GROWTH OF ENC}LISr H. C. I l„.j i..^J BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND ^ THE GIFT OF Henrg M. Sage 1891 /^..^.^^^3^, fl^hs... 9963 Cornell University Library PE 1095.W98 Growth of English 3 1924 026 571 566 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026571566 By THE Same Author THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE MOTHER TONGUE An Introduction to Philological Method Large crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. THE PLACE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE IN NATIONAL EDUCATION Demy 8vo. is. LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. THE GROWTH OF ENGLISH AN ELEMENTARY ACCOUNT OF THE PRESENT FORM OF OUR LANGUAGE, AND ITS DEVELOPMENT BY HENRY CECIL WYLD I BAINES PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND I-HILOLOGY IN THB > UNIVERSITY OF LIVERVOOL AUTHOR OF 'the HISTORICAL STUDY OF THE MOTHER TONGUE,' ETC. LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1907 PREFACE This book is obviously a book for beginners. It may serve for Secondary Schools, should some of these institutions find it convenient to include such a study of the native language as is here proposed in their curriculum ; but the work is primarily intended for Training Colleges. Those who are preparing intending teachers for their profession will find that a very large part, at least, of the Board of Education Regulations for the study of the English Language is here covered. My experience leads me to believe that it is hardly possible to state things too simply or too plainly in a work designed for beginners, and I think that the following short account of the elements of phonetics, and of English pronunciation in particular, will be found an intelligible and useful starting-point for those who approach these subjects for the first time. If beginners will take the trouble to master thoroughly Chapters I. to IV., they will find it easy to grasp a much more advanced treatment of the subject. My vi PREFACE own opinion is that this elementary phonetic training ought to begin at the age of ten or twenty, and I have tried to make the opening chapters suitable to children, as well as useful for students of the ordinary Training College age. After much consideration, I resolved to try the experiment of using the ordinary English spelling throughout the book, instead of adopting an exact phonetic notation. The latter course would have been, in some respects, more convenient, but the essential point is to teach people to think clearly about speech sounds, and to use a terminology sufficiently exact to express those phonetic facts which are within their knowledge. A few words are necessary as to the general scope and plan of the book. The fundamental point from which I start is that the beginner's attention must be directed to the familiar facts of his own speech, and that he must learn to observe these accurately. I have therefore selected in a systematic manner certain phenomena of English speech which come within every one's experience, and while directing attention to them, have used them to interpret and express some of the most fundamental facts in the life of language. When the beginner has learnt to observe dialectal variation all round him, when he has become aware that his own speech,, and that of PREFACE vii his associates, is in process of transformation, he can understand that a language which has a Future must also have had a Past — he has seen and realized those forces actually at work which shape what we call the History of Language. In dealing specifically with the History of English, I have tried to relate it in a vital way to the facts and phenomena of Present-day English, and, further, to indicate broad principles rather than merely isolated facts which are the partial expression of these principles. It is my earnest hope that those chapters especially which deal with the varieties in modern English speech may not only prove interesting to students, but may suggest to their teachers further develop- ments of what I can but believe are fertile and really educative lines of instruction. To many lecturers in Training Colleges the methods here suggested will doubtless be novel, but if they will give them an honest trial, they will find that to deal in this way with living and familiar realities will not only excite the interest of their pupils, but will also develop in these the faculties of observation and intelligence. I would venture to suggest to those Training College lecturers who use the book that the first seven chapters might form the basis of a First Year's Course, to be amplified and illustrated from the viii PREFACE experience of the teacher, with the co-operation of the pupil's own efforts. If properly treated, the ground here covered will form an excellent prepara- tion to the elementary historical study contained in the remaining chapters, which might with propriety be left to the Second Year. If the historical part of the course be accompanied by the study of a portion of Chaucer, as suggested in my pamphlet. The Place of the Mother Tongue in National Education, the whole subject will be illuminated by actual experience, at first hand, of an earlier form of English. HENRY CECIL WYLD. The University, Liverpool, June, 1907. CONTENTS CHAPTEK PAGE I. WHAT IS LANGUAGE? - - I II. THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE - II III. THE SOUNDS OF ENGLISH 28 IV. VARIOUS FORMS OF ENGLISH — I. PRONUNCIA- TION - 41 V. VARIOUS FORMS OF ENGLISH — 2. GRAMMAR, PHRASEOLOGY, AND VOCABULARY 58 VI. SOUND CHANGES OBSERVABLE IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH 70 VII. SPEAKING AND WRITING - 84 VIII. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE HISTORY OF A LAN- GUAGE LANDMARKS IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH - 98 V IX. ENGLISH SOUND CHANGES OF THE PAST 127 v/ X. ENGLISH SPELLING I40 XI. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH VOCABU- LARY — LOAN WORDS 151 XII. ENGLISH INFLEXIONS 1 73 XIII. THE PLACE OF ENGLISH AMONG OTHER LAN- GUAGES CONCLUDING REMARKS 1 88 IX THE GROWTH OF ENGLISH CHAPTER I WHAT IS LANGUAGE? The word 'language' is used in English in several senses. We speak of Sign Language or Gesture Language, meaning those movements of the fingers, the hands, or the head, which are used by some savages, or by the deaf and dumb, to convey to others their thoughts and wishes. But by language we generally mean those sounds which we make in speaking. If we call this kind of language Speech there is no doubt as to what we mean. This is the kind of language with which we 'are now going to deal. We all of us use it constantly, and could not carry on our lives without it. It is by means of language or speech that we let other people know what we are thinking, what we want, what we like and dislike. Some unfortunate persons are unable to speak. We speak of these people as being * deaf and dumb.' This usually means that they are deaf, quite deaf, either from their birth or from a very early age. It is because they are unable to hear that these people are dumb, or unable to speak ; for we learn to I 2 WHAT IS LANGUAGE? speak, as very small children, by hearing others do so, and imitating them. Now, to all ordinary people language, or the power of speech, is such a natural thing, and so familiar, that they do not think very much about it. If they were asked, ' What is language ?' most people would not be able to give a very clear answer. And yet language, although it is so common, is a very wonderful and precious thing, one which is well worth thinking about. We therefore surely ought to be able to say exactly what language is, seeing how familiar it is to all of us, and what an important and necessary thing it is in our lives. Let us try and understand exactly what language is. We have said that we can express our thought by gestures or signs. Most people use some gestures while they are speaking, but in many cases it would be hard to say what exactly is the meaning of these gestures. But in England, at any rate, everybody understands, even if nothing is said, that when a man nods his head he means ' yes ' and that when he shakes it from side to side he means ' no.' In fact, these two gestures are just as full of meaning as the two words just mentioned. We see, then, that gestures of this kind serve the same purpose as ordinary language or speech — that is, they express our meaning. In fact, deaf people and many savage races can carry on long ' conversations ' — that is, can ask questions and answer them, can express their meaning — by means of signs and gestures alone, and without any spoken words. Language, then, whether it consist of gestures or of what we call 'speech,' is a means for letting others HOW SPEECH SOUNDS ARE MADE 3 ! know what is in our minds, what we are thinking of, ^' or feeling, or what we desire. We want just now to consider more especially what that way of expressing our thoughts is that we call ' speech,' or ' language,' in the usual sense of the word. Now, speech is heard, and therefore consists of sounds. When we speak we make certain sounds which for ourselves and our friends have a meaning. How are these sounds produced ? If we watch a person who is speaking, or look at ourselves in the looking-glass while we are speaking, we can see that the lips move to a certain extent, and also that the mouth is sometimes more or less open, sometimes almost or entirely closed. We cannot see, however, what is going on inside the mouth, still less what is going on lower down in the throat. As a matter of fact, three very important actions besides the movements of the lips and jaws are carried out in the act of speech. First, in the mouth, the Tongue is moving rapidly from one posi- tion to another ; secondly, in the throat, two small membranes called the Vocal Chords are alternately made tight, and are loosened ; thirdly, the air which is breathed into the lungs is being expelled, passing through the throat and mouth. The sounds which we make in speaking are due to these movements of the vocal organs. We can therefore define speech as the expression of thought or feeling by means of sounds produced by the vocal organs. It is well to add that these sounds are deliberately and intentionally uttered for this purpose, because there are other vocal sounds or cries which may be uttered unintentimially by the vocal organs, 4 WHAT IS LANGUAGE? under the influence of certain strong emotions such as joy, fear, anger, and so on. The emotional cries are mechanical and instinctive, and are not included under the term 'language.' Now, from what has been said, we see that there are two sides to language: what we may call the inner side, which is the \i meaning which we wish to express, and the external side, which consists of the speech sounds whereby we express that meaning. We cannot tell what is passing in the mind of another by looking directly into that mind, nor can others know what is in our own minds, except by means of some symbol, whether a picture, a statue, a gesture or a sign, or, as in the case of spoken language, by means of certain sounds, which are the outward symbols of what is inward, and of the mind. A symbol stands for something else, and those who are familiar with the symbol and the particular way of using it recognize and understand it. Some symbols, such as pictures or statues, have a meaning for everybody : there is no need to make a special study of them before we can understand them. Thus, a picture of a horse or a tree will at once convey to anyone who has ever seen these objects the idea of ' horse ' or ' tree.' But those symbols which are the sounds made by the organs of speech do not possess the same general significance. Therefore, until we have learnt a language, and have found out the meanings which the speakers attach to each particular sound, or collection of sounds — that is, words — we do not understand it ; it conveys no meaning to us. For there is no absolute reason why the group of sounds which go to make up such SOUNDS STAND FOR IDEAS 5 a word as ' horse ' should necessarily convey the idea of a particular species of four-footed animal. Every Englishman at the present day, however, attaches practically the same meaning to the word ; whenever he hears it he takes it for granted that the speaker refers to the same thing as that with which the sounds are associated in his own mind, and he knows that ' when he uses the word it will call up in the minds of his hearers the same picture which exists in his own. To learn a language, therefore, means to learn a particular set of sounds, and groups of sounds, and to learn also what, are the ideas, thoughts, and feel- ings for which they stand, of which they are the symbols, in the minds of the native speakers of the language. We learn our own language very gradually, by hearing our parents, nurses, and teachers, repeat a word a great many times, and seeing them point to the thing or person for which the word stands. In this way we learn first the names of the most familiar concrete objects, and much later we gradually form some conception of abstract ideas, and learn their names. Mother, Father, Dog, Tree, Grass, Flower, and so on, are easily understood by the child, but it takes him much longer before he grasps the meaning of Hope, Truth, Evil, and so on. It is