OLD ARYAN WORDS 



would call a very eggsdraortinary zlr gums dance ? 

 Yet after all, so far from being extraordinary, 

 such phenomena occur so regularly in a com- 

 parison of the Aryan languages that they have 

 been reduced to a systematic form of expression 

 in what is known as " Grimm's law." Take, 

 for example, the word "father." This is the 

 same in all the Aryan languages, save for the 

 differences in pronunciation which make the 

 Germans say vafer, while in Latin, Greek, and 

 Sanskrit we have pater. On the other hand, 

 brother, in German bruder, appears in Latin and 

 Sanskrit zsfrater or bhratar, in Greek as (frpdrrjp, 

 the member of a brotherhood or fraternity. That 

 is, where we pronounce an/the Greeks, Romans, 

 and Hindus pronounced a^, but where we pro- 

 nounce a b they pronounce an /, or something 

 like it. Similarly, where we say gard-en the Greek 

 said^o/3TO5 and the Latin hort-us ; and our goose, 

 which appears more fully in the German gans, is 

 found in Greek as xyv> i n Sanskrit as hansa, in 

 Bohemian as bus, the name of the celebrated 

 martyr. But conversely, where we say heart the 

 Greek said KapS and the old Roman cord, and 

 where the German says haupt the Roman said 

 caput. That is, a Teutonic answers to a Greek, 

 Latin, Sanskrit, or Slavonic h> but a Teutonic h 

 answers to a k in the latter languages. Now this 

 group of facts is not precisely analogous to the 

 cockney's transposition of his aspirates, but it is 

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