THE SOURCE OF THE MODERN ENGLISH (ROMAN) ALPHABET. 73 
letter is sometimes pronounced like s, sometimes like k. The 
third letter in the Anglo-Saxon alphabet was always pronounced k, 
the surd sound corresponding to the sonant g. The power of the 
fourth Hebrew letter is d, that of the fourth Greek letter the same, 
and that of the fourth French letter the same. The similarity of 
the Hebrew names of the first four letters with the Greek names 
should be noticed. With regard to the fifth Hebrew letter, ‘its 
power is precisely that of our h. How is it, then, that the Greeks 
have turned it intoe? Epsilon, it should be noticed, is properly 
pronounced as the French e, not as our e. The answer seems 
to lie in the strong indisposition of the Greeks to the sound h ; 
they had no letter representing this sound, they had only the 
“rough breathing;” and, further, the simple aspirate never 
occurs in Greek words except initially. Now, the Hebrew Hé #7 is 
found initially, medially, and terminally in Hebrew words, there- 
fore the Greeks could not employ the letter in the same way as 
the Hebrews. It will be noticed that the corresponding Greek 
letter is a vowel, and is pronounced precisely in the same part of 
the throat as the Hebrew 7; so that they have got as near to the 
‘Hebrew sound as the genius of their language would permit. 
The power of the sixth Hebrew letter is that of our v, and the old 
Greek Digamma (discarded before the Greek alphabet was settled) 
was pronounced either like our w or v. The corresponding 
French letter is f, a letter closely allied in power tov. The power 
of the seventh Hebrew letter, Zayin, is that of our z. The Greek 
Zeta has the same power, and the corresponding French letter, 
when sounded soft, closely resembles it. The eighth Hebrew 
letter, Cheth, is the guttural aspirate, perhaps the most difficult of 
the Hebrew sounds for Europeans to acquire. The corresponding 
Greek letter is a vowel, pronounced precisely as ouree. Here 
the Aryan throats of the Greeks rejected the foreign guttural 
aspirate, but in its place they put a sound which, as in the case 
of Epsilon, is pronounced in precisely the same part of the throat 
as the Hebrew. The Romans, who seemed to tolerate the 
sound h more than the Greeks, rejected the Greek vowel, and put 
the letter h, the simple aspirate, in its place. The ninth Hebrew 
