OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 191 



little or no change has taken place in the pronunciation of 

 the Greek letters. This result was arrived at by comparing 

 Professor Sophocles's account of the Modern Greek pronun- 

 ciation, and especially the chapter in which he undertakes to 

 spell English words with Greek letters. 



In applying the Greek letters to the Coptic language, the 

 Copts first exhausted the Greek alphabet; and for the remain- 

 ing articulate sounds, that could not be expressed in Greek, 

 were obliged to invent new characters. Accordingly, we ob- 

 serve : — 



1. That, the sound of the English d not existing in the 

 Greek language, the Copts were obliged to invent a new 

 character to represent this sound. 



2. That, though the Copts made use of the Greek 0, they 

 were not satisfied with it ; but invented a new character for 

 the full Roman and English/. 



3. That the Copts invented a new character for the sound 

 of the English h. 



4. That the Copts rejected the Greek 7, and invented a 

 new character, that seems to correspond to our English^g", 

 or gh. 



5. That the Copts invented new characters for tsh, or the 

 Italian c ; for dsh, or g soft ; and for the English sh ; none of 

 these three sounds existing in Greek. 



Dr. Pickering regarded several of the Greek sounds of let- 

 ters as deviations from normal original sounds, but deviations 

 which have been transmitted from a very ancient period. He 

 had, however, obtained evidence that the normal sound origi- 

 nally belonging to the character B was much as in the 

 Greek, — was, in fact, easy respiration, or the English v. 



When writing first began to be practised, there seem to 

 have been no superfluous letters; and the Greek language 

 in the course of ages has unquestionably experienced some 

 losses. It may be regarded as certain that the three vowel- 

 characters, ?7, t, V, were not originally sounded alike. The 

 Greeks have also lost the digamma, or w. Aristophanes 



