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♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Nov. 1, 1885. 



Frencli lias almost entirely lost the sound of h as we have 

 it in English, and that that soimd is by no means secure 

 in our own land is proved by the 'Arry " 'oo 'opes you're 

 very vrell," and the M.P. who talks of his work "in the 

 'Ouse." The Aztecs have no sounds _(/, d, b,f,h. Although 

 Hebrew and Arabic are so nearly allied, the sound of ■;;, 

 which is common in Hebrew, is unknown in Arabic, 

 while the Arabic initial w does not exist in Hebrew. To 

 take another example, there exist in Arabic no less than 

 eight sounds which few, if any, Westerns can ever 

 master, and then only after years of practice. 



A sort of natural selection of sounds takes place, an 

 unconscious selection governed by physical peculiarities, 

 which, iu their turn, are greatly modified by climate and 

 social conditions. Thus the hardy races of the North 

 have a language largely composed of harsh, rough 

 sound.s, in the pronunciation of which much energy is 

 expended. In the luxurious south, however^as, for 

 exam2>le, in Italian — the soimds are soft and easy to 

 pronounce. Again, dwellers in thinly-populated districts, 

 who are not driven to talk much, pronounce slowly and 

 carefully, while those who dwell in cities, and who are of 

 necessity great talkers, clip their words, slur over difficult 

 sounds, and even drop them altogether. 



These common and everyday sound-changes which are 

 unnoticed in our ordinary intercourse with our fellow 

 countrymen at once become apparent when we converse 

 with Americans, whom we cannot always understand, 

 although their language is our own. So striking are 

 these changes, that in the introdiiction to his celebrated 

 " Biglow Papers," Mr. James Russell Lowell considered 

 it necessary to make a detailed explanation to his readers, 

 lest they should fail to understand the language he puts 

 into the mouths of his Yankee heroes. He says : — 



1. The genuine Yankee never gives the rough sound 

 to r when he can help it, and often disjjlays considerable 

 Ingenuity in avoiding it even before a vowel. 



2. He seldom sounds the final g — a piece of self-denial, 

 if we consider his partiality for nasals. The same of the 

 final d, as han' and stan' for haiid and stand. 



3. The h in such words as ivhile, when, tvhere, he omits 

 altogether. 



4. In regard to a he shows .some inconsistency, some- 

 times giving a close and obscure sound, as hev' for have, ez 

 for as, thet for that, and again giving it the broad sound 

 it has in father, as hdnsome for handsome. 



6. To the sound ow he prefixes an e (hard to exemjtlify 

 otherwise than orally). 



The following passage in Shakespeare he would recite 

 thus : — 



Neow is the winta uv eour discontent 



Med glorious summa by this siin o' Yock, 



An' all the cleoiids thet Icowered upun eour heouse 



In the deep buzzum o' the osliin buried ; 



Neow air eour breows beound 'ith victorious wreaths ; 



Eour breused arms hung up fer monimuuce ; 



Eour starn alarums changed to merry meetins, 



Eour dreffle marches to delightful measures. 



Grim-visaged war hethsmeuthed his wrinkled front, 



An' neow instid o' mountin'barebid steeds 



To fright the souls o' fcrflo odverserics, 



He capers nimly in a lady's chftmber, 



To the lascivious pleasin' uv a loot. 



Itichnrd III. Art. 1, sc. 1. 



The substitution of (ine sound for another may be 

 either (1) from a defect of hearing, which may be com- 

 pared to colour-blindness ; or (2) from defect of the vocal 



organs ; or (3) from defect of the nervous mechanism sup- 

 plying them ; or (4) from carelessness. The child who, 

 when I said to him " Can't you say rope ? " indignantly 

 replied, "Well, I did say ifojje .' " was probably affected 

 by the first of these alternatives ; and the same is most 

 likely true of the Polynesians, who turned Samuel into 

 Heinara, and David into liaviri. 



Similarly when young children are learning to speak, 

 the same word takes on quite diffei-ent forms in different 

 mouths. Thus the word water is pronounced by one c/a-ga, 

 while another utters it wa-iva. Milk is referred to by 

 one as witJc, while another tiny autocrat lustily demands 

 his wiM, and so on. 



In the Malayo-Polynesian group of languages the word 

 oran, man, becomes in different dialects rang, olan, Ian,, 

 ala, la, net, da, and ra. Unconscious changes of this 

 kind are the great cause of the divergence of dialects 

 from a common language, and, by continued differentia- 

 tion, of languages from a common stock ; and Whitney 

 does right in giving it the first place in his classification. 

 Of this differentiation I propose to speak next month, but 

 I would here remark that of the possible number and 

 combinations of sounds, comparatively few are utilised. 

 Prince Lucien Bonaparte has made a list of 385 sounds, 

 seventy-five of which are vowels, which may be articu- 

 lated ; but many of these are not found in any known 

 langtiage or dialect. 



The number of possible combinations of sounds which 

 might be used as words has been calculated as follows by 

 Mr. Pagliardiui. Allowing that forty-eight elementary 

 sounds may be produced by the human vocal organs, 

 taking these 



2 by 2 gives 



3 „ 3 „ 



4 4 



2,256 



103,776 



4,669,920 



20.5,476,4,?O 



so that a monosyllabic language containing no word with 

 more than five letters could theoretically possess 

 210,252,488 words ; but as some combinations — such as 

 those in which no vowels occur, as, dims, rffn — could not 

 be pronounced, this number may be reduced to one 

 hundredth part, that is to two millions, which would still 

 be a larger number than the sum total of all the words iu 

 all the languages of Europe. 



The laws of phonetic change are partly those of the 

 physical relation of articulate sounds, but partly influenced 

 by human will — aversion to certain efforts, choice of 

 j)articular forms, sense of euphony and proportion, and 

 all the thousand motives which influence human action. 



Every law of speech has its origin iu the physical and 

 mental constitution of the users of speech, iu their 

 capacities, necessities, likes and dislikes, in their circum- 

 stances, natural and historical, and in their inherited and 

 acquit ed habits. 



Owing to the manner in which languages grow and 

 decay, there has been a great tendency to regard language 

 as a living organism, but this is mere mythology. 

 Languages f.re the slowlj'-claborated products of the 

 api)licatiou by human beings of means to ends, the result 

 of the devising of signs by which ideas may be 

 communicated, and the operations of thought carried on. 

 Language may, thertftirc, rather be compared to ;; 

 building, er.ch individual brick of which has to be made 

 and proved worthy before it can be added to the noble 

 pile. Every item of speech had its beginning either in 

 accident or design, and whether it maintained itself and 

 obtained currency depended on whether it supplied a 

 want. 



