Imatges de pàgina
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tune, however, of this unlucky sign to have been woefully misinterpreted. We all know what it was for a long time supposed to represent; viz.: the pronoun his. We know, too, the chief texts, ("Christ his sake" and others,) upon which this belief rested. The rectification of this error took place by degrees. The objection that lay closest at hand was, of course, the fact that it was only for the masculine gender of the singular number that this explanation was available. We do not, it was urged, say "The Queen, her Majesty" nor yet "the children, their bread." This, however, was soon condemned as insufficient: inasmuch as, though nothing like so common as his, both their and her are used in the corresponding constructions. A better objection, however, was found in the word hi-s itself; because, here, thes could not possibly be made (so to say) out of itself. The most conclusive argument, however, was, at the same time, the shortest, and this was the fact of the sin "father's" being simply the s in the Latin "patris," the Greek πατερός, the s, indeed, of all the Indo-European languages.

This is as much as need be said about the two most prominent conventionalities which followed the Norman Conquest. The rest may be considered more briefly : indeed they need only be indicated. (a) The doubling of the vowel, as in feet, to show that its sound is long, is one which is so natural that we only wonder at its not having become practical and prominent at an earlier period; i.e., in the Latin stage of the alphabet. It is foreshadowed by the Greek Omega 2, w, which is, really, a modified, lengthened, and enlarged Omicron, 0, 0. The whole doctrine of the Greek Isochronism, or Equality of Time, pointed in the same direction. The statement that two short syllables, equalled one long one, and vice versa, had only to be extended to the vowel. vowel, and the doubling of the vowel as a sign of longness followed. The Anglo-Saxon, though imperfect and inconsistent, promoted this result.

(b) The combination of different vowels in the same syllable is due to other, and less simple causes. The Anglo-Saxon combinations ea and eo (though here the smaller vowel preceded the broader one, and was often semi-vocalic) had the effect, to say the least, of accustoming the eye to the presence of two vowels in the same syllable: and be it remarked that, in English, the sequence is that of the Anglo-Saxon stage; i.e., e comes before a. I, however, is rarely found in the same place and this is because it was, when followed by a vowel, diphthongal; or, in the eyes of those who failed to recognise its diphthongal character, long; and, as such, less likely to suggest coalescence. In Dutch the e follows the broader vowel; and here is, so far as mute letters are tolerable, the mute e in its right place; or would be if it had a place at all.

(c) Combinations like oa as in coal are probably due to another cause, and have no connection with the expression of longness. They seem to be the result of the original indistinctness (already noticed) between the sounds of a and o.

(d) The same applies to oo =ā, an indistinctness which has also already been indicated.

(e) I after a, (as in snail,) in words of English origin, almost always indicates an original g (snægel), which is first changed into y, and then, being eliminated, brings the two vowels in juxta-position.

There is enough in these examples to show that in the actual contact of two vowels in the same syllable, much as it may offend against one of the primary laws of Phoneticism, there is little non-natural or arbitrary. But is this all? No. We have written as if these anomalous forms of spelling were only detrimental so far as they were anomalies. But this is not the fact. They are inconsistent as well; for the oo in foot is short and that either the second vowel as the sign of longness, or the second consonant (as in spotted) as a sign of shortness is superfluous, has already been stated. Hence we have, in addition to an inordinate amount of anomalies, a notable amount of inconsistencies and redundancies as well.

SECTION XLIV.

DIALECTS OF THE ANGLO-SAXON AND OLD ENGLISH.

These redundancies and inconsistencies might have been prevented by a certain amount of rigidity or uniformity in the practice of our spelling. But no such conditions existed. It is still a matter of uncertaintyas to the particular dialect which the orthoepy and orthography of the present literary English represent. It was not that of the literary Anglo-Saxon; not that of the dialect which prevailed anterior to the Norman Conquest. Nor is it unnatural that such should be the case. The present High German is not that of the parts which most especially constituted the Germania of Tacitus. The Castilian of Spain is not that of the great mass of the Spanish peninsula. The Italian is that of Florence rather than of Rome; the French that of Northern France; anything, indeed, but that of the district wherein the first language of Gaul was both spoken and written; indeed, so far as the place of its first successful cultivation is concerned, the French originated in England rather than in France. Just, then, as it would be a mistake to suppose that the present Italian was a continuation of some Sicilian or South Italian form of speech; the Castilian one of the Catalonian or Valencian; the German one of that of Westphalia or the parts about Cologne, and the French that of Provence; so it would be an error to suppose that, between the language of Alfred and the language of Dryden, there was any literary continuity. In short, in England, as elsewhere, the points which coincided with the cultivation of the earlier and the later English literatures shifted.

Now the cultivated dialect of the Anglo-Saxon period was the West Saxon, or the Saxon of Wessex; the English of the counties of Dorset, Wilts, Berks, and Hants. The nearest approach to a concurrent literary language was in Northumberland. We may call this form of speech, if we choose, Angle rather than Saxon, though the term is anything but unexceptionable. Both, however, were English. Then there was the great intervening tract formed by the Midland and Eastern counties, which we may call Mercia and East Anglia. Of the Mercian, however, and the East Anglian dialects the cultivation was, practically, nil. The little we know about them tells us that they differed from one another less than the West Saxon and Northumbrian, and that they differed in small and negative, rather than in great and positive, characters.

Now as an origin of the present literary English, the claim on the part of Northumberland is no better than that of Wessex. Nor is there one for East Anglia as opposed to Mercia. Individually I hold, with the generality of investigators, that the Mercian is the dialect which the present written language most especially represents: and to Mercia I assign London. I prefer this to fixing upon any particular county as the district from which we are specially called to deduce it. Mercia gives us the counties wherein we find the smallest amount of provincialism, and, also, those to which the two Universities belong.

Be this as it may, the history of our literature gives the West Saxon dialects a predominance until the middle of the fourteenth century. Over and above the writers of the proper Anglo-Saxon period we have for Wessex, Layamon, and the author of the Ancren Riwle, Nicholas of Guildford, the author of the Ayenbite of Inwit (a native of Kent, but a writer whose language is nearly as Devonian as that of Devonshire itself,) Robert of Gloucester, William of Shoreham, Langland, the author of Piers Plowman's Vision, Trevisa, (both these somewhat later than their predecessors) and others, either anonymous or of less importance. Against these there is little to be set, except the conclusion of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is assigned to the parts about Peterboro'; the Ormulum, and Havelok the Dane, which are assigned to the Danish parts of England; Robert Manning, or Robert of Bourne, a Lincolnshire man; and Rolle, or the Hermit of Hampole, the author of The Prick of Conscience, a Yorkshire man.

Chaucer and Gower and Mandeville, in the latter part of Edward III.'s reign were Londoners. Wycliffe's language was probably that of the university of Oxford, rather than of his birthplace, Yorkshire. By the beginning of the fifteenth century there is a fair proportion of writers from the more central districts-London being included herein. Great changes now take place. The most Northern dialects of Northumberland, which, philologically, extended to the Forth, are now the dialects of a literature of no ordinary merit; for just while the English is in a degenerate and chaotic state, the Scotch is advancing. But we must not call it Scotch, not even Lowland Scotch. We must call it what the speakers themselves called it, English. They were constrained, perhaps unwillingly, to do this; but they had no choice in the matter. It had to be distinguished from the Gaelic of the Highlands; even at the cost of some national distaste to the name. The English, however, of Northern England is not the English of our classical writers.

In other respects, too, the first three quarters of the fifteenth century form a notable epoch. The antagonism between the English and the Norman French has ended in the predominance of the former. The age, too, is an age of manuscripts. Printing is about to begin; but just in proportion as the vocation of the copyist approaches its end, the mass of materials has accumulated; for the manuscript stage of our literature and orthography is now in its ninth century; and there is more than ever there was before to be transcribed. Neither are authorship and transcription limited to any particular districts. We have now manuscripts from the borders of Wales. We have now, in Capgrave and Lydgate, writers from East Anglia; and both these, Shropshire and Norfolk, are quarters to which, hitherto, but little has been assigned. There is, indeed, a diffusion of the practice of both composing and copying to an extent hitherto unknown: of uniformity, or any directing authority, very little. It was no part of the business, then, of the transcriber of a work in a dialect different from his own to adhere to the very words and letters of his author. Translation from one local form to another is too strong a word. But, though the transcriber did not translate, he accommodated the minor details of spelling and grammar from one part of England to that of another-the one to which he himself belonged. That this was done largely we know from ample evidence. How much confusion it created we can more easily imagine than calculate.

SECTION XLV.

EXTENSION OF THE PHONETIC PRINCIPLE AND SUBJECTS ALLIED TO PHONETIC SPELLING, AS SPECIALLY APPLIED TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

The Phonetic Spelling, so far as it has hitherto been discussed, is that of the English language. The term, however, has a wide import; and, there are certain varieties in the application of the phonetic principle which are sufficiently akin to the subject of the present treatise to call for a slight notice.

The first of these is Metagraphy, (6) or Transliteration. This 6. This is a derivative from μετα, in its sense suggestive of action and reaction, or interchangeableness, and γράφω = I write. I can safely recommend the word, inasmuch it is not one of my own construction; but one suggested nearly forty years ago by one of the best scholars in Cambridge. It is not held that, except so far it is somewhat shorter, Metagraphy is a better word than Transliteration : and it is admitted that Transliterate is a much better word than Metagraphize. On the other hand, however, Metagraphic is a better word than Transliterational. There is room for, and need of, both.

means the substitution, sign for sign, of some letter in an alphabet comparatively known (say the English, or any one of Western Europe) for one in an alphabet comparatively strange; as for instance the Sanskrit, or the Hebrew; indeed, any Oriental alphabet whatever. If the latter be, itself, phonetic, the two principles coincide. This, however, is merely a happy accident. If the English alphabet were transliterated into the Greek it would be no more phonetic than it is at present. The Greek reader would get a series of letters somewhat less unfamiliar to him than the English are at present. The faulty spelling, however, would still remain. As between a Greek and an Englishman lishman this would be but small boon. Where the orthography, however, is of a moderate badness, and where the difference of the letters is considerable, the boon is a great one: and, in all cases, there is some advantage.

a

We have now only to ask whether a letter which will stand for a sound in one language, can stand for the same sound in another; and, if the answer be given in the affirmative, the question of a Universal Alphabet dawns upon us. What the answer is, and what it may lead to, is another question. The three questions have been suggested for the sake of showing how they are connected, and how they differ; and further than this we are not called to go.

Out of a mixture of Metagraphy and Phonetic Spelling we get the most difficult of the problems connected with our subject; namely, the transliteration of dead languages so far as their pronunciation is known, combined with the attempt to represent the true sounds of the letters and combinations of which the import is doubtful. In the Latin, where the letters are the same as our own, this is merely phonetic spelling. In the Greek it is phonetic spelling with metagraphy superadded. Important as these questions are, they need not, in a treatise like the present, detain us beyond the mere indication of their place in a full view of the general system of Orthographical Reform.

For a different reason I say nothing about the extension of Longhand Phonography to Shorthand. I know so little of it that I am constrained to take its merits upon trust. Nor is this the place to publish the unanimous verdict that I have heard in favor of the extension. It is part, however, of the system, and those who know it best put the highest value upon it.

Lastly comes the notice of what, when it was done for the first time, was the greatest benefit ever conferred on mankind; namely, that analysis of sentences into words, and of words into their articulate elements, without which the sign that speaks to the eye is impossible. Here there is nothing but Progress to report. Not a year goes by without our hearing of some language, barbarous as it may be, being reduced to writing, generally by the missionary, but sometimes, from the mere love of his subject, by the philologue. To bring the results of all this into harmony, is the duty and pleasure of the systematic student. The English and the Russian languages

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