Word: vowels
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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...
...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...