of the highest importance, if we wish to understand the real nature of language, to realize fully that words consist of sounds, which are uttered f and heard, and not of letters, which are looked at. Owing to the large part which books play in education, people have come to hold strange views 6 WHAT IS LANGUAGE? concerning language, and some actually think that the letters, which make up the written word on paper, are the real language, and that the sounds, which we can hear, are only of minor importance. It is probable that we should find it easier to grasp the real external facts of language, which are its sounds, if we knew nothing about writing and spelling at all, and could only think of language as being uttered sounds. A little consideration of the question shows us that the letters are very unimportant compared with the sounds, and that when we study a language, it is the sounds and their meanings which must mainly concern us. Let us think for a moment of the relation of the written word to actual speech. Language, of course, existed and was handed on for ages before writing was invented, and there are plenty of races at the present day who have fully developed languages in which they can express everything that is in their mind, but who have no system of writing. Even in England and other highly civilized countries there are still old people who never learned in their youth either to read or to write. For such people as these it is clear that language only exists as something which is spoken. We see, then, that the life of language may be quite independent of writing and spelling. What is writing ? It is simply a clever and con- venient device by which certain symbols, which we call letters, are used to represent the sounds of speech. Words are built up of a collection of several sounds, and so when we write we are supposed to use a letter for each sound of which the word is composed. LETTERS ARE OF SECONDARY IMPORTANCE 7 Letters in themselves are not language, but merely symbols which are used for the sounds of which language is composed. There is no life or meaning in written symbols by themselves ; but they must be translated, as it were, into the sounds for which they stand before they become language or have any meaning. We become so accustomed to the look of letters, in groups to represent words, that we learn to read them off quite rapidly into the sounds for which they stand. Even when we read silently, without pronouncing the words aloud, we carry out the process mentally, and often unconsciously, of turning the letters into the sounds which each represents, and in this way we get at the meaning of what is written. We have already said that the sounds of speech themselves are only the symbols of thoughts, not the thoughts themselves. Written words, however, are still further away from the thoughts and ideas than spoken ones, for they are only the symbols of these — that is to say, they are symbols of symbols. Spoken language, then, comes first, and is the reality of speech ; written words are a late invention, and have no life beypnd that which the reader puts into them, when he pronounces the sounds for which they were written. You sometimes hear it said that we ought to pronounce in such and such a way, because the word is so written. But this is putting the cart before the horse. It would be more correct to say that when words were first written, they were written in such and such a way, in the attempt to put down as accurately as possible, by means of the written 8 WHAT IS LANGUAGE? symbols, the sounds which occurred in living pro- nunciation. You may ask, ' What, then, does decide how a word is pronounced ?' It will be easier to explain this later on, when we have said something about what is called the history of language ; but in the meantime it will perhaps be clear if we say that the pronunciation of a language changes slightly from age to age, and that, as a matter of fact, a word is pronounced in a certain way at a certain time by a given set of people. Why it is that the word is pronounced just in this particular way at a given time, must be explained later on, but we may be sure of this, that as a rule the spelling has absolutely nothing to do with the pronunciation. This is due to quite other causes. We do not pronounce as we do because of the spelling. We shall soon see that in English at any rate the spelling which we learn as correct appears to be but very slightly connected with our usual pro- nunciation of the words. Indeed, if we were to' try to carry out the rule of pronouncing as we spell, we should produce a very strange language, which no one would understand. We must banish from our minds any idea that pronunciation follows spelling ; this is a very wrong and silly idea, and if we hold it, we shall have a very false impression of what language really is. Through- out this book, unless otherwise stated, when we speak of Language, or the English Language, we mean real, spoken language which can be heard, and not language written on paper, which is only a makeshift for the real thing. We need think very little about spelling, but very SUMMARY 9 much about speech sounds, if we want to understand the many interesting things which there are to learn about language. When a word is referred to, you must think of the sound of the word, not of the look of the word when written. You will perhaps find that you really know very little about the sounds of the words in your own pronunciation ; but this is just what is important for you to think about. And you will /probably find, also, that the less you think, or perhaps, even, the less you know, about the spellirig of a word, the easier it will be for you to discover what sounds you really pronounce in it. Many people, who think only of the spelling, believe that they pronounce an T in the word ' colonel,' or in the word ' alms,' but you would find that a person who had not learnt English spelling carefully would never think of writing an ' / ' in these words if he came to write them for the first time, without ever having seen them spelt. A very important lesson, which most people have to learn, is to keep their ears open, and listen carefully to the language which they hear around them, and which they speak themselves. In this chapter we have tried to make clear the' following points : (i) Language, or speech, is a means of letting others know what we are thinking, or feeling; (2) la nguage consists of sounds which for ourselves, and ot hers, have ameanmg ; (3) the sounds of^eech are made by the movements of certain organs in the throat and mouth, known as the organs of speech ; (4) in speech, these sounds are deliberately