336 PHONETIC ANOMALIES OBSERVED IN SOME 
‘This anomalous sound of 7a obtained also in the case of some 
common nouns. 
The early French or Gaulish Christians who first heard the Greek 
word éxxAnoia from the lips of their missionaries, caught the sound 
of the #ra as being that of our i, that is, as ee. Thus they wrote it 
down as Eglise. So we must suppose the traders of the Greek city 
of Marseilles to have sounded their e¢as, to account for boutique shop, 
being fashioned out of dzo6yxn store. The same usage must have 
existed to some extent during the classic times, in Italy—if the 
Greek X7jpos nonsense, and the Latin lire, pronounced leere, trifles, 
are identical.* Compare, finally, as a curiosity, deer with O4p.+ 
3. But it is time to turn toz. The European usage is to call this 
letter ce. Nevertheless it is clear that there was a sound attached 
to this vowel which approached the ez, or almost oy-sound, which 
the English people have chosen, in a multitude of cases, to give it.— 
Loire, for example, represents Liger—the ancient name of the largest 
river of France. With this compare noir from niger; loisir from 
licet, and mot, as derived from mihi. Also, it is well known that the 
Latin plural termination 7 is an equivalent for, if not identical with, 
the corresponding ot in Greek. In later Greek, long ¢ was often 
exchanged for e¢ diphthong : not that this diphthong was pronounced 
like the English 7; but a deviation from the common ee-sound is cer- 
tainly indicated.t 
ern, or Romaic, and not what we hold to be ancient.” Vide Hallam’s Literary History» 
Vol. I., 92. The Greek of Christian missionaries in Britain, six centuries before Theodore, 
was probably similar. The sound which we give to the Greek eta may thus bea very ancient 
tradition. 
*That in Quintilian’s time (A. D. 90.) the principles of pronunciation were not the same 
tm the Latin and Greek languages, is plain from what he says of the danger of a Roman 
ohild’s acquiring faults of pronunciation from a use too long and too exclusive, of the Greek 
tongue. Vide Instit. Orat. Lib. I. iij. 3. 
+ ©ip is “ wild animal”—and the cognate “ deer,” we know, is by no means exclusively the 
genus Cervide with which we in modern times associate the word. We shall recal Bdgar’s 
gong in Lear (iij. 4,) 
Mice and rats and such small deer 
Have been Tom’s food for seven long year.” 
It may be added as a brief corollary that venison is anything taken in hunting, and not 
exclusively the flesh of Cervide. 
} The restoration of the e diphthong to proper names which for a series of years have been 
printed with a simple ¢—although it may momentarily offend the eye—has the advantage of 
being a safeguard against false quantities. We may not quite like to see Phidias figuring as 
Pheidias—but not only do we thereby approach nearer to the actual name of the great sculp- 
tor, but the young competitor for classical honours is guarded against a possible heavy dis- 
count on his merit-marks. In like manner, although it may not be expedient te alter the - 
