There are in the English language more substantive names than seem to be necessary for an universal language, besides the synonymas of various other dialects, which are incongruous in sense, with the hieroglyfic signs, and tend to darken and confound the natural sense and sounds of names and things. Tho’ the English vocables are explained elsewhere, we shall here take notice of some peculiarities of that nature in the English substantives.
Bl-ab, b-abe; ebb, gl-ebe; rib, tr-ibe; kn-ob, gl-obe; t-ub, t-ube; where the final e should be dropped, and the remaining vowel marked with a grave accent, as tub, tùb.
B-ack, b-ake; b-eck, b-eke; l-ick, like, link; p-ock, p-oke, m-uck, p-uke. These might be wrote as lic, lìc.
Ax, sex, ra-dix, ox, ux, as acs or ach as formerly. Ach, be-ach, spe-ech, st-ich, l-och, n-och, touch.
M-atch, l-etch, itch, b-otch, sm-utch.
H-ac, ar-se, ace, dice, d-oce, d-uce.
H-ag, l-eg, g-ig, l-og, h-ug.
Age, b-adge, coll-ege, edge, se-ige, br-idge, d-oge, l-odge, subterf-uge, b-udge.
Aight, eight, f-ight, f-ought, o-ught. These eight last classes are made use of to express the three subsisting sorts of actions, viz. the local or inanimate, the generative and energic, when the first might be expressed by c, the second by g, and the third by ch, as, ac, àc, and aç with a cedille, that is, the acute, the grave, and soft or feminine; ag, àg, āg for the short, long, and soft of the generative species of motion; and ach, àch, and āch, the last to be sounded like the Welsh ch or the English wh in what or where, for the acute, grave, and gutteral of energies and animal motions; so that these three letters, which the Welsh inflect so as to express the cases and genders by the difference of acute, grave, and gutteral, might very well serve for all the uses of the eight last classes of names, should the whole be deemed necessary. But, those of the third, fifth, eighth, and ninth classes are compound sounds expressed by a combination of characters, which ought not to be kept together but in terminations; they having been corruptly introduced into languages by the Greeks and Romans, in order to express qualities and pleasant sounds contrary to the nature of things.
Bre-ad, bl-ade, br-ed, br-eed, ma-id, si-de, c-od, c-ode, b-ud, pr-ude, should be wrote and accented as ud, ùd.