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, as it brings the root of the tongue in close contact with the lower part of the palate, and nearly in the position to which the close g brings it."--_American Dict., Octavo_. But I follow Wallis, Brightland, Johnson, Walker, Murray, Worcester, and others, in considering both of them sometimes vowels and sometimes consonants. They are consonants at the beginning of words in English, because their sounds take the article a, and not an, before them; as, _a wall, a yard_, and not, _an wall, an yard_. But oo or the sound of e, requires an, and not _a_; as, _an eel, an oozy bog_.[94] At the end of a syllable we know they are vowels; but at the beginning, they are so squeezed in their pronunciation, as to follow a vowel without any hiatus, or difficulty of utterance; as, "_O worthy youth! so young, so wise!_"
OBS. 5.--Murray's rule, "W and y are consonants when they begin a word or syllable, but in every other situation they are vowels," which is found in Comly's book, _Kirkham's_, Merchant's, Ingersoll's, Fisk's. Hart's, Hiley's, Alger's, Bullions's, Pond's, S. Putnam's, Weld's, and in sundry other grammars, is favourable to my doctrine, but too badly conceived to be quoted here as authority. It undesignedly makes w a consonant in wine, and a vowel in _twine_; and y a consonant when it forms a syllable, as in _dewy_: for a letter that forms a syllable, "begins" it. But Kirkham has lately learned his letters anew; and, supposing he had Dr. Rush on his side, has philosophically taken their names for their sounds. He now calls y a "diphthong." But he is wrong here by his own showing: he should rather have called it a triphthong. He says, "By pronouncing in a very deliberate and perfectly natural manner, the letter y, (which is a diphthong,) the unpractised student will perceive, that the sound produced, is compound; being