LANGUAGE. 



In pronouncing the letters of the first class, the 

 lips are chiefly concerned ; in the second, the 

 principal organ is the tongue, or the tongue and 

 the teeth (whence they are also called dentals); 

 and in the third, the back-parts of the tongue and 

 palate are employed. 



The branch of the science of language which 

 treats of the elementary sounds of speech is called 

 Phonetics (from Greek phone, sound) ; and, along 

 with the sounds themselves, it considers their 

 representation by visible signs or letters. How 

 imperfectly the elementary sounds of English are 

 represented by the letters that compose the 

 English alphabet, is apparent from the analysis 

 above given. That alphabet is imperfect both by 

 redundancy and defect, (i.) The same sounds 

 are represented by more than one letter ; as c, 

 &, and q ; c and s ; g and j. (2.) The same 

 letter represents more than one sound ; as c, 

 which is sometimes k, and sometimes s ; g, 

 which is sometimes the vocalised form of k, and 

 sometimes j \ n, which is sometimes n, and 

 sometimes ngj s, which is sometimes s, and 

 sometimes z ; and y, which is sometimes a con- 

 sonant (when initial), and sometimes a vowel, 

 sounded like the letter /. (3.) Single letters are 

 used to represent articulate compounds ; as g 

 and j, which are sounded dzh [the voiceless form 

 of j is represented by ch, as in chair] ; u, which 

 is sounded yooj and x, which is sounded ks, and 

 sometimes gz. (4.) The alphabet contains no 

 characters for six of our undoubted consonant 

 elements namely, ivh, th(\n), /A(en), sh, zh, 

 ng. (5.) Each vowel-letter represents many 

 sounds ; and the lack of seven characters to 

 denote the excess of our vowel-sounds over the 

 number of our vowel-letters, is supplied by about 

 sixty combinations of two or of three letters, so 

 that the original phonetic character of the alphabet 

 is almost entirely lost in the confusion of our 

 orthography. 



HOW LANGUAGE CHANGES. 



Language passes from generation to generation 

 by tradition ; the rising generation naturally learn 

 to speak as the adult generation speaks ; and 

 where there is any express teaching on the part 

 of the old, it is to the effect of guarding the young 

 against any deviation from existing use. But, 

 notwithstanding this, language does change, has 

 always changed, and will continue to change, like 

 everything human. In proof of this, we have only 

 to look back at English as it appears in any book 

 written two or three hundred years ago. It already 

 begins to have a strange aspect, and were it not 

 that almost everybody still reads the Bible and 

 Shakspeare, its strangeness would strike us still 

 more. Chaucer, who wrote two centuries earlier, 

 can be understood by ordinary English readers 

 only with pains and the help of a glossary. When 

 we go back five centuries further to King Alfred, 

 the language of the royal author is as much 

 foreign to us as Dutch. So much is this the case, 

 that it has got a different name, and is spoken of 

 as Anglo-Saxon. It is really, however, the same 

 uninterrupted stream of English, only traced 

 farther up towards its source. 



Languages change in various ways. One 

 change going on daily before our eyes consists 

 in the introduction of new words. As a rule, we 



have an instinctive and salutary hostility to new 

 words. They, in fact, defeat the very end of 

 speech ; to which it is essential that the meaning 

 of the signs used be commonly known. But when 

 we have a new thing or a new idea to speak about, 

 we must either describe it in a roundabout way 

 every time we mention it, or invent a special 

 name for it This is legitimate innovation. The 

 progress of art and science has, within the last 

 hundred years, enriched the English and other 

 European tongues with many thousands of new 

 technical terms. These terms have very various 

 origins. Many of them are formed from Greek 

 or Latin words ; others from the names of per- 

 sons ; sometimes, in importing a new product 

 or notion from a foreign country, we retain its 

 native name : e. g. palaeontology, megatherium, 

 Galvanism, Faradisation, Darwinism, Macadamise, 

 electro-magnetism, zincography, spectroscope, tele- 

 graph, telegram, Magenta, gutta-percha, trepang, 

 tomahawk. 



In the more generally current part of the 

 vocabulary, new coinages are naturally less fre- 

 quent ; and when a new word does appear, it has 

 to run the gantlet of criticism before admission. 

 The right of reliable, which has only recently 

 come into frequent use, to rank as a genuine 

 English word, is still disputed. The Americans 

 are less fastidious in this respect than we are, and 

 not a few words of transatlantic manufacture are 

 asserting a place in England, although still looked 

 askance at by purists : <?. g. to progress as a verb 

 irom. pro'gress ; to interview' homiriterview. 



The counterpart of this birth of new words is 

 the decay and death of old ones. Many words 

 current in England in the days of Shakspeare are 

 no longer heard, unless, it may be, in provincial 

 dialects : barn (child), eyne (eyes), wee (small), 

 caliver (hand-gun), chare (a turn of work), fardel 

 (burden), foison (plenty), geek (fool), stomach 

 (courage), welkin (sky), yare (ready). 



A more important change than the growth of 

 new words and the death of old, is the transfor- 

 mation that words undergo while still continuing in 

 use. This transformation is either in the meaning 

 or the form, or in both. I. Changes in meaning. 

 The Anglo-Saxon seelig, from which the modern 

 English silly has been formed, means ' blessed,' 

 'happy.' But the best type of unalloyed happiness 

 is that of a child, and as the happiness of a child is 

 accompanied with innocence and simplicity, the 

 word acquired the secondary meaning of 'inno- 

 cent, simple,' and after a time, altogether lost its 

 primary meaning. Milton uses 'silly' into which 

 form seelig had by degrees been transmuted in 

 the sense of 'simple,' without implying any dis- 

 paragement. But simplicity borders on ignorance 

 and feebleness of mind, and hence a second tran- 

 sition to the modern meaning of silly, in which 

 nothing remains of the former stages. The same 

 word selig, while continuing to be used in German 

 in the sense of ' blessed,' has acquired the second- 

 ary sense of ' departed,' ' dead,' ' the late.' The 

 association of ideas here is obvious, and the substi- 

 tution oiseligior a more obviously appropriate term 

 is prompted by the desire to suggest a disagreeable 

 idea in an indirect way. This instinct of polite- 

 ness in speech euphemism, as it is called which 

 seeks to hint at an unpleasant or an indelicate 

 thing, rather than name it directly, has had much 

 to do in making words acquire new meanings and 



