YOUNG MAN'S BEST COMPANION, AND Book of General Knowledge. PART I.---GRAMMAR. THE necessary accomplishment of spelling and writing good English, claims the first place in a work professedly written for the instruction of youth. If we wish to speak and write with propriety we must study Grammar. This is a preliminary step to the acquisition of general knowledge, and is equally useful to the highest, as well as the most humble classes of society. It is of little importance that a person is a good penman, unless he can spell correctly; the beauty and uniformity of the hand-writing will only serve to render his orthographical errors more conspicuous, and such person will, of course, be ridiculed and laughed at by his acquaintance.. ENGLISH GRAMMAR is divided into four parts, Orthography, teaches the form and sound of letters, and the art of combining letters into syllables, and syllables into words. Etymolo gy teaches the deduction of one word from another, and the various modifications, by which the sense of the same word is diversified. Syntax, comprises the order of words in a sentence, and the correspondence of one word to another. Prosody, treats of the just pronunciation and poetical construction of sentences. ORTHOGRAPHY. A letter is the first principle, or least part, of a word. The letters of the English alphabet are twenty-six in number, by the use of which we are enabled to express our ideas with the same clearness and precision as in conversation. The vowels are, a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes w and y. W and Y are consonants when they begin a word or syllable ; but in every other situation they are vowels. B The meeting of two vowels in a word is called a dipthong, as in eat, oil, air. A tripthong is the union of three vowels, as in beauty, beau, lieu. The other letters are consonants, sometimes divided into mutes, semi-vowels, and liquids. Concerning the sound of single letters, the following rules are all that can safely be depended upon. C is pronounced hard like k before a, o, u; and soft like s, before evi, and y. G is also sounded hard before a, o, u; sometimes hard, and sometimes soft, before i and y; and generally soft before e, E is most silent at the end of a word: but in that case it. lengthens the foregoing vowel, as hid, hide; and that sometimes in the middle of a word, as ungrateful. But sometimes it only softens a preceding g, as in lodge, judge. H is only an aspiration of the breath, and sometimes at the beginning of a word is scarcely sounded at all; as an hour, an honest man. W is either a vowel or a dipthong; its proper sound is the same as u in the Italian, ou in the French, or oo in the English. Sometimes it is not sounded at all after o, sometimes like au. X is a double consonant, composed of a hard c, or k, and s ; and at the beginning of a word mostly sounded like z. Y has exactly the same sound as i; and is only a substitute for it at the end of a word, or before i; as cry, flying. It is a perfect vowel and when used as a consonant at the beginning of a word, it answers to the ancient Saxoni: as yew, iw; young, iong. Ž is a double consonant: it sounds as much coarser and thicker than s as v does than f. J and v, though confounded by some old writers with i and u, are entirely different letters; the former having the sound of a soft g, and the latter that of a coarser f. The sound is called ja, and the latter vee. It is a defect in the English, and perhaps in every other alphabet, that the same letters do not always express the same sounds. The following is a specimen of the varieties of sound expressed by the same letters. VOWELS. A in the words man, face, what, ball. E men, cohesion, me, yes. I fit, bird, bind, machine. U muse, number, busy, bury. A Syllable is either one letter; as a; or more than one, as man. All spelling, or division of syllables, may be comprehended in seven general rules. 1. A consonant between two vowels, goes to the latter syllable; as ba-nish, except w and x, which go to the former syllable, as flower, exile. 2. Two consonants in the middle of a word, that are proper to begin a word, must begin a syllable together; as clu-ster; except such derivatives, whose primitives ending in e final, drop the e in spelling, have the consonants in the middle of the word parted, though they may be proper to begin a word; as houshold. Note. That dl, tl, and kl, are often used to begin syllables, though they begin no word; as la-dle, tur-tle, wrin-kle. 3. Two consonants in the middle of a word, that are not proper to begin a word, must be divided; as num-ber, except two consonants in the middle of a derivative, though they be not proper to begin a word, must not be divided; as stand-ard. 4. If two vowels come together, not making a dipthong, they must be divided, as ae in Ja-el; ao in ex-tra-or-di-na-ry; eo in pi-te-ous; ia in vi-al; io in vi-ol; iu in di-ur-nal; oe in co-er-cion; ua in u-su-al; ue in duel; ui in ru-in, con-gru-i-ty; and uo in con-gru-ous. as Note. 1. Ua, ue, ui, and uo, become dipthongs after q quar-rel, ques-tion, qui-et, quo-ti-ent; likewise ua in per-suade, per-sua-sion, &c. |