DEPARTMENT OF LETTERS. 



'ON SEVERAL POINTS IN THE PRONUNCIATION 

 OF LATIN AND GREEK. 



BY S. S. HALDEMAN, 



Professor of Comparative Philology iu the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 

 Corresponding Member of the Academy. 



Modern facilities for travel have had the effect of bringing 

 the people of different countries together to such an extent 

 that an opinion has been developed in favor of pronouncing 

 names and quotations in the native mode, in some cases even 

 when thej contain sounds which do not occur in English, and 

 the study of philology is gradually showing that language is 

 amenable to the laws of speech, and not to the conventicnali- 

 •ties of spelling. 



Loose views about "English analogies" have resulted in 

 •much false science. By a true English "analogy," that is, by 

 a law of English speech, pure or hard gay cannot occur before 

 "soft" dzhee or jay; in genuine English speech, therefore, 

 there can be no lug-jer for lugger, no beg-jar for beggar^ nor 

 words like exag-jerate and sug-jest. When we introduce a for- 

 eign word which corresponds with an English syllable, it is 

 consistent with analogy to preserve the sound, as the syllable 

 hey in musquito and quinine (kee-neen — which is by some sup- 

 posed to have the initial syllable of quiet), lee in Liebig and rin 

 in rinderpest. A Latin analogy appears in the initial of wine, 

 wind, wit, worm, and a French one in veal, vile, victual, vagrant, 

 and even in vacuum, whose initial we pronounce with vee and 



