- IV. Of Consonants and their sounds-Distinction of, into labials, dentals, nasals, palatals, and gut- VII. Genders of Substantives-List of genders formed by different names-On the genders of inanimate substances, or personification VIII. Cases-The Latin and English cases of Nouns con- ENGLISH GRAMMAR. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. WHEN, disregarding or not comprehending its meaning, we listen to a speech merely as it strikes the ear, we discern a succession of simple sounds which, though differing from one another in the mode of utterance, are each formed by a single effort of the voice. Every such separate vocal effect is a syllable, and, if significant, it is a word. In the continued flow of speech, a number of syllables may succeed one another without any perceptible interval of time, but they are suffici ently distinguishable by the different modification of the vocal organs which each requires; and these changes, from one form of utterance to another, may be considered as the joints by which the syllables are connected. The simple syllable itself, too, is often slightly articulated; for its single combined effect is made up of pulsations or stops, the whole constituting what are usually denominated articulate sounds-the language of mankind. B Every syllable, or conjunction of syllables, proceeding from the mouth of a rational man, either is, or ought to be, associated with the consciousness of some particular perception in the mind, both of the speaker and of the hearer. This perception is usually called an idea. The speaker is said to have the conception of the idea in his own mind; and if he fails in his endeavour, by language, to communicate a corresponding impression to the mind of his hearer, he speaks, in effect, in an unknown tongue. It is only on the condition of its communicating sensations, that his voice can be said to be made up of words, for otherwise it is merely the utterance of unmeaning syllables. In spoken language, then, a word is any definite sound of the human voice which is associated in the mind of the hearer with some explicit idea; but man, in his anxiety to communicate his thoughts to the absent, has invented marks, called characters, which, when seen by the eye, recall to the memory the sound of those words which were previously heard by the ear. These characters, whether engraved or painted, when they are made to follow one another in the order in which the words themselves were spoken (or supposed to have been spoken), suggest to the mind of the reader the same succession of ideas that were (or might have been) listened to by the hearer. This invention is termed Written Language. The history of the origin and progress of Written Language is involved in darkness. At present the art exists under two distinct forms, each of which has its advantages and disadvantages when compared with the other: the one exists in the verbal characters of the |