TZSCHIR'NER, HEINRICTI GOT'TLTEB, 1778-1828; b. Mittweida, Saxony; studied theology at Leipsic; ordained to the ministry, 1801; professor of theology, Wittenberg, 1805; at Leipsic, 1809; superintendent at Leipsic, 1815; prebendary of Meissen, 1818. He strongly opposed Roman Catholic reaction in Germany. Ile published Protestantis mus and Katholicismus aus dem Standpunkte der Politik betrachtet; translated into English, French, and Dutch, Das Reactionssystem.
twenty-first letter of the English alphabet, represents in that language three distinct sounds, as heard in tube, tub, and full. The last is its primitive sound, which it had in Latin, and which it has preserved in German and Italian, but which is oftener denoted in English by oo. In tube it does not mark a pure vowel sound; it is aspirated, as if y were prefixed—Iyub. The sound heard in tub is characteristic of English ; and, owing, perhaps, to the decided emphasis given to one syllable of a word at the expense of the rest, there is a tendency to allow the other vowels, a, e, o, when unaccented, to degenerate into this indistinct, stifled sound: cavalry, sister, fashion are pronounced almost, if not altogether, as if written cat'ulry, sister, fashun. This is
especially the case with o; and in this vowel the degeneracy is not confined to unac ceuted syllables; in a whole host of words the accented o is exactly equivalent to it—e.g., come, muneg, among. Perhaps a similar tendency in Latin may account for the preva lence of u in that language as compared with Greek—e.g., Let. genus = Gr. genes; volumus = boulornetha; spatula = spatale; scopulus = skopelos. U, in Latin, some times goes into the still thinner sound of i; thus maxumus, eaputis, degenerated into maximus, capitis. Of the labial series of vowels (see LETTERS), It approaches nearest to the labial consonants; so much so that in Latin the vowel u and the consonant v were both denoted by the same character, v, of which u is only a later modification. In the middle ages the two characters were used indifferently whether as vowel or consonant; and it was only in the 16th c. that the Dutch scholars fixed the use of the character u for the vowel, as distinct from v.