1861.] 357 [Combinations. 



sibilation commenced on English ground, thus French nature pro- 

 nounced with hard t, in England, first became nd-fi/ur, and finally 

 nd tshilr, and soldier was first changed into sol</j/er and finally into 

 solJzher. 



§ 32. The process of assibilation was not entirely foreign to the 

 Anglo-Saxon before the Norman conquest. Either immediately be- 

 fore, or very soon after this event, we find the Saxon words ceaf, 

 ceafk, ceut, cenrJ, ceosan, cieni, ri/st, cji/rice, c2/n, cicen, cidan, cild 

 (it n)ust be noticed that the Anglo-Saxon c was pronounced like Ic) 

 assibilated into chuff, chalk, chat, churl, choosf, churn, chest, church, 

 chinn, chuken, chide, child. This assibilation took place in the usual 

 manner. E in the diphthongs ea and eo was hardened into y after 

 the guttural c or k. y first weakened k into t, and finally became 

 itself assibilated into sh (of this we have an instance in the forms 

 feccan and fef inn to fetch) ; hence the sound tsh in chaff, &c. This 

 sibilation of k before ea and eo afterwards extended to those cases 

 where it was followed by y and i, and subsequently also reduced the 

 French ch==zsh to the same standard as in chafe, chain, chamber, 

 chance, change, eliarm, chaste, chief choice, &c. 



[Rem. — It is a mooted point among the grammarians whether the 

 French ch originally sounded tsh and afterwards dropped the t, or 

 whether it sounded sh from the very first. In case it sounded like 

 tsh at first, and dropped the t afterwards, we need not assume that 

 the Anglo-Saxon ch extended its pronunciation to the French words, 

 but, on the contrary, there would be reason to suppose that the French 

 ch imprinted its pronunciation on the Anglo-Saxon c. This, indeed, 

 is h3ld by Dr Ripp (Physiologie d Sprache, vol. ii, pige 90), while 

 Prof Dlez asserts (Grammatik d. Romanischen Sprachen, vol. i, first 

 edition, page 19()), that the French ch sounded like sh from the very 

 first. 1 side with this view of Prof Diez (although he seems to have 

 given it up in the second edition of his work) for this reason, that 

 the assibilation of c before a is entirely limited to the French, and 

 in the other Romance languages does not occur except in a few 

 foreign words. Also, it may be seen very readily how c was assibi- 

 lated before e and i, even when they were not followed by other vowels, 

 because, after the assibilation had once started in those cases where 

 they were followed by other vowels, it naturally extended to all cases 

 whatsoever, where c was followed by e and i ; but it did not extend 

 to c when followed by a, o, u. We might assume that y was inserted 

 before a, as in the Icelandic and Danish languages, but this arbi- 

 trary insertion of y into stems is peculiar to these languiiges, and is 



VOL. VIII. — Iw 