and intentionally uttered, and are not mere cries; (5) these sounds are the outward symbols of what is lo WHAT IS LANGUAGE? in the mind ; (6) written letters are a further system of symbols, which represent the sounds of speech, and are thus the symbols of symbols ; (7) pronuncia- tion does not follow spelling, but is independent of it, and it often happens in English that the spelling is not a correct symbol of the pronunciation, as it now exists ; (8) it follows from all this that in study- ing a language what we want to get at is not the written, but the spoken forms of it. CHAPTER II THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE Every one will agree nowadays that if we wish to know something about birds and animals and flowers ; if we want to realize the way in which they live and grow, we must learn these lessons by observing the living things — the birds and beasts, as the}- go about their business, of finding food, or making their nests; the plants as they unfold in wood or hedgerow. This personal observation will teach us much more of the essential facts, and in a more vital and interesting way, than we can gather merely from books and lectures. In precisely the same way, the fundamental facts about our own language, those facts which we must know before we go on to more advanced and difficult studies in Enghsh, must be learnt by persomil obsen'aiioii of our own speech. Only, whereas in the case of Natural History it is necessary to cultivate the power of string- accurately, when we come to study language, as it ought to be studied, we must cultivate our sense of hearing. We must, as we have already said, learn to hear with precision. Now, many people, perhaps, will be surprised to be told that however much wo may think that other II 12 THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE persons, with whom we constantly associate, speak exactly as we do ourselves, yet, as a matter of fact, no two persons, probably, speak absolutely and precisely alike. The differences may be so slight that it will take a great deal of careful observation to discover them, but they are there nevertheless. This being the case, each person must begin his observation of the English which is spoken by noting how he speaks himself. When he has care- fully observed the facts of his, own speech, he can begin to compare this with the speech of others. I can do no more in a little book like this than show you how you should begin the study of your own English, and point out some of the things which you should notice in yourselves. When a writer talks about English he generally means that precise form which he himself habitually speaks. He cannot possibly describe the way in which his readers speak, for he has not heard them. In many, probably in most, cases the reader's speech will be found to agree with that of the writer, but in some cases it will be different. But the readers may learn, from the way in which the writer describes his own pronunciation and so on, how they should observe and describe their own. Therefore, if you firid it stated in this book that such and such a sound is pronounced in two words which are given as illustrations, whereas you pro- nounce not the same but different sounds in the particular words given, this merely proves that your way of speaking is different in this particular respect from that of the writer, not that he is wrong in what he says about his own pronunciation. MEANING OF 'VOWEL' AND 'CONSONANT' 13 It does not matter at all if you think that it is not a good way of speaking to pronounce the same sound in each of the words given. For it must be remembered that, for the moment, the writer is not trying to teach people how they ought to pronounce, but merely how some people, himself among them, actually do pronounce. You must also remember that we are now dealing, not with letters, but with sounds. The study of the sounds of speech is called Phonetics, and although you are not invited, just at present, to make a deep study of this subject, there are yet a few points connected with the simplest facts of Phonetics which you ought to understand if you want to have an intelligent knowledge of English pronunciation. Now, everybody, even those who, quite properly, make no claim to know anything about Phonetics, yet make use of the phonetic terms Vowel and Consonant. But how many people could give a clear definition of either term ? Some people would say that a, e, i, 0, u, were vowels, and the other letters were consonants. But we have nothing to do just at present with letters : we want a definition of two classes of sounds, a, e, i, etc., are merely the names of certain symbols which we use to represent certain sounds. An equally bad answer is given by those who say that a consonant is a sound which cannot be pronounced by itself, and a vowel is one that can be so pronounced. This distinction is entirely false, for with a little practice each and every consonant which exists can be pronounced alone, and without a vowel following. 14 THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE The question is, What is the special character of that class of sounds which we call consonants, and how do they differ from the other class that we call vowels ? The best way to decide the question is to pronounce a few consonants, and then a few vowel sounds, and observe what peculiarities the former class possess which are not shared by the latts . As examples of consonants, let us take the t in top, the p in pull, the / in fat, and the z in seize. We can easily observe that in t and p there is a kind of checking of the breath for an instant, and that it then bursts out with a slight puff. If you can pronounce t and p (the sounds, not the names of the letters) by themselves, several times, you will soon notice the puff of breath to which I refer. You will find that t and p are over in an instant ; you cannot audibly continue t or p, although you may repeat them as often as you like. On the other hand, if you pronounce / or z, you find that you can continue them as long as your breath lasts. There is no sudden puff of breath, but the breath passes all the time, causing a slight hiss or buzz. This shows us that there are two kinds of consonants — one which is instantaneous, and which ends with a puff of breath ; the other which can be audibly prolonged, which has no sudden puff, but which has a hiss or a buzz going on all the time. The puff class are called Stops, because the breath is checked or stopped for an instant in pronouncing them ; the hiss and buzz class are called Continuants, or Open Consonants, because they can be continued for a long time, and because the passage in the mouth. VOWELS AND CONSONANTS CONTRASTED 15 through which the breath comes, is slightly open all the time. The hiss or buzz is caused by friction made by the air in coming through the narrow passage. You must test the truth of these statements for yourselves, by pronouncing the consonants mentioned a good many times, and observing in each the points just described. When you have done this, try and find some other consonants of each class for your- selves. We now come to Vowels. Pronounce the first vowel in 'father' and in 'boot' several times. You will observe that these sounds resemble the open or buzz consonants in this, that they can all be prolonged as long as your breath lasts. But you will notice also that these two vowels (in father and boot) differ from the sound of z, etc., in so far as the vowels have no hiss or buzz which is audible. The reason of this absence of friction is, that in vowels the passage through which the air comes is not sufficiently narrow or closed to produce it. We can say, then, that the main difference between consonants and vowels is, that whereas in con- sonants the breath is either altogether stopped for an instant (in the puff class) or so far closed that a certain amount of friction is caused, in vowels the passage is not sufficiently closed to produce friction, and therefore there is no hiss or buzz at all. In fact, the distinction between vowels and consonants de- pends upon the degree of narrowing or closing of the passage through which the air or breath has to pass; A sound in which there is either audible friction, or a complete momentary stoppage of the air produced in i6 THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE some part of the mouth, is a consonant ; sounds in which there is neither stoppage nor friction are vowels. Some Facts about Consonants. It is very important to remember the distinction between these two classes of consonant — the Stops and the Open consonants. Besides those already mentioned, we have several others of both classes in English. Thus, k in king, d in dog, are Stops ,- th in think, sh in ship, are Open consonants. You should now try and find some more consonants of each kind for yourselves. The Distinction of Voice and Breath. If you pronounce first the th in think, and then that in this several times, you will notice that there is a difference between the sounds, although we write them both with the letters th. The sound in this is louder than the other ; also, if you pronounce it as loud as you can, and make it last as long as you can, and put your finger-tips on your throat while doing so, you will feel quite distinctly a slight regular vibration going on in the throat. This vibration, however, does not occur when you pronounce th in think. And yet you will find, if you attend carefully to the position of the tongue when pronouncing the loud and the other th-sound, that in both cases the point or tip of the tongue is placed against or between the upper and lower rows of teeth. In fact, the only difference between the two sounds as regards the way in which they are made lies in VOICE AND BREATH 17 the vibration in the throat in the case of th in this, which is absent in the other th. This vibration is caused by what are called the vocal chords — two small membranes in the throat — being tightened and drawn across the inside of the throat. When the vocal chords are in this position, and the air coming from the lungs passes through the throat, the chords are set vibrating by the air. The air has, as it were, to burst through between the chords. All sounds pronounced with the chords drawn across the throat, so that they vibrate when the air passes through them, are called Voiced sounds. Beside th in this, we have in English several other Voiced Open consonants, such as z in buzz, v in veal. But the vocal chords may also be tightened, and may vibrate when Stop consonants are pronounced, as in d in dog, b in big, g in goat, and so on. Try and find some other Voiced consonants, both Stops and Open. You will notice that when you are speaking aloud all vowel sounds are accompanied by vibration of the vocal chords. This does not occur, however, when you whisper a vowel. We now pass on to those consonants which are pronounced without this vibration. Pronounce /as in fat, s as in sap, and you will find that, although you can both feel and hear the air rushing out with a kind of hiss, there is no vibration in the throat. In these cases the vocal chords are not tightened and drawn across the throat ; the air does not burst through between them, and they do not vibrate. The following pairs of words have initially a voiced or a voiceless open consonant; the voiced sound is in 2 i8 THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE the first word of each pair: zebra — sap, veal— feel, this-^think. As in the case of the two th-sounds, the only difference between z and s, v and /, respectively, is that the former is voiced, the latter is voiceless, or, as it is also called, a breath consonant. We may give a few pairs of voiced and voiceless stops : dog — top, big — pig, got — cot. As regards the last pair, you will notice that, although cot is spelt with a c, it is pronounced with what we might call a ' ^-sound.' You must learn to recognize the same sound when you hear it, no matter how it may be written. Remember, once more, we are trying to learn some- thing about sounds, not about letters. Now try and find words which contain voiceless consonants, both open and stops, and then try to find out what each sound would be like if pronounced with voice — that is, with vibration in the throat. If you clearly understand this account of voice and breath (or voiceless) consonants, you will have learnt a very important lesson. You see that it is much better to speak of voiced and voiceless sounds than of hard and soft sounds. The former terms have a clear and precise meaning, which is quite easy to grasp. Many people speak of voiced sounds as soft, and voiceless as hard; but if you ask them what the difference between the two kinds of sounds really is, they cannot tell you. Now, however, you know that the difference consists in the presence or absence of vibration in the vocal chords, and for the future you will speak of voiced and voiceless sounds. THE QUESTION 'WHERE'? 19 Consonants formed in Various Parts of the Mouth. You have, perhaps, never thought how or where you form any particular sound. And yet it is very easy to find out how a great many sounds, especially consonants, are made. Besides the questions we have already discussed of stops and open, voiced and voiceless consonants, it is necessary to notice that these kinds of consonants may be formed in different ways and in different parts of the mouth. I shall only mention a few points which it is very easy for each one to find out for himself with a little careful observation. I begin with consonants formed with the lips, because you can see the lips moving, as well as feel their movements. Pronounce b in big, p in pig, and you can see, if you look in the glass, that each time you say either b or p the lips are closed for an instant. You can also feel that you are closing the lips ; p and b, therefore, are suitably called lip-stops. If you add that 6 is a voiced lip-stop, and / a voiceless lip-stop, you have described all that takes place in forming these sounds. Now pronounce / in feel, and v in veal. You can feel after a little thoughtful observation that when you pronounce / and v the lower lip is brought against the upper teeth, and that the air passes between the lip and the teeth. This fact can be discovered also by placing the fihger to the lips while pronouncing the sounds, and by watching the movement in the glass ; / and v, therefore, are called 2—2 20 THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE lip-teeth open consonants, the former voiceless, the latter voiced. The next easiest consonants to observe are those formed by the point or tip of the tongue. Pronounce t in tip and d in dip, and try to keep the tongue in the position necessary for pronouncing these sounds. Then put the tip of the httle finger (the hand being held palm upwards) just inside the front teeth of the upper row. You will find that the tip of the tongue is just behind the teeth, touching the tops or roots of these. With a little practice you will be able to feel, from the sensations in the tongue itself, just where the tip is. We call t and d, therefore, point- stop consonants, the former voiceless, the latter voiced. The nearest open consonants are the ' i^-sounds ' already mentioned, only in these sounds the point or tip of the tongue is more on the teeth themselves. Therefore we may call the ' iA-sounds ' point-teeth-open consonants ; you know already how to discover when they are voiced or not. When you have thoroughly mastered what has been said about the lips, and the point of the tongue, and when you are able to be certain from the sensation alone that you are using the point or the lips, you may begin to experiment with regard to other sounds, and try to find out how they are formed — such as s in sap, or k in king. Nasal Consonants. We shall now 'Consider for a moment one other point in connexion with consonant sounds, and that is the use of the nose, which plays -a part in three THE NOSE IN SPEECH 21 common English consonants, n, m, and ng (as in sing). There is a passage leading from the back of the throat into the back of the nose, and thence out through the nostrils. This passage is usually kept closed by means of a curtain or flap of flesh at the back of the mouth, that part which ends in the uvula. When this passage is open, however, part of the air passes through it at the same time that the other part comes through the mouth, and out at the lips. Sounds uttered with the nose passage open, are called nasal or nasalized sounds. You can easily discover for yourselves that m is merely nasal b, and n nasal d, but it might be more difficult to find out that the ng in sing is simply a nasalized form of the ^-sound in goat. If when you have the tongue or lips in the necessary position for d, g, b (as in dog, got, hit), you open this passage leading from the throat into the nose, you will get respectively n, ng, m; if you close the passage you get the ordinary d-, g-, 6-sounds. The reason why, when we have a bad cold in the head, we say, for instance, 'pid' instead of 'pin' is that our nose passage is (for the moment) always closed, and we are, therefore, unable to send any air through it, and therefore cannot pronounce a nasal sound. Vowel Sounds. Beginners generally find it very difficult to realize those positions of the tongue which produce the different vowel sounds, and it is better to postpone trying to do so until we are thoroughly familiar with the movements and- positions of the organs of 22 THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE speech which produce the consonants. We shall therefore merely note generally here that, as a matter of fact, the movements of the tongue are of prime importance in forming vowel sounds, but shall not attempt to describe them at this stage. There is one point, however, which every one can observe without any trouble, and that is, that whatever may be the position of the tongue, some vowel sounds require the action of the lips, while others do not. If we pronounce the vowel in see or set, and then that in root or rot, and look in the glass while doing so, it will become evident that in the first two sounds the lips are perfectly passive and inactive, while in the two last they are brought slightly together. Notice, when other persons are speaking, the move- ments of the lips in the utterance of vowel sounds, and make a list, both from them and from your own speech, of all the English vowels in which the lips are used, and of those in which they are not. We call vowels like that in root, rounded vowels, those like that in see, unrounded. The Nature of Diphthongs. A diphthong is a combination of two distinct vowel sounds, only one of which has stress (p. 26), and which constitute only one syllable. In English some diphthongs are written with two vowel symbols, as ou in house; others are written with only one letter, as what is popularly called 'long i,' in nine. In English there are also sounds which are not diphthongs at all, like the vowel in cause, which are HOW TO STUDY SOUNDS 23 spelt with two vowels. When we speak of a diphthong, therefore, we refer to such a combination of sounds as that described above, and do not consider the spelling, which is purely accidental. For an account of the English diphthongs, see PP- 33-36 below. Hints on the Observation of Sounds. When you want to study a sound, the best way is to pronounce first a word in which it occurs, and then detach it from the word and pronounce it by itself. Practise this isolating of sounds — many people find it very difficult at first. Remember that you want to get at a sound, and not at the name of a letter. Therefore, if you wish to observe the movements of the tongue, let us say in the sound of » in ' name,' do not pronounce the name of the letter n, which we call 'en,' because that contains also a vowel {e as in 'men'), but be careful to pronounce only the consonant n by itself. There is no .difficulty in prolonging the sound of a nasal consonant, of an open consonant, or of any vowel, but a stop consonant has, of course, only a momentary sound, and is not heard, as a matter of fact, until the position of the vocal organs has been abandoned. It will therefore be found a useful practice to, as it were, 'pronounce mentally ' in the case of stops, letting the organs fall into the right position, which they do instinctively, and then maintaining the position, and trjdng to concentrate our minds upon the position, without thinking of the sound. This mental pronunciation is of the greatest value in studying 24 THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE every kind of sound. The best process is — first pronounce the sound aloud, then whisper it, and finally pronounce mentally, concentrating our mind more and more on the position pure and simple. It will be found easiest to begin with open consonants, because, as has already been pointed out, the sound of these can be prolonged. Sounds in Combination. Hitherto we have thought only of single sounds — d, b, th, and so on — but it must be remembered that sounds do not occur in ordinary language in this way. Speech does not consist of isolated, single sounds, but of groups or series of sounds, which form syllables, words, sentences. In any given language there are only a certain number of sounds, and they occur only in certain combinations and in certain positions. Now, it is a curious thing that a new combination of sounds which in themselves are perfectly familiar is often as difficult to pronounce as an entirely new sound. For instance, we are all familiar with the sound ng (as in sing) after a vowel at the end or in the middle of a word. In the latter position we also quite commonly pronounce it before another vowel, as in singing. But if we try to pronounce the sound which we express by ng immediately before a vowel initially — that is, with no other sound before the ng — we shall, perhaps, find it almost impossible to do so without a good deal of practice. And yet there is nothing new in the combination, except the position of the sound in question, with respect to other sounds. Again, we can all pronounce t followed THE ' BREATH-GROUP ' THE UNIT OF SPEECH 25 by s at the end of a word, as in bits ; but try and pronounce the combination ts initially, as in the German Zeit ('time'), and difficulty at once arises for some English people. It is a good preparation for the pronunciation of foreign languages to practise familiar sounds in unfamiliar combinations. Sound Sequences in Ordinary Speech. It is popularly believed that in speaking we separate our words one from the other by a slight pause after each. This, however, is not the case in natural, rapid speech. The pauses which we make in speaking are not due to the existence of any necessity for shutting off each word as an inde- pendent entity by itself, but to quite other causes, of which the commonest is that the supply of air from the lungs, by means of which we are able to speak at all, becomes exhausted, and we pause to take breath. Again, we may pause because we are at a loss for a word, or because we wish to be particularly emphatic. All the sounds produced with one lungful of air, no matter whether they form one long word or several shorter ones, are known as a breath-group. It is the mind which resolves the breath-group into words, not the voice. Unless we know a language, we cannot possibly tell by merely listen- ing to it where one word leaves off and another begins. This is proved by the fact that children and foreigners often get hold of a wrong form of a word which they have only heard in a sentence surrounded by other words. 26 THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE Supposing we did not know the word but in the sense of only, we should probably understand the sentence ' It is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous ' to contain the familiar word butter. It is easy to find numbers of two-syllabled words in English which are indistinguishable in sound from other groups of syllables containing two words. For instance, honour, on her, on a ; offend her, a fender ; not at home (quickly pronounced), not a tome ; not at all, man ! not a tall man, and so on. So much is it the case that words are not separated up in natural speech that the end of one word some- times gets permanently tacked on to the beginning of the next, and the original form is altogether'lost. Thus, in English a newt was originally an ewt. Some- times a word loses its initial sound by being wrongly separated out from among the words in a breath- group. Thus, our word umpire has lost its original n, which it had in the French word nonpair. Here, a numpire being quite indistinguishable in pronuncia- tion from an umpire, the word, when used apart from the article, was taken to be that form which we use. Stress. — This is the name given to what is more popularly known as Emphasis, or simply as Accent. By stress is meant the degree of force, and therefore of loudness, with which a sound is uttered. In such a word as pity the first syllable has the strong stress, the second being much weaker, and, by contrast, called unstressed. In deceive conditions are reversed, and the second syllable has the chief stress. This alternating of strong and weak or weak and strong stress occurs in breath-groups as well as in separate words. Thus, in ' He came, he saw, he con- ACCENT 27 quered,' uttered as a sentence, we find the following order of stressing : weak, strong, weak strong, weak, strong, weak. ' He came, he saw,' have each exactly the same order, the same system of stressing, as the word deceive. Stress is very important in language, not only because it serves to define meaning, but also because, as we shall see later on, a sound is often different according to whether it is strongly stressed or not. Intonation. — This is the name given to the pitch or note on which a sound is uttered. Stress and intonation are both classed by students of language under the general heading 'Accent.' In ordinary popular English speech, however. Accent generally means Stress, because in English Stress is the most prominent kind of Accent. Other languages, such as French, replace, for the most part, differences of Stress by differences of Intonation, to express emphasis ; while others, such as Swedish, make copious use of both forms of Accent. Intonation may he falling or rising. Falling intonation is heard in ' He was a good boy,' where the last word is pro- nounced on a lower tone than the rest of the sentence to express the simple undisputed fact. Rising intonation is used in the question 'Are you coming home to-day ?' where the last syllable is higher than the