isle_ or
_eel_ and _ill, tone_ and _tun, pule_ or _pool_ and _pull_, have been
declared essentially the same by some, and essentially different by others.
Were we to recognize as elementary, no sounds but such as are
unquestionably simple in themselves, and indisputably different in quality
from all others, we should not have more sounds than letters: and this is a
proof that we have characters enough, though the sounds are perhaps badly
distributed among them.

OBS. 7.--I have enumerated _thirty-six_ well known sounds, which, in
compliance with general custom, and for convenience in teaching. I choose
to regard as the oral elements of our language. There may be found some
reputable authority for adding four or five more, and other authority as
reputable, for striking from the list seven or eight of those already
mentioned. For the sake of the general principle, which we always regard in
writing, a principle of universal grammar, _that there can be no
syllable without a vowel_, I am inclined to teach, with Brightland, Dr.
Johnson, L. Murray, and others, that, in English, as in French, there is
given to the vowel _e_ a certain very obscure sound which approaches, but
amounts not to an absolute suppression, though it is commonly so regarded
by the writers of dictionaries. It may be exemplified in the words _oven,
shovel, able_;[99] or in the unemphatic article _the_ before a consonant,
as in the sentence, "Take the nearest:" we do not hear it as "_thee
nearest_," nor as "_then carest_," but more obscurely. There is also a
feeble sound of _i_ or _y_ unaccented, which is equivalent to _ee_ uttered
feebly, as in the word _diversity_. This is the most common sound of _i_
and of _y_. The vulgar are apt to let it fall into the more obscure sound
of short _u_. As elegance of utterance depends much upon the preservation
of this sound from such obtuseness, perhaps Walker and others have done
well to mark it as _e_ in _me_; though some suppose it to be peculiar, and
others identify it with the short _i_ in _fit_. Thirdly, a distinction is
made by some writers, between the vowel sounds heard in _hate_ and _bear_,
which Sheridan and Walker consider to be the same. The apparent difference
may perhaps result from the following consonant _r_, which is apt to affect
the sound of the vowel which precedes it. Such words as _bear, care, dare,
careful, parent_, are very liable to be corrupted in pronunciation, by too
broad a sound of the _a_