"Vowel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is free it will not and should not be in the same position at all times. It will be a little lower for somber tones than for bright tones. It will be a little higher for the vowel e than for oo or o, but the adjustments will be automatic, never conscious. It cannot be too often reiterated that every part of the vocal mechanism must act automatically, and it is not ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... plural of how, a hill (Chapter XII), or the genitive of How, one of the numerous medieval forms of Hugh (Chapter VI). Hind may be for Hine, a farm servant (Chapter III), or for Mid. Eng. hende, courteous (cf. for the vowel change Ind, Chapter XIII), and is perhaps sometimes also an animal nickname (Beasts, Chapter XXIII). Rouse is generally Fr. roux, i.e. the red, but it may also be the nominative form of Rou, i.e. of Rolf, or Rollo, the sea-king who conquered Normandy. [Footnote: Old French had a declension in two ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... halt; and so acted the dogs that Pouchskin was driving—all five suddenly coming to a dead stop! Pouchskin endeavoured to urge them forward—crying out the usual signal, Ha; but, in his anxious eagerness, Pouchskin placed the accent after the vowel, instead of before it; and instead of Ha! his exclamation sounded Ah! The latter being the command for the dogs to halt, of course only kept them steady in their places; and they stood without offering to move a leg. By good ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... is true throughout The Country Squire that every pair of lines taken alternately ends in rhymes which are perfect or nearly so. Now a perfect rhyme is one in which the two rhyming syllables are both accented, the vowel sound and the consonants which follow the vowels are identical, and the sounds preceding the vowel are different. For instance, the words smile and style rhyme. Both of these are monosyllables and hence accented. The ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... vowel-letters had nearly the same values as in Old English. Long vowels were often marked by (´). In this book long vowels are regularly marked by (¯)[1]. The following are the elementary vowels and diphthongs, with examples, and key-words ...
— An Icelandic Primer - With Grammar, Notes, and Glossary • Henry Sweet
... of vowelless words. The correct vowels must be ascertained before the meaning of a word or sentence can be definitely established. The vowel points of our Hebrew Bibles are not older than the seventh century A.D., and are frequently erroneous. In the present case the word stealing does not occur in the text, but only ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... sound of r existed in the Onondaga dialect. Since their day this sound has disappeared from it entirely. In La Fort's manuscript the letter frequently occurred, but always, as his pronunciation showed, either as a diacritical sign following the vowel a, to give to that vowel the sound of a in "far," or else as representing itself this vowel sound. Thus the syllable which should properly be written sa was written by La Fort either sar or sr. But, though the language is modern, the speeches themselves, as I am assured by Chief John ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... the thanks you deserved, either, Doctor von Kammacher," he said in his broad dialect, rich in vowel sounds, and recounted a number of cases, of which Frederick had not known, in which good had been repaid by evil tattle. "The people around Plassenberg are not fit for men like you and me. Men like you and me belong in ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... and forwards and dwelling sonorously on each vowel, the holy man seemed the incarnation of Muslim piety; but as the two conspirators passed him with scarce a glance, and made their way to a small gate leading into the great garden bordering on the Nile, his eyes ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... from the natural language of children; and it may be observed, that all such primitive words which denote their parents, are the simple repetition of one syllable, composed of a labial or a dental consonant and an open vowel, (Des Brosses, Mechanisme des Langues, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... themselves and are questioned by the leader of the game and must answer without bringing in a word containing a forbidden vowel. Say the vowel "a" is forbidden, the leader asks—"Are you fond of playing the piano?" The answer "Yes, very much," would be correct as the words do not contain the letter "a." But if the answer were—"Yes, and I am fond of singing ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... on monosyllabic words that are not emphatic, but usually the metrical accent of any given word corresponds to its logical accent. The accentuation of a syllable tends to lengthen the time used in the pronunciation of that syllable, and so we call it long, although the sound of its vowel may be short. Short syllables are those which are unaccented, even though the vowel ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... completely as in the ballad; and precisely the same contrivances are employed to effect them in both cases where any ruggedness in the natural collocation of the words may present itself. For instance, change in the accent, the elision or the addition of a letter or syllable, the lengthening of a vowel, transposition, and a hundred other little artifices. The euphony itself, though sometimes a little imperfect, is also studied with the same kind of care in the older and purer ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... 