As a vowel, _y_ is wholly superfluous. It is a current remark that more words end in _y_ (_fortify_, _pretty_) than in any other letter. This is true only in respect to their spelling. As a matter of _speech_, the _y_ final has always the sound either of the _ee_ in _feet_, or of the _i_ in _bite_. Such is the case with the words _fortify_ and _pretty_, quoted above. For some reason or other, the vowel _e_ is never, in English, written at the end of words, unless when it is mute; whilst _i_ is never written at all. Instead of _cri_, we write _cry_, &c. This is a peculiarity of our orthography, for which I have no satisfactory reason. It _may_ be, that with words ending in _e_, _y_ is written for the sake of showing that the vowel is not mute, but sounded. Again, the adjectives ending in _y_ as _any_, and the adverbs in _ly_, as _manly_, in the older stages of our language ended, not in _y_, but in _ig_ (_manlig_, _aenig_); so that the present _y_, in such words, may be less the equivalent of _i_ than the compendium of _ig_. I venture this indication with no particular confidence. The _b_ in _debtor_, _subtile_, _doubt_, agrees with the _b_ in _lamb_, _limb_, _dumb_, _thumb_, _womb_, in being mute. It differs, however, in another respect. The words _debtor_, _subtle_, _doubt_, are of classical, the words _lamb_, _limb_, _dumb_, &c., are of Saxon, origin. In _debtor_, &c., the _b_ was, undoubtedly, at one time, pronounced, since it belonged to a different syllable; _debitor_, _subtilis_, _dubito_, being the original forms. I am far from being certain that with the other words, _lamb_, &c., this was the case. With them the _b_ belonged (if it belonged to the word at all) to the same syllable as the _m_. I think, {193} however, that instead of this being the case, the _b_, in _speech_, never made a part of the word at all; that it belongs now, and that it always belonged, to the _written_ language only; and that it was inserted in the spelling upon what may be called the principle of imitation. For a further illustration of this, see the remarks on the word _could_. "_Ch_ has a sound which is analysed into _tsh_, as _church_, _chin_, _crutch_. _C_ might be omitted in the language without loss, since one of its sounds might be supplied by _s_, and the other by _k_, but that it preserves to the eye the etymology of words, as _face_ from _facies_, _captive_ from _captivus_"--_Johnson._