"H is a note of aspiration."—It is under the notion that th, ph, sh, as in thin, thine, Philip, shine, are aspirated sounds, that h is admitted in the spelling. As has been repeatedly stated, th, ph, sh are to be treated as single signs or letters.
"J, consonant, sounds uniformly like the soft g (i.e., as in gem), and is, therefore, a letter useless, except in etymology, as ejaculation, jester, jocund, juice."—Johnson. It may be added that it never occurs in words of Saxon origin, and that in the single word Allelujah it has the sound of y, as in the German.
K never comes before a, o, u, or before a consonant. It is used before e, i, y, where c would, according to the English analogy, be liable to be sounded as s; as in kept, king, skirt. These words, if written cept, cing, scirt, would run the risk of being sounded sept, sing, sirt. Broadly speaking, k is never
used except where c would be inconvenient. The reason of this lies in the fact of there being no such letter as k in the Latin language. Hence arose in the eyes of the etymologist the propriety of retaining, in all words derived from the Latin (crown, concave, concupiscence, &c.), the letter c, to the exclusion of k. Besides this, the Anglo-Saxon alphabet, being taken from the Roman, excluded k, so that c was written even before the small vowels, a, e, i, y; as cyning, or cining, a king. C then supplants k upon etymological grounds only. In the languages derived from the Latin this dislike to the use of k leads to several orthographical inconveniences. As the tendency of c, before e, i, y, to be sounded as s (or as a sound allied to s), is the same in those languages as in others; and as in those languages, as in others, there frequently occur such sounds as kit, ket, kin, &c., a difficulty arises as to the spelling. If spelt cit, cet, &c., there is the risk of their being sounded sit, set. To remedy this, an h is interposed—chit, chet, &c. This, however, only substitutes one difficulty for another, since ch is, in all probability, already used with a different sound, e.g., that of sh, as in French, or that of k guttural, as in German. The Spanish orthography is thus hampered. Unwilling to spell the word chimera (pronounced kimera) with a k; unable to spell it with either c or ch, it writes the word quimæra. This distaste for k is an orthographical prejudice. Even in the way of etymology it is but partially advantageous, since in the other Gothic languages, where the alphabet is less rigidly Latin, the words that in English are spelt with a c, are there written with k,—kam, German; komme, Danish; skrapa, Swedish;=came, come, scrape.
The use of k final, as in stick, &c., has been noticed in p. [194].
"Skeptic, for so it should be written, not sceptic."—Johnson. Quoted for the sake of adding authority to the statement made in p. [193], viz., that the Greek kappa is to be represented not by c, but by k.
"K is never doubled, but c is used before it to shorten the vowel by a double consonant, as cŏckle, pĭckle."—Johnson.
This is referable to the statement that k is never used where c is admissible.
"K is used before n, knell, knot, but totally loses its sound."—Johnson. This, however, is not the ease in the allied languages; in German and Danish, in words like knecht, knive, the k is sounded. This teaches us that such was once the case in English. Hence we learn that in the words knife, knight (and also in gnaw, gnash), we have an antiquated or obsolete orthography.
For the ejection of the sound of l in calf, salmon, falcon, &c. see under a. For the l in could, see that word.