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 semi-vowel, that which with such impact has an audible sound, as S and R. A mute, that which with such impact has by itself no sound, but joined ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... by the sign ^. Except in a few familiar words, such as Nerbudda and Hindoo, which are spelled in the traditional manner, vowels are to be pronounced as in Italian, or as in the following English examples, namely: a, as in 'call'; e, or e, as the medial vowel in 'cake'; i, as in 'kill'; i, as the medial vowels in 'keel'; u, as in 'full'; u, as the medial vowels in 'fool'; o, or o, as in 'bone'; ai, or ai, as 'eye' or 'aye', respectively; and au, as the medial sound in 'fowl'. Short a, with ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... never gives the rough sound to the r when he can help it, and often displays considerable ingenuity in avoiding it even before a vowel. ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... Catholic Church. What might be described as operatic tendencies in the music of worship date further back than the foundation of Christianity. The Egyptians were accustomed to sing "jubilations" to their gods, and these consisted of florid cadences on prolonged vowel sounds. The Greeks caroled on vowels in honor of their deities. From these practices descended into the musical part of the earliest Christian worship a certain rhapsodic and exalted style of delivery, which is believed to have been St. Paul's "gift ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... longer requires my attention, so I am now free to converse. You are surprised at my knowing your language? You will speak mine after a few more applications of the thought exchanger. I am speaking with a vile accent, of course, but that is merely because my vocal organs are not accustomed to making vowel sounds. Our power is obtained by the combustion of gases in highly efficient turbines. It is transmitted and used as direct current, our generator and motors being so constructed that they can produce no etheric disturbances ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... of tradition went another task, that of fixing the letters of the consonantal text of the Bible (by the Massora), its vowel pronunciation (by the punctuation), and its translation into the Aramaic vernacular (Targum). Here also the Babylonians came after the Palestinians, yet of this sort of erudition Palestine continued to be the headquarters even after the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... to a circle. But little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect does not sensibly differ from a straight line. Even if it have the third vowel as its centre, it does not soon betray it. The highest thought, that is, is the most seemingly impersonal; it does not obviously imply ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... into connexion with other facts, according to endless diversities of permutation and combination, furnish grounds for such eternal successions of new speculations as make the facts themselves virtually new. The same Hebrew words are read by different sets of vowel points, and the same hieroglyphics are deciphered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... word is either a secondary entry or a parenthesized alternative spelling in the form "ms ()". headword spelled "ms" Minor difference, generally an added or omitted macron or a predictable vowel variation such as for . form of "ms" The referenced word is an inflected form. A few very common patterns such as adverbs in "-lce" listed under adjectives in "-lic" are not individually noted. redirected to "ms" The cross-referenced form ...
— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall
... of the conversation above recorded can hardly be had except my reader will take the trouble to imagine the contrast between the Scotch accent and inflection, the largeness and prolongation of vowel sounds, and, above all, the Scotch tone of Malcolm, and the pure, clear articulation, and decided utterance of the perfect London speech of Lenorme. It was something like the difference between the blank verse of Young and the prose ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... as we call vowels, and dividing sounds, styled by us consonants. In determining his vowels he varied during the progress of his discoveries, but finally settled on the six—A, E, I, O, U, and a guttural vowel sounding like ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... maybe either high or low; so that, with adult men, as Haller long ago remarked,[6] the sound partakes of the character of the vowels (as pronounced in German) O and A; whilst with children and women, it has more of the character of E and I; and these latter vowel-sounds naturally have, as Helmholtz has shown, a higher pitch than the former; yet both tones of laughter ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... he could do nothing except await whatever fate was in store for him. Two persons came into the room; he heard them speak sharply and knew then that they were Chinese; there was no mistaking the outlandish inflection of vowel and consonant. In a second rough hands were laid upon him and he was dragged away from the wall. He gave a few last futile wrenches and then lay still, ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... eu-re, thou, thee; teu-re, he, him. In the Tamanac, u-re, I; amare or anja, thou; iteu-ja, he. The radical of the first and of third person is in the Chayma u and teu.* (* We must not wonder at those roots which reduce themselves to a single vowel. In a language of the Old Continent, the structure of which is so artificially complicated, (the Biscayan,) the family name Ugarte (between the waters) contains the u of ura (water) and arte between. The g is added for the sake of euphony.) ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... the velvety South of Ireland vowel-inflection. "We keep Wednesday for the Women's Laager, always. Many of them are so miserable, poor souls, about their husbands and sons and brothers who are in the trenches, or who have been killed, and then there are the children to be cared for and washed. Not only the siege orphans, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... identical to the forms above them, but which are transcribed differently to reflect morphological considerations; e.g., the form ague from the stem ague. The phonetic values of /au/, /uu/, and /ou/ are [[IPA: Open-mid back rounded vowel]:], ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... gracioso, half servant, half confidant, who appears often in the Spanish drama. The Spanish playwright did not confine himself to one form of verse; and Mr. MacCarthy, in his adequate translation, has followed the various forms of Calderon, only not attempting the assonant vowel, so hard to escape in Spanish, and still harder to reproduce in English. These selections give no impression of the amazing invention of Calderon. This can only be appreciated through reading 'The Constant Prince,' 'The Physician of His Own Honor,' ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... have for their object the strengthening of the voice, should also be adapted to develop and perfect the process of breathing. The student should be frequently trained in set exercises in loud exclamations, pronouncing with great force the separate vowel sounds, single words, and whole sentences, and at the same time taking care to bring into vigorous action, all the muscular apparatus of respiration. Shouting, calling, and loud vociferation, in the open air, both while standing, and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the inflections, and in the general features of the syntax. The roots are, as a rule, bilateral or trilateral, composed (that is) of two or three letters, all of which are consonants. The consonants determine the general sense of the words, and are alone expressed in the primitive writing; the vowel sounds do but modify more or less the general sense, and are unexpressed until the languages begin to fall into decay. The roots are, almost all of them, more or less physical and sensuous. They are derived in general from an imitation of nature. "If one looked only ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... indicating short vowels; these typically occur as the first vowel in a Malay word (mostly e, but sometimes a, i, u). Letters with breve accents have been replaced with just the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... the aspirate, Fuddy-Duddy, the incapable terrapin, came to a dead halt, and before the vowel had died away up the ravine had folded up all his eight legs and lain down in the dusty road, regardless of the effect upon his derned skin. The queer little man slid off his seat to the ground and started up the dell without deigning to look ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... had arisen? Who stopped the way which led to peace? Not we, was our firm declaration; we were most pacifically inclined, and ever had been; we were, in fact, little saints. But the enemy could not be brought to any terms of accommodation. "That we will try," said the vowel amongst our guardians, Mr. E. He, being a magistrate, had naturally some weight with the proprietors of the cotton factory. The foremen of the several floors were summoned, and gave it as their humble opinion that we, the aristocratic party in the war, were ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the soft air along, While fluent Greek a vowel'd undersong 200 Kept up among the guests, discoursing low At first, for scarcely was the wine at flow; But when the happy vintage touch'd their brains, Louder they talk, and louder come the strains Of powerful instruments:—the gorgeous dyes, The space, the splendour of the draperies, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... As in all foreign words ending with a vowel, the Portuguese have nasalised the "i." In 1505 it was written "Coxi." See A.C. Burnell's note in Voyage of Linschoten (Hakluyt Society's publications, London, 1885), i, p. 68. This city lies some thirty ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... majesty of the Latin, the sweetness of the Italian, the dignity of the Spanish, or the polish of the French, never had any place in English. The inflections given to our words never embraced any other vowel power than that of the short e or i; and even, this we are inclined to dispense with, whenever we can; so that most of our grammatical inflections are, to the ear, nothing but consonants blended with the final syllables of the words to ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... and vowel following d, changing places. The slender or soft sound given to th in our polished dialect, is in the West, most commonly converted into the thick or obtuse sound of the same letters as heard in the words ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... fatted in England, (Frolicksome though I have been) have I tried on Hexameter, knowing Latin and Greek are alone its languages. We have a measure Fashion'd by Milton's own hand, a fuller, a deeper, a louder. Germans may flounder at will over consonant, vowel, and liquid, Liquid and vowel but one to a dozen of consonants, ending Each with a verb at the tail, tail heavy as African ram's tail, Spenser and Shakspeare had each his own harmony; each an enchanter Wanting no aid from without. Chevy Chase had ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... then Emanuel's face was observed to change. The frown vanished and a smile of heavenly rapture took its place. His mouth gradually opened till its resemblance to the penultimate