"Consonantal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... being used at first indifferently: they added the X sign; they converted the t of the Phoenicians into th, or theta; z and s into signs for double consonants; they turned the Phoenician y (yod) into i (iota). The Greeks converted the Phoenician alphabet, which was partly consonantal, into one purely phonetic—"a perfect instrument for the expression of spoken language." The w was also added to the Phoenician alphabet. The Romans added the y. At first i and j were both indicated by the same sound; a sign for j was afterward added. We have also, in common with other ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... their vowel and consonantal expressiveness, the past history of countless physical sensations, widely shared by innumerable individuals, and it is to this fact that the "transmission value" of ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... the sound of a in father. er,, air. i,, ee. u,, oo. y is always consonantal except when it is the last letter of the word. g is ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... was replaced by fille, which has acquired in its turn a meaning so offensive that it has now given way to jeune fille. Minx, earlier minkes, is probably the Low Ger. minsk, Ger. Mensch, lit. human, but used also in the sense of "wench." For the consonantal change cf. hunks, Dan. hundsk, stingy, lit. doggish. These examples show that the indignant "Who are you calling a woman?" is, philologically, in all likelihood a ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley |
