Imatges de pàgina
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SECTION XV.

THE PHONETIC AS OPPOSED TO THE ETYMOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE.

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There is another point upon which a remark may now be made. The alphabet more especially under notice, that employed in the Phonetic Journal by Mr Pitman is, in every sense of the word, Phonetic. As such it stands in contrast with the present incomplete alphabet with its corresponding faulty orthography. It is phonetic from first to last. It limits letters to the representation of sounds; to this and nothing else. Secondary objects, such as the suggestion of the etymological history of a word, as the differentiation of the meanings of words sounded alike, (with, however, a few exceptions, as in, no = "in, no," and inn, know = ín, nó) and as the fixation of the language, it utterly ignores. It not only ignores all this, but it goes to the length of doing away with all that has already been attempted in any of these directions, or with any of these intentions. To use a favorite expression of Sir William Hamilton's, it is "Thorough-going." As compared, then with the existing orthography it is phonetic in the highest degree, and the ordinary system is its opposite. Nevertheless, it does not follow that the ordinary system, notwithstanding this opposition, is wholly wanting in phonetic elements. It has them to a great extent; indeed no alphabet, and no orthography can exist without a phonetic element as its basis. It is only when they are so far warped by other influences as to become something different from that for which they were originally intended, that the opposition suggested by the word in its present sense becomes real. The Phonetic Principle is one thing: a Phonetic System of Spelling, consisting of an alphabet and its corresponding orthography, is another: and, in the forthcoming pages, the former-the Phonetic Principle-will mean the limitation of spelling to the representation of sounds only, and the exclusion of all secondary objects: generally, however, with special reference to the principle to which it is the most opposed the Etymological or Historical Principle.

SECTION XVI.

ALPHABETS UNDOUBTEDLY DERIVED FROM THE PHENICIAN.

(a) THE EASTERN OR ASIATIC GROUP.

1. The Phœnician Alphabet itself is known only through coins and inscriptions; the great part of which are Punic rather than Phœnician, in the geographical sense of the word. Punic was another name for Phænician, and Carthage was a Phœnician colony. Africa and Spain are the countries where Punic remains most abound. A specimen of the language of Carthage occurs in a play of the Latin comic writer, Plautus; where one of the characters, Pænulus, or the

so far

Little Carthaginian, speaks the language of the country. The writing, however, is Latin. The Phoenician alphabet, then, as we know it, is known only in respect to its capital letters.

language and Samaritan

2. The Samaritan alphabet, also, is written in capitals only. This is the alphabet of the famous copy of the Pentateuch; which is Hebrew in langua Chronicle is, like the Pentateuch, in respect to its letters, Samarin spelling. The so-called Samaritan itan; though Arabic in language. This means that the Samaritan has obtained its original Lapidary character for more than a thousand years at least. It gives us the nearest approach to the original primitive alphabet of any alphabet

at present in use.

3. The Hebrew of the Old Testament, although the alphabet of which the most is known, is, by no means, in respect to the shape of the letters, a good representative of the original. Yet it consists of capitals only. They are not, however, of the sort required for inscriptions. They are meant for writing. Nevertheless, they are wholly deficient in the cursive character. This is, doubtless, because they were not meant to be written as ordinary letters; but as Holy Scriptures. There is a boldness in their lines, and a squareness in their outline which has given them the name of the Quadrate Character. Written, or almost drawn, with a pious patience and observant care, they undergo but little change so long as they remain the letters of the holy text. As the Chaldee of the later writers, and a secular literature, they lose their massive regularity, and become more or less cursive. Still, in printing, there is but one sort of letter-the Capital.

Such is the Hebrew alphabet when written with the original twenty-two letters and no more. representation of the vowel sounds has been already stated. This How inadequate this was to the evil, however, is remedied in what is called the Masoretic text of the Old Testament. Here we have a full representation of the vowels: and, in the strict sense of the term, every sign thus superadded is a new letter. The Masoretic signs, however, of the vowels are not letters in the ordinary acceptation of the term. They are marks consisting of either short lines (-), or dots (::) written over or under the consonants with which they combine; and as such are adjuncts or appendages, rather than true letters. Another use of the dot was to add it to certain consonants wherein two closely allied sounds had only one sign. These were true diacritical marks. The vowel-signs were something more. In the orthography of the class of languages now before us both play an important part. The Hebrew, with its direct derivatives, is the alphabet of Judaism.

4. The Syriac is, pre-eminently, the alphabet of Christianity-early Eastern Christianity. With the same framework of twenty-two consonants it has the same system of superadded vowels. These, however, are only three in number, and are borrowed from the Greek. There is no distinction between the small letters and the capitals in

writing; all the letters being small. In inscriptions, however, they are all capital, and that of an archaic character, that is, they approach the Phœnician. From the Syriac of the Nestorian missionaries we get the Uighur, or alphabet of the Turks of Central Asia; before their conversion to Christianity: and from this the Mongol, and from the Mongol the Mantshu. These two represent the languages of Buddhism, and are the most outlying, eccentric, or metamorphic of all the members of the class. All the letters are small; the lines run neither from right nor left, to from left to right, but from the top of the page to the bottom.

In the South-East where existed the pagan civilisation of the fire-worshippers of the Euphrates, the Tigris and the Syrian Desert, the alphabet, best represented by the inscriptions of Palmyra, gave origin to that of the Persians anterior to their conversion to Mahometanism. This is, at the present time, the alphabet of the Parsees. 5. In the Arabic, the alphabet of the Koran, the present Persian, Turkish, Hindostani, and Malay languages are written; all having, previous to the introduction of Mahometanism, been written in proper alphabets of their own. The Arabic, a growth out of an early form of the Syriac, is formed wholly for writing; the lapidary or inscription character being at a minimum. All the letters are small rather than capital, and as much as possible they are made to run into one another. Hence, most of them have three forms; one for the beginning, one for the middle, and one for the end of a word. The vowels, when written at all, are inserted, or rather superadded, on the Syriac principle. The fundamental consonants are few in number, indeed only the original twenty-two of the Hebrew alphabet. Hence, there is a necessity for diacritical dots. 6. The Abyssinian alphabet stands alone in its class. It is the alphabet of a so-called Christian country. It is written from left to right. Finally, it is a syllabarium rather than a series of simple signs for simple sounds.

SECTION XVII.

ALPHABETS UNDOUBTEDLY DERIVED FROM THE PHENICIAN.

(6) THE WESTERN OR EUROPEAN GROUP. THE GREEK AND ITS

DERIVATIVES.

Whatever may been the number of elementary sounds in the Phœnician language, it was greater than that of the letters. The alphabet, then, was inadequate to the demands of the language for which it was constructed. Much more would it be so for a strange one. Fortunately, when extended to Greece, it fell into the hands of such a nation as the Greeks, for they had pre-eminently the capacity of improving, developing, and adorning whatever they touched. With the Phœnician they agreed :a. In keeping the order of the letters. b. In keeping their names.

Thus far, then, the Greeks were conservative: and no harm was done by their conservatism. Much good, on the other hand, was done by their innovations. The results of these were that, when the Greek alphabet became a model for others, it had the following form, and was applied to the language on the following principles : 1. Its letters in writing ran from the left to right. The Hebrew writing was from right to left.

2. Its capital letters were clearly distinguished from the small ones, and vice versa. In some cases there was a mere rounding or softening down of an angle: so that a letter, previously fitted for inscriptions, became adapted for cursive writing. In others, the change amounted to the formation of a new letter.

3. Signs which were not wanted had disappeared, so that three letters which belonged to Hebrew, and which were at first adopted by the Greeks, no longer found a place in their alphabet. These were

(a) The Hebrew vau, or vaf, with the power of v or w. It was the sixth letter in both the Hebrew and the Greek alphabets, and, in the latter, when it ceased to be used as a letter, it was retained as a numeral=6. It was called the Digamma, being, in form, like two gammas, one on the top of the other. As the Romans retained it, it still keeps its place in the alphabets of Latin origin, with a change of power and form; in other words, it is the Digamma which is the origin of our own letter f, its name ef being from the original vav.

(b) The Hebrew kof, koph, quof, or quoph. This, also, from having been retained by the Romans, has become the English q.

(c) The history of the letter known as the Doric san is more complex. Word for word, it seems to be the Hebrew sin, which is the name of the ordinary s, its place being between rand t. The Greek letter, however, which has this place and power is not called san but sigma, which seems to be, word for word, the Hebrew samech. Samech, however, is the name of another letter, one which has its place between n (nun) and o (ayn), and which, in Greek, so far as its place is concerned, is represented by xi (Ξ ξ). This samech, which in the Greek alphabet is thus transformed, seems, in the Latin to have been, at first, either rejected or allowed to become obsolete-afterwards, however, to have been admitted; its place, however, was at the end of the alphabet, where it now does duty such sound as the German ch, at any rate a sound of the k, g, h series. The name of this letter the Greek converted into hēta; its shape they put into the form of the present H, but its sound, or power, they absolutely transformed. The Greek (Η η) is a vowel; the ee in feet, or the long sound of the Epsilon (EE) ore in fen. On this change from a consonantal or semi-consonantal, to an undoubtedly vocalic sound, more will be said hereafter; inasmuch as heth was not the only letter thus transmuted.

as x.

4. A fourth letter underwent a more important change than any of the preceding. In the Hebrew alphabet it stood eighth. If we count the Digamma, it stands eighth in the Greek as well. Eighth, also, it is in the Latin, in the English, and, probably, in all alphabets of Latin origin. Its Hebrew name is heth, its English aitch, the two being, as word and word, the same. Now, whatever may have been the exact sound of this Hebrew heth, it is universally admitted to have been one akin to that of the modern h, that is, a breathing, an aspiration, or the like; or, if not this exactly, some

a

5. But there is a further innovation connected with this same heth. As a letter under the name of hēta it did, for the Greeks, the work of a vowel. What, however, did it do in its capacity of an aspiration or breathing, or as the origin of the Latin h? It became mark. Perhaps we may call it a diacritical mark. At any rate it became an appendage to a letter rather than the body of the letter itself. As an appendage, its proper place was before the vowels: and the vowel upsilon (ru) was always preceded by it. Moreover, with a slight extension of its powers, it became a regular concomitant of consonant r, just as if, in English, we never wrote ra or re, etc.. but always rha or rhe. There can be but little doubt that, here, it denotes a vibration of the tongue rather than a simple breathing. Now, with the power of an h, this sign (') was, to a great extent, a letter also. It was, doubtless, very abnormal and exceptional in its form. Nevertheless, there is nothing in the conception of either a letter or an alphabet which prevents any two signs being of different sizes: though, at the same time, every alphabet requires some approach to symmetry. Still, (') never passed for a letter in Greece; because, as the letters were numerals also, a disturbance in the order would have been the result.

That it was amply sufficient for the purpose it was meant for is evident. Practically, a vowel is either preceded by a breathing or it is not; so that when once we have a sign for the presence of one we have no need of a second in order to denote its absence. Upon this principle, the (') itself might have been dispensed with; for a mark attached to the vowel of the non-aspirated division would have made it unnecessary.

6. The Greeks, however, thought otherwise, the result being that a second mark of the same kind was adopted. This was the same comma-shaped prefix with its tail turned. Hagios was written ἁγιος ; and ago appeared as ἀγω. Unwilling as we may be to impute error to the Greek orthographists, we can scarcely commend this superfluity of signs indicative of h and no h.

7. The Greeks saw, or seem to have seen, the true nature of the sounds of the ph in Philip, the th in thick, and the ch (kh) in the German auch, noch, etc. We call them Aspirates, and as an aspirate is a breathing, and as a breathing is represented by h, and as the three sounds are, respectively, connected with p, t, and k, we see nothing wrong in writing them as if they were p+h, t+h, and k+h: an egregious blunder which we may lay to the charge of the

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