vowel was quite realistic, and simultaneously, by a curious muscular co-ordination, he rose on his toes to a considerable height in ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... bird whose cry is really "ooh, ooh." Or else we put in the wrong consonants, which is shown by the fact that different nations assign different consonantal sounds to the same bird. We do not even agree on the vowel sounds. What is there in common between our English "Cock-a-doodle-doo" and M. Rostand's "cocorico"? And we need not go as far as the animal world. See how the nations differ in spelling out that elementary human sound which is the expression of pain or surprise, and which in ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... of ropes leading to the points of the leading sled. At the rear the "pusher off" half reclined, graceful and nonchalant. With the exception of the steersman, who was too busy, each had his mouth wide open and was expirating in one long-drawn continuous vowel-sound. This vowel-sound was originally the first part of the word "out." It had long since become conventionalized, but still served its purpose ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... the change of depth, and laid up the important details for future reference without requiring any assistance from him in the matter. If you were walking and talking with a friend, and another friend at your side kept up a monotonous repetition of the vowel sound A, for a couple of blocks, and then in the midst interjected an R, thus, A, A, A, A, A, R, A, A, A, etc., and gave the R no emphasis, you would not be able to state, two or three weeks afterward, that the R had been put in, nor be able to tell what objects you were passing at the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... justified in accepting Hartmann's theory of the collective suicide of mankind, and in throwing a "bloody spittle of contempt" at life. A "bloody spittle," as is known from Arthur Rimbaud's sonnets on consonants, stands before the eyes of everyone who pronounces the vowel i, just as the vowel a brings up the picture of "black, shaggy flies, which buzz around ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... followed by a liquid does not make the preceding vowel long. Thus agris, libros, ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... text: Italicized words or phrases are capitalized. A few obvious errors have been corrected. Many German names with umlauts have had the umlaut replaced with an 'e' following the vowel (according to standard form) due to the limitations of ASCII. These names are noted in ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... lent a faint impression of the double e to the initial vowel. She slurred the rest, until the y sound squinted in. ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... light came into the woman's face; she was communing with herself—perhaps going over mentally some tender phrases, full of the soft vowel sounds ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... aloud. Rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, vowel coloring, the effect of enjambement, to name only the more obvious phenomena, appeal solely to the ear. Looking at a page of verse is like looking at a page of music. Unless the symbols are translated into sound values, the effect is blank. A skilled ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... had his work to do, and soon went; and very nearly up to Hall time Williams was engaged in a vain attempt to identify the subject of his picture. 'If the vowel before the ng had only been left, it would have been easy enough,' he thought; 'but as it is, the name may be anything from Guestingley to Langley, and there are many more names ending like this than I thought; and this rotten book has no ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... in expressing lively description, haste, fear, command, etc., and consists of an abrupt and forcible utterance, usually more or less explosive, and falls on the first part of a sound or upon the opening of a vowel, and its use contributes much to distinct pronounciation. It is not common to give a strong, full and clear radical stress, yet this abrupt function is highly important in elocution, and when properly used in public reading or on the stage "will ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... Chaldeans and the causes of their ruin Other legends of a confusion of tongues Influence upon Christendom of the Hebrew legends Lucretius's theory of the origin of language The teachings of the Church fathers on this subject The controversy as to the divine origin of the Hebrew vowel points Attitude of the reformers toward this question Of Catholic scholars.—Marini Capellus and his adversaries ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... diphthongs.[17] They have neither the oe nor ue, which the Germans consider as the best sounds of their idiom: nor the Greek,[Greek: ei], [Greek: ui], [Greek: au], [Greek: eu], and the like; still less the variety of pronunciation of one and the same vowel, peculiar to the English. The Poles, Russians, and Bohemians, possess however a twofold i, [18] a finer and a coarser one; the latter of which is not to be found in any other European language, and is unpleasant to the ear of foreigners. The Poles, besides this, have nasal vowels, as other languages ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... a noble word for ye," said Catherine proudly. "Our Gerard taught thee that, I'll go bail. Come then, out with thy vowel." ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... made this winter (1831-32) with his Shelleyan "Sonnet to a Cloud" and his imitations of Byron's "Hebrew Melodies," from which he learnt how to concentrate expression, and to use rich vowel-sounds and liquid consonants with rolling effect. A deeper and more serious turn of thought, that gradually usurped the place of the first boyish effervescence, has been traced by him to the influence ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... zonner—haven't zonner your acquaintance. Want to see Will. Got prodigal on zands, Will has. Seems t'ave come back mos' 'no—mos' 'nopportune 'casion. All right, ole man: jus' give me y' arm and I get 'long mos' com-for-ble, mos' comfort-a-ble," he ended with a leer of triumph at having achieved the vowel. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... that he was mistaken. Yes! he would let him see how much he was mistaken, the puppy! He, Touch-and-go Bullet-head, of Frogpondium, would let Mr. John Smith perceive that he, Bullet-head, could indite, if it so pleased him, a whole paragraph—aye! a whole article—in which that contemptible vowel should not once—not even once—make its appearance. But no;—that would be yielding a point to the said John Smith. He, Bullet-head, would make no alteration in his style, to suit the caprices of any Mr. Smith in Christendom. Perish so vile a thought! The O forever; ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... What, the Rhodian? Form and face, Victory's self upsoaring to receive The poet? Right they named you . . . some rich name, Vowel-buds thorned about with consonants, Fragrant, felicitous, rose-glow enriched By the Isle's unguent: some diminished end ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... vowel i by bringing the jaws still closer to one another, and stretching the two corners of the mouth towards ...
— The Shopkeeper Turned Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere (Poquelin)
... shape, number, and use of the characters and letters of this nation it is quite evident that they are all taken from the Moro Malays and originated from the Arabs. The vowel letters are only three in number, but they serve for five in their use; for the second and third are indifferently e, i, y, o, and u, according as is required by the meaning or sense of the word which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... teach orthography and orthoepy simultaneously. The vocabulary contains several hundred euphonious and peculiarly significant words, heretofore not comprised in spellers of this grade. All lists of words are strictly classified with regard to their formation, their vowel sounds, alphabetic order, accent and number ...
— Lee's Last Campaign • John C. Gorman
... into one harmonious whole the several results desirable to be attained in a series of school reading-books. These include good pictorial illustrations, a combination of the word and phonic methods, careful grading, drill on the peculiar combinations of letters that represent vowel-sounds, correct spelling, exercises well arranged for the pupil's preparation by himself (so that he shall learn the great lessons of self-help, self-dependence, the habit of application), exercises that develop a practical command of correct forms of expression, good literary ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... A vowel is a letter that can be perfectly sounded by itself. 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 ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... interrupts him by obtruding his ostentatious notes—"The reader will observe the beauty of this thought." "This is one of the finest passages in any author, ancient or modern." "The sense of this line, which all former annotators have mistaken, is obviously restored by the addition of the vowel ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... am learning the Art from the greatest master in Nuremberg, Hans Sachs. For a full year I have received his instructions. Shoe-making and poetry I learn simultaneously. When I have pounded the leather even and smooth, I learn of vowel-sounds and of consonance. When I have waxed the thread hard and stiff, I apply myself to the rules of rhyme. While punching holes and driving the awl, I commit the science of rhythm and number...." And so forth. For a full year he has been learning, and how far does Walther ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... where, by the light of a large fire, made of brushwood and cow's dung, they are taught a few sentences from the Koran, and are initiated into the principles of their creed. Their alphabet differs but little from that in Richardson's Arabic Grammar. They always write with the vowel points. Their priests even affect to know something of foreign literature. The priest of Benowm assured me that he could read the writings of the Christians: he showed me a number of barbarous characters, which he asserted ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... Bodo gegedov' u minda (two hands and another). [Note the "v" at the end of gegedo. The full word is really gegedove; but it is shortened to gegedo, unless the next word is a vowel. Also note the "u." There are two words for "and," namely ta and une. The "u" here is the une shortened, and put instead of ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... name of my friend Lloyd's place," he said, "but you'll find it written there in seven consonants and one vowel." ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... SECURED. Instead of NAMELY, I would always use WHICH IS, or THAT IS, that my-election is secured. The other word is, MINE OWN INCLINATIONS: this is certainly correct before a subsequent word that begins with a vowel; but it is too correct, and is now disused as too formal, notwithstanding the hiatus occasioned by MY OWN. Every language has its peculiarities; they are established by usage, and whether right or wrong, they must be complied with. I could instance many very absurd ones in different languages; ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... forward in this way, and then opened your lips to sing a full tone, this tone should, indeed must, be right in the same place where the humming tones were,—it cannot be anywhere else." Madame illustrated again, first humming on one tone, then letting it out with full resonance, using the vowel Ah, which melted into O, and later changed into U, as the tone died away. "This vibration in the voice should not be confounded with a tremolo, which is, of course, very undesirable. A voice without vibrato, would be cold and dead, expressionless. There must be ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... much delighted when we could catch the just pronunciation of a word. For my own part, no language seemed easier to acquire than this; every harsh and sibilant consonant being banished from it, and almost every word ending in a vowel. The only requisite, was a nice ear to distinguish the numerous modifications of the vowels which must naturally occur in a language confined to few consonants, and which, once rightly understood, give a great degree of delicacy to conversation. Amongst several observations, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Portuguese, and Americans, bearing colored leis, or wreaths of flowers, which they waved at friends on board, and with which they bedecked them as soon as they came off the gangplank. It was a Babel of tongues in which the strange, vowel-choked language of the Hawaiians ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... get all that in the Y.M.C.A. huts where the padre toils and the layman sweats day and night for the well-being of the soldier men. In some of the huts it is actually possible to get a bath. It is always possible to get dry. 'Twas Black Jack Vowel, good friend Jack, who wrote over to tell us that there was no hut at one time ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... the E, (TSE,) which is pronounced with great softness, sometimes C, (TSIE,) the accented S is almost warbled. The Z has three sounds: the Z, (JAIS,) the Z, (ZED,) and the Z, (ZIED). The Y forms a vowel of a muffled tone, which, as the L, cannot be represented by any equivalent sound in French, and which like it gives a variety of ineffable shades to the language. These fine and light elements enable the Polish women to assume a lingering and singing accent, which they usually transport ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... by David Bogue, Fleet Street. 1852. Mr. Reach was very particular about the pronunciation of his name. Being a native of Inverness, the last vowel was guttural. One day, dining with Douglas Jerrold, who insisted on addressing him as Mr. Reek or Reech, "No," said the other; "my name is neither Reek nor Reech,but Reach," "Very well," said Jerrold, "Mr. Reach will ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... and Indian roots than that of the Porto Rican "jibaro" and is more easily understood by the outsider. Slight differences of pronunciation are noticeable in different parts of the country: the people of Seibo are inclined to use the vowel "i" instead of the consonant "r" and say "poique" instead of "porque," somewhat as the New York street urchin says "boid" for "bird"; the people of Santiago sometimes drop the "r" entirely and say "poque," as the Southern negro in the United States says "fo" for "four"; the ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... New England countryman never flattens a vowel; if he changes it he always makes it sharp. He would be more likely to say: "Pleasure does make us Yankee kind er winch, as if 'twas suthin' paid for by the inch." There are other instances of similar sort; but, nevertheless, if the primitive Yankee ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... difficult for Colonel House to say no. He might go so far as to utter the first letter of that indispensable monosyllable; but before he accomplished the vowel, his mind would turn to some happy "formula" passing midway between no and yes. He was fertile in these expedients. Daily he would talk of some new "formula," for Fiume, for Dantzig, for the Saar Valley, for the occupation ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... a primitive word is dropped on taking a suffix beginning with a vowel: as, blame able blamable; guide ance guidance; come ing coming; force ible forcible; ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... c(h)ourse you c(h)an!" lisped Flaccus, who affected Greek so far as to aspirate every word beginning with a vowel, and to change every ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... DEAR JACK: The letter E is the one to be added to that church-wall text which you gave to your chicks in May. If this vowel is set in at the right ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... sounds. According to the circumstances of the identical or similar sounds, four varieties are distinguishable: (1) alliteration, or initial rime, when the sounds at the beginning of accented syllables agree, as tale, attune; (2) consonance, when the vowel sounds differ and the final consonantal sounds agree, as tale, pull; (3) assonance, when the vowel sounds agree and the consonants differ, as tale, pain; and (4) rime proper, when both the vowels and the final consonants ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... consequence—the element—the air, etc. Thirdly, the French, who are equally chargeable with the English with barbarism in this particular, dispose of their le and their la without ceremony, and always take care that they shall be absorbed, both in verse and in prose, in the vowel that immediately follows them. Fourthly, and I believe lastly, the practice of cutting short "the" is warranted by Milton, who of all English poets that ever lived, had certainly ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... emission is, first of all, the cultivation of the breath prop, then attacking the vowel sound o o in the medium voice, which requires a low position of the larynx, and exercises on the ascending scale until the higher notes have been brought down, as it were, and gain some of the body and support of the lower ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... "Pater Noster Valley," and after a few months left the country. His great services in reducing the Maori language to written form have hardly been sufficiently recognised. Marsden, like the other settlers, could never adapt himself to the Italian vowel sounds, and at his request Kendall wrote out a new vocabulary on a different system; but he soon found it unsatisfactory, and returned to the principles which he had worked out with Professor Lee. For the rest of his life—in South America and in Australia—he still ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... twelfth century, and must have received its present form in Picardy. It is written, as you see, in alternate snatches of verse and prose. The verse, which was chanted, is not rhymed as a rule, but each laisse, or screed, as in the "Chanson de Roland," runs on the same final assonance, or vowel sound throughout. ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... pidgin English. He said Bruno was a terrible heretic. I said he was terribly burned. He agreed to this with some sorrow. Then gave me recipe for what he calls RISOTTO ALLA BERGAMASCA. When he pronounces a soft O he protrudes his full carnal lips as if he kissed the vowel. Has he? And could he repent? Yes, he could: and cry two round rogue's tears, one ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Spinoza's own times the work met with unbounded indignation. Indeed hardly any age could have been less prepared for its reception. So rigorous a theory of verbal inspiration was then held, that the question of the date of the introduction of the Hebrew vowel points was discussed under the idea that inspiration would be overthrown, if the admission was made that they were introduced after the time of the closing of the canon.(355) The tone of fairness in Spinoza's manner, which compels most modern readers to believe in his honesty, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... in English frequently ends with a vanish,—a brief terminal sound of "short i" which makes the vowel slightly diphthongal, as in "day", "aye". Such a vanish must not be given to any ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... The author omitted vowel modifiers and diacritics from all names in the body text: Hakon, Malar, Mjolnir. The footnotes are generally ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... towards us in a way which seemed to say to them, "Gentlemen, behold the enigma!" Then, beginning with the eldest, the twelve jabbered at us in turn, apparently in different tongues, some sibilant, some guttural, and others with the musical cadence of frequent vowel sounds. Needless to say, each was equally incomprehensible to us, and we did not think it worth while to try German or English upon them. When they had finished, they looked much vexed, and slowly wagged their beards. Then the youth spoke something to them with ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... should be allowed some use of their natural speech in class. We hope that this example may be followed all over the country. We also believe that a knowledge of provincial pronunciation, and a familiarity with the richness and beauty of the vowel sounds which it often preserves, especially in the North, would be of value to those who speak the standard language, and would certainly lead to some correction of the slurred and indistinct way of speaking which is now regarded as correct English, ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 1 (Oct 1919) • Society for Pure English
... This she was unable to do at first, but upon persistence and passive placing of her mouth in the proper position for the sound, she was able to whisper "e." From this she rapidly went on to the other vowel sounds. Then the aspirate "h" was added, later the explosives, "p," etc., until at the end of about two hours she was enabled to whisper anything desired. Her husband was instructed not to allow her to use ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... next letter that some of them were not half bad-looking, surprisingly well groomed for so far West, and fairly attractive till they opened their mouths. Then, he said, they twanged the banjo at every vowel and went over the letter "r" as if it were a bump in the road. He had no desire for blinders, but he said that he would derive comfort from a pair of ear-muffs. By and by he was writing her not to be worried about losing him, for there was safety in numbers, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... single words, as Dialysis or Diaeresis, placed over vowels to shew they must be pronounced in distinct syllables, as Raphael. The Circumflex is set over a vowel to carry a long sound, as Euphrates. An Accent is marked thus (a), to shew where the emphasis must be placed, as neglect; or to shew that the consonant following must be pronounced double, as homage. To these may be added the long (-) and short (breve) marks, which denote ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... Spanish-English form is perhaps the prettier. I am sorry to say that the poet, to get a rhyme, sometimes spells it "Urracle," which is not pretty. Southey's "Queen Orraca" seems to me to have changed her vowel ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... from the number of pats to the number of times he hears a noise. This once accomplished, tests can be made with sounds of different