approaches more and more closely to that excellent standard. The subjoined table will make this clearer than any comment :—

Sanskrit Alphabet, as transcribed by Sir W. Jones, M. M., in the Missionary, and in the Church Missionary

160

LECTURE IV.

PHONETIC CHANGE.

ROM the investigations which I laid before, you

FROM

in

my last Lecture, you know the materials which were at the disposal of the primitive architects of language. They may seem small compared with the countless vocables of the countless languages and dialects to which they have given rise, nor would it have been difficult to increase their number considerably, had we assigned an independent name and position to every slight variety of sound that can be uttered, or may be discovered among the various tribes of the globe. Yet small as is the number of the alphabetic elements, there are but few languages that avail themselves of all of them. Where we find very abundant alphabets, as for instance in Hindustani and English, different languages have been mixed, each retaining, for a time, its own phonetic peculiarities. It is because French is Latin as spoken not only by the Roman provincials but by the German Franks, that we find in its dictionary words beginning with h and with qui. They are due to German throats; they belong to the Teutonic, not to the Romance alphabet. Thus haïr is to hate; hameau, home; hâter, to haste; déguiser points to wise, guile to wile, guichet to wicket. It is because English is Saxon as spoken not only by Saxons, but likewise by Normans, that we hear in it several sounds

which do not occur in any other Teutonic dialects. The sound of u as heard in pure is not a Teutonic sound. It arose from an attempt to imitate the French u in pure.* Most of the words in which this sound is heard are of Roman origin, e.g. duke, during (durer), beauty (beauté, bellitas), nuisance (nocentia). This sound of u, however, being once naturalized, found its way into Saxon words also; that is to say, the Normans pronounced the A.S. eów and eaw like yu; e.g. knew (cneów), few (feawa), dew (deáw), hue (hiw).†

The sounds of ch and j in English are Roman or Norman rather than Teutonic sounds, though, once admitted into English, they have infected many words of Saxon descent. Thus cheer in good cheer is the French chère, the Medieval Latin cara; ‡ chamber, chambre, camera; cherry, A.S. cirse, Fr. cerise, Lat. cerasus; to preach, prêcher, prædicare; forge, fabricare. Or j in joy, gaudium, judge, judex, &c. But the same sounds found their way into Saxon words also, such as choose (ceósan, German kiesen); chew (ceowan, German kauen); particularly before e and i, but likewise before other vowels; e.g. child, as early as Layamon, instead of the older A.S. cild; cheap, A.S. ceap; birch, finch, speech, much, &c.; thatch (theccan), watch (weccan); in Scotch, theek and waik; or in bridge (brycg, Brücke), edge (ecg, Ecke), ridge (hrycg, Rücken). The soft sound of z in azure or of s in vision is likewise a Roman importation.

*Fiedler, Englische Grammatik, i. pp. 118 and 142.

† Cf Marsh, Lectures, Second Series, p. 65.

Cara in Spanish, chière in Old French, mean face; Nicot uses 'avoir la chère baissée.' It afterwards assumed the sense of welcome, and hospitable reception. Cf. Diez, Lex. Etym. s. v. Cara.

M

Words, on the contrary, in which th occurs are Saxon, and had to be pronounced by the Normans as well as they could. To judge from the spelling of MSS., they would seem to have pronounced d instead of th. The same applies to words containing wh, originally hv, or ght, originally ht; as in who, which, or bought, light, right. All these are truly Saxon, and the Scotch dialect preserves the original guttural sound of h before t.

srz.

The O Tyi-herero has neither I nor f, nor the sibilants The pronunciation is lisping, in consequence of the custom of the Va-herero of having their upper front teeth partly filed off, and four lower teeth knocked out. It is perhaps due to this that the O Tyi-herero has two sounds similar to those of the hard and soft th and dh in English (written s, z).*

There are languages that throw away certain letters which to us would seem almost indispensable, and there are others in which even the normal distinctions between guttural, dental, and labial contact are not yet clearly perceived. We are so accustomed to look upon pa and ma as the most natural articulations, that we can hardly imagine a language without them. We have been told over and over again that the names for father and mother in all languages are derived from the first cry of recognition which an infant can articulate, and that it could at that early age articulate none but those formed by the mere opening or closing of the lips. It is a fact, nevertheless, that the Mohawks, of whom I knew an interesting specimen at Oxford, never, either as infants or as grown-up people, articulate with their lips. They have no p, b, m, f, v, w-no labials of any kind; and although their own Sir G. Grey's Library, i. 167.