Tafel.] 320 [October. 



when they are formed by breathing they may either be pronounced 

 with mute or sonorous breath. 



Such of the fluid consonants as are breathed and at the same time 

 rendered sonorous, beau much resemblance to the semi-vowels, but 

 they lack some of their most important attributes; for they are still 

 linked to the consonants, composing their respective classes, and are 

 subject to changes by transplantation into other languages; moreover 

 their range is limited, and they do not occur in all languages, and, 

 where they do occur, they cover but a small ground, compared with 

 that which is filled by the semi-vowels ; it seems as if they were the 

 highest points reached by the consonants in their desire of emulating 

 the semi-vowels and vowels. 



Besides these changes of the fluid consonants which are obtained 

 by modifications of the breath, there are others which are caused by 

 shifting the places of articulation ; of these I shall speak hereafter. 



The relations existing between the hard, soft, and fluid conso- 

 nants are the same as between the points of a circle ; for Comparative 

 Philology shows that in the progress of time the fluid consonant is 

 made soft, the soft hard, and the hard fluid, thus establishing the 

 fact that the hard consonant is equidistant from the soft and the 

 fluid, e. g. in the Anglo-Saxon portion of the English tongue, which 

 represents an early stage of the German language, we find the words 

 hath, word, and ivater, which in the modern German are spelled 

 Bad, Wort, and Wasser, &c. A similar change happens to the 

 vowels in the two languages, with this diff"erence, however, that it is 

 the German language which usually holds fast to the original vowels, 

 while it is the English that varies them. Thus it happens that some- 

 times where in German we find a in the English language we find 

 e, o, I, and u, viz.. Germ. Rast, Engl, rest; Germ, halten, Engl, to 

 lioJd ; Germ, flackern, Engl, to flicker ; Germ, Jiattern, Engl, to 

 flutter. On comparing the changes of the vowels with those of the 

 consonants, we find that the latter are more limited in their changes 

 than the former; for the consonants can only move from right to 

 left, /. e. the fluid consonant (th) can only be changed into the soft 

 consonant (d), but not into the hard (t), while the vowels can move 

 both to the right and to the left. Comparative philology, moreover, 

 proves that the three circles which are formed by the labial, dental, 

 and guttural consonants are perfectly independent of each other and 

 only rarely interchange, so that, as a general thing, a labial does not 

 become a dental, nor a dental a guttural, although it sometimes 

 happens that through the agency of the vowel-consonant y a guttural 