kinds, different pitch, and different volume, varying the distance, the instruments, and the vowel when the articulate sounds are reached. He can be shown a whistle, then, when it is blown behind his back, he will hold up as many fingers as the times it was blown, if he perceives the sound. He can ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... verbs. There were the words noti, and navi, and nari, and when in was forced to be prefixed to them, it seemed more musical to say ignoti, ignavi, ignari, than to adhere to the strict rules. Men say ex usu and republica, because in the one phrase a vowel followed the preposition, and in the other there would have been great harshness if you had not removed the consonant, as in exegit, edixit, effecit, extulit, edidit. And sometimes the preposition has sustained an alteration, regulated by the first letter ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... substitution [ ] have been used in this version of the text. When used, it indicates that the vowel it surrounds is a long vowel with ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... timid equestrian, laying the emphasis on the final syllable of his companion's title, and pronouncing the first as if it were spelt with the third instead of the second vowel. ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... this long-ears had to be 'dear Sir'd and obedient servanted' till I said (to use a mild word) 'commend me to the sincerities of this kind of thing.'! When I spoke of you knowing little of me, one of the senses in which I meant so was this—that I would not well vowel-point my common-place letters and syllables with a masoretic other sound and sense, make my 'dear' something intenser than 'dears' in ordinary, and 'yours ever' a thought more significant than the run of its like. And all this came of your talking of 'tiring me,' 'being too envious,' &c. &c., ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... example; but is never to be found as in the second, for that sound, or power, is always represented by the Italic letter e. It has also a third power, as in the words Yes, Yell, etc., which is retained every where in the Vocabulary, at least in the beginning of words, or when it goes before another vowel, unless directed to be sounded separately by a mark over it, as thus, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... drawn close about her. "It's an honest true one about a ghost that used to ha'nt my great-grandfather. My great-grandfather owned a beautiful castle in France not far from Nice." She pronounced it with the long sound of the vowel, and was promptly corrected by Marie Louise. "I said it was my great-grandfather, not my niece," said the storyteller sharply. "Well, onct upon a time he was engaged in a war— the Communism war, I think it was. In the heat of battle one day he cut off a great general's head, ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... attentions to Julia continue, but I do not know that he has any serious encouragement. She ought to do better. A poor honourable is no catch, and I cannot imagine any liking in the case, for take away his rants, and the poor baron has nothing. What a difference a vowel makes! If his rents were but equal to his rants! Your cousin Edmund moves slowly; detained, perchance, by parish duties. There may be some old woman at Thornton Lacey to be converted. I am unwilling to fancy myself neglected for a young one. Adieu! my dear sweet ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... or vowel[n] y with supralinear e y^e (i.e., the) accented q with semicolon q[ue] w with supralinear curve w[ith] e with sublinear ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... 'fire,' or 'quality,' there being considered to be three Ramas, three kinds of fire, three qualities (guna); for 4 were used 'veda,' 'age,' or 'ocean,' there being four of each recognized; 'season' for 6, because they reckoned six seasons; 'sage' or 'vowel,' for 7, from the seven sages and the seven vowels; and so on with higher numbers, 'sun' for 12, because of his twelve annual denominations, or 'zodiac' from his twelve signs, and 'nail' for 20, a word incidentally bringing in finger notation. As ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... the regular form of the subjunctiveCantet. The only latin vowel preserved after the tonic syllable is aFrench e (mute). Thus contat"chante" which form has in ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... for the asperity and discordance of our speech, and in general, this reproach is just, for there are many persons who do scanty justice to the vowel-elements of our language. Although these elements constitute its music they are continually mistreated. We flirt with and pirouette around them constantly. If it were not so, English would be found full of beauty and harmony of sound. Familiar ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... must have abjured them the moment that he set to work composing. In Oper und Drama, for example, he has a very interesting discussion on the value of consonants in the German language and on the characteristic difference between the expression of the consonant and that of the vowel, arriving at the conclusion that alliteration is better suited for the German musical drama than the imported rime. Further, he shows—rather convincingly, I think—that the true subject for the drama is mythical. But not long after this he wrote ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... yourself of this, repeat the vowels loudly and clearly without stopping to think about the position of the mouth, and notice how your lips, the tip and base of your tongue, and your soft palate and throat all change their positions for each successive vowel. ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson |
