233 



ALPHABET. 



ALPHABET. 



234 



actually called Phenician. Now, there is no doubt that the inscrip- 

 tions from which we have taken the Greek characters of our plate are 

 older, at least, than either the Phenician inscriptions given in Boeckh, 

 or the coins which furnished Mionnet with his characters. Hence, we 

 may naturally expect to find at times in the oldest Greek characters 

 iraces of a higher antiquity and purer forms than in those which pass 

 under the more venerable names of Hebrew, Phenician, and Sama- 

 ritan. The mere wave then, we contend, was probably the original 

 form of the mem : the initial or concluding stroke of the wave be- 

 coming, by a kind of flourish, longer than the others, leads to the 

 so-called Etruscan and Greek forms in columns 6, 9, 14, 15, 16, 18. 

 This long descending stroke takes a bend in the Samaritan and Hebrew 

 characters towards the left, as was not unnatural in a language where 

 the words run in that direction. By a comparison of the yimel, nun, 

 ay in, and ft, and perhaps caph, with the corresponding letters in the 

 other alphabets, the reader will perhaps be induced to ascribe the 

 bottom strokes, which in these letters also run to the left, to the same 

 accidental origin. This supposition is strongly confirmed by the fact, 

 that the caph, nun, pe, and teadi, when they are the final letters of a 

 word, omit this appendage, and in its place have the perpendicular 

 stroke merely continued in the same direction downwards, a little 

 beyond its usual length. Our last example shall be from ayin, which 

 is at once the name of a letter and the word which signifies an eye. 

 The eye happens moreover to be a hieroglyphic character of the 

 Egyptians, and therefore we cannot be surprised to find it among the 

 Hebrew symbols. Nay, if we may believe Champollion, the picture 

 of on eye in the Egyptian hieroglyphics was actually used at times for 

 an o, exactly as ayin by the Hebrews. Now, though an eye might be 

 represented at first with tolerable precision, it would, in the inevitable 

 course of degradation, soon become a mere oval, or rather circle (for 

 the eyes of animAl are generally circular), with a small dot in the 

 centre to mark the pupil. Such a character is actually found in our 

 Greek series of alphabets, Plate II., Column 21, &c. The form after- 

 wards lost its inserted point, and at times was corrupted into a lozenge 

 or even a triangle. In Dr. Young's successive plates of parallel pas- 

 sages from Egyptian MSS. (' Encycl. Brit. Supp.' PI. 78. N.) the reader 

 may see an emblem, consisting, like our own, of a circle with a point 

 in it, gradually wearing down in MSS. less and less carefully written, 

 until it becomes at first a mere circle, and then something more like a 

 triangle. After what has been said, we need hardly repeat that the 

 Hebrew form appears again in a very corrupted state. A tail has been 

 added, upon the principle explained above, and the careless writer (as 

 in the Greek letter, Plate II., Column 20) lias failed to make his circle 

 meet at the top, an accident which may be also traced in the Hebrew 

 //'/<. Indeed, the letters ayin and thcth may be compared in nearly 

 all their forma. Those who examine the changes of letters, will not 

 be surprised, that what was at first an accident, became at last a fixed 

 rule in the formation. We shall soon see other instances of this fact. 



But before we proceed to an examination of the alphabets given in 

 our plates, it may be useful to consider the distribution of articulate 

 sounds among the vowels, liquids, and consonants. Attempts have 

 been made by some writers to determine the number of distinct sounds 

 which the human voice is capable of producing. A little consideration 

 would have shown them that they were attempting to limit that which 

 was essentially infinite. The vowel sounds all run into one another in 

 a continuous gradation. The same is true of those modifications of 

 sound which we call consonants, and likewise of the liquids. At the 

 game time it is of course necessary that a limited number of symbols 

 shoidd be employed. Of these, some nations will employ more, some 

 less, but few have ever made use of so many as thirty, unless indeed we 

 include those alphabets which consist of syllabic symbols, and then, of 

 course, the consonantal syllables will be multiplied in the proportion of 

 the simple vowels. The vowel sounds are usually placed in the order 

 a, e, i, o, u, such being their succession in the various alphabets of 

 Kun.pe and Western Asia; but if we wish to place them in that order 

 which marks their relation to one another, we should write i, e, a, o, a, 

 or in the opi>o.-*it order, u, n, a, e, i. Mr. Willis, in two papers in the 

 ' Oimliridge Philosophical Transactions,' vol. i., for Nov. 24, 1828, and 

 March 16, 1829, has shown by experiment, that the different vowel 

 sounds may be produced artificially, by throwing a current of air upon 

 a reed in a pipe, and that, as the pipe is lengthened or shortened, the 

 vowels are successively produced in the order above given. When a 

 door creaks, or a cat mews, we have experiments of the same nature, at 

 least ag regards the result, for in both these cases we may often detect 

 the due series of the vowels. Indeed, the word mew would be more 

 expressively written mieaou. In all these remarks we speak of the 

 vowels as possessing those sounds which are common on the Continent, 

 not those which are peculiar to ourselves ; namely, i like ee, e like ay, 

 a as in father, o as in done, u as oo in fool. 



The liquids again should be written in the order r, I, n, m, beginning 

 fnuii.the throat and advancing along the palate and teeth to the lips ; 

 or in the reverse order. For proof of this assertion, we need only ask 

 then .iid tin: four letters, and at the same time note the 



parts of the mouth employed for each. The other letters have often 

 been divided according to their organs : 1. The guttural and palatals, 

 g (as before a), k (with <, v ) ; <jh, ch (as in the Scotch Mi) ; h, with 

 perhaps ny, y, and wA. 2. Dentals, d, t ; dh (as tk in this), th (as in 

 ; i, ; zk (like rh in church}, ih ; j (as in English), j (as in 



French). 3. Labials, Z>, p ; v, f, and w. Perhaps the four last of those 

 we have included among the dentals partake in an equal degree of the 

 palatal character. In the above enumeration of the consonants, we 

 have placed first in their respective series those commonly called the 

 middle (or medial) letters g, d, b ; then the tenues, or more delicate 

 letters, t, t, p ; and then the aspirates ; but as each class presents two 

 forms of the aspirate readily distinguished by the ear, and as these 

 pairs of aspirates stand in the same relation to one another as the 

 medial and tenues, we have throughout placed what we may perhaps 

 call the middle aspirate before its delicate relative, namely, yli before 

 ch, or x ; dh before th ; v before /. Perhaps among the labials, v, f, w 

 may be considered as aspirates ; if so, they are still in their proper 

 order. So among the six sibilants given after the dentals, it appears to us, 

 that z, ch, and the English j, stand respectively to s, th, and the French 

 j, in the same relation of medials to tenues, and they are arranged 

 accordingly. The letters y and w are sui generis, and are indeed inti- 

 mately related to the vowels, having an affinity to the opposite 

 extremities of the vocal series, y, i, e, a, o, u, w ; and thus we may 

 consider the commencement of the series as connected with the throat, 

 and the termination with the lips. But although we have in the pre- 

 ceding enumeration appeared to limit the number of consonants, they 

 are in fact, like the vowels, unlimited. Although an Englishman, for 

 example, is satisfied with a single t, l,f, and r, he need not go far to 

 find other nations whose wants are more extensive. An Arab has two 

 modes of uttering a t, which to the ear of an ordinary European appear 

 the same, and thus having what to him are two distinct results, he 

 naturally employs two distinct symbols. A Pole, again, has two 

 varieties of the letter I. So, also, in the comparison of different 

 languages, it is well known that the sound of a German w approaches 

 to, but is not identical with, an English v ; and, in like manner, the 

 Greek $ and Roman /, though treated by moderns as identical in 

 power, are expressly distinguished by Quintilian. Nor can we stop at 

 two varieties of the consonant. These are strictly, as we have said, 

 infinite. In the production of a t, for example, the tongue may effect 

 its contact with the palate either at the line adjoining the teeth or at 

 a distance of an inch or more from this line. The two extremes give 

 us those varieties of the consonant which, as just observed, are clearly 

 distinguished by the ear of an Arab. But the contact might also be 

 effected at any one of the intermediate points, and thus we have an 

 imperceptible gradation from the palatal t to the dental t. Yet here 

 again, as with the vowels, though the modifications of the consonant 

 are without limit, it becomes a necessity to limit the symbols. We 

 have a precisely parallel case in the colours produced by the prism, 

 which pass by an imperceptible gradation from the one extreme to the 

 other, and yet the names assigned to the colours arc of necessity 

 but few. 



A tabular arrangement, in which the medial, tenues, and aspirated 

 letters are placed in vertical columns, while those belonging to the 

 same organ are collected in horizontal rows, affords a good view of 

 them. But the parallelepipedon furnishes an arrangement superior to 

 that of the square for the twelve related consonants given below ; and 

 for the sibilants, the angular points of the prism may be employed, 

 while the vowels and liquids require nothing more than a simple line. 



1. Consonants. 



-bh 



- ph 



2. Sibilants. 



In the preceding parallelepipedon, the three horizontal planes, begin- 

 ning from above, represent the guttural or palatal, the dental, and the 