rest. Rising intonation is usually neces- sary in English to express interrogation, unless some interrogatory word be used, such as which or who, where it is unnecessary, as in ' Who was there ?' CHAPTER III THE SOUNDS OF ENGLISH The first thing which must be observed in studying a language is its pronunciation. We therefore begin our survey of our own language by enumerating the sounds now in use in educated polite speech. In the following list the ordinary symbols are used for each sound, and in order that there may be no mistake as to which sound is intended, several words are given to illustrate the sound under discussion. The letter, or letters, which in each case express the sound are in italics. To prevent error I have tried to pick out only such words as will contain the desired sound, in the pro- nunciation of every speaker who uses the sound at all, unless, of course, his natural dialect is very different indeed from mine. The Consonants. k, as in hick, cane, cart, crab. Note that this sound is spelt with A or c initially, but generally ck in the middle or end of words. Note also that q (or qu), as in quick, expresses merely the sound of k followed by w ; and that x, as in ^x, is simply k + s. 28 ENGLISH CONSONANTS 29 g, as in ^ve, ga.te, go, grieve, hig. ng, as in sing, bring, longing, tongue. Note that, although this sound is written ng, it has not the sound of either, but is a different sound altogether. It is one sound and not two, and has already been described (p. 21). In fitiger we pronounce not only ordinary ng, but also g, as in gave, after it. Some people, in Lancashire, for instance, pronounce this combination — that is, ng, and then g, as in ga.ve — also in such words as loreg'ing. t, as in ou ?' ^^ {' hit you ' becomes ' hitchu ' in rapid speech) ; creaiwre, feature (formerly pronounced kreetyure, feetyure, now with the ' cA-sound,' that is, t and sh). Similarly, in such combinations as ' met you,' ' Is thai jyou ?' ' I het you anything,' etc., the t zxidy tend to pass into -tch-. (3) The 2-sound followed by ^-sound passes into the sound heard initially in French jamais, and finally "^ in French rouge : ' I didn't come to prais^jrau,' ' please ^yourself '; the same sound is also heard in ' pleasMre,' ' a^ure,' ' leisure.' (4) In the combination n and g, n tends to become ng: ' He was drowned in goin g to save his brother ' *' 72 SOUND CHANGES IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH (the 'in' in such a sentence is often pronounced ' ing ' by careless speakers. (5) In the combination n before p, b, f, or v, n often becomes m : ' On p ayment,' ' on board ' (pro- nounced ' om' in both cases) ; ' in fact,' ' in vain ' (pronounced 'im ' in each case). (6) Consonant differently pronounced according to the vowel which follows. Contrast the A-sound in ' keen,' ' ^ick,' ' Kate,' etc., with that in ' cone,' ' cart,' ' cut,' ' caught,' ' cool,' etc. (7) Vowel differently pronounced according to whether it is followed by another vowel or by a consonant. Contrast the vowel naturally uttered in ' the eye,' ' the ear,' ' the arm,' etc., with that heard in ' the nose,' ' the leg,' ' the mouth,' etc. (8) Consonant lost or retained according to whether a consonant or vowel follows, r is not heard in ' far be it from me,' ' pure nonsense,' ' for me,' etc., before another consonant, nor finally in ' Is it far ?' ' The water's quite pure,' ' What's it for ?' but it is heard in the same words when the following word begins with a vowel, as : ' far away,' ' pure air,' ' for ever.' It should be noted that it in no way affects the point at issue if some of the pronunciations just described are considered by some people to be ' incorrect,' ' slovenly,' or ' careless.' We are not now setting up a jtandard of elegance of speech, but are indicating _what_ actually does take place in E nglis h pronunciation in the utistuHieST language of thousands, if not milirdris, of^^'efsohs. EveiT if the pronunciations described were one* and all ' vulgar,' which they certainly are not, provided that INFLUENCE OF STRESS ON PRONUNCIATION 73 they actually occur, which they certainly do, they would be just as instructive as if they were the height of refinement. As a matter of fact, the most fastidious speakers, when they are off their guard, are 'guilty' of many of those very combinativ e chang es, ji^. pronunci atio n which they condemn theoretically. For the moment, no judgment, for good or ill, is pronounced on any possible mode of English speech. (6) Influence of the Presence or Absence of Stress upon English Sounds.— (i) Double forms A- of prepositions, and auxiliary verbs resulting from strong and weak stress. (See short list of these given, pp. 39-40 above.) (2) Loss of the initial aspirate of pronouns {he, his, »^ him, her) in rapid consecutive speech, in sentences where these words do not receive stress. Contrast ' I told Aim Ae'd better come and see you ' — where ' him ' and ' he,' being unstressed, have either a very weak aspirate, or none at all — with the pronuncia- tion of the above pronouns as isolated words, when they always retain the aspirate, or with such a sentence as, ' It doesn't matter who is absent, if only he is there ; his presence is most important,' where the strong emphatic stress maintains the aspirate. (3) Vowels in pronouns, ' you ' ' he,' ' we,' * she,' altered according to whether they have strong or weak stress in. the sentence. T he vowel in ' you ' js that of ' pool ,' jKhgn_,£*'^^^^^'^ ' ^^^^ °^ 'P^^^' ^^^5 unstressed.; the vowel of "' he,' 'wi,' etc., is that of ' iree ' when stressed, that of ' hit ' when unstressed. (See notes on these sounds, p. 32 above.) (4) The vowel in the second element of a com- 74 SOUND CHANGES IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH pound is often different from that of the simple word, through absence of stress in the former case. Compare the sound in ' man ' with that in ' gentle- man,' ' Frenchman,' and that in ' men ' with the vowel of 'gentlemen,' etc. ; the vowel in 'ford ' with that in the second syllable of ' Oxford,' etc. The above examples in I. (a) and (6) are intended to illustrate some of the chief processes of combinative sound change which take place at the present day. Many other examples of a similar character may be observed by the student for himself, and these should be carefully collected. II. IsoLATivE Sound Changes in Present-day English. Besides sound changes which are due to the influence of other sounds, or of stress, there is another class which is equally interesting and im- portant. In the course of time the pronunciation of a language undergoes changes which appear to arise and develop in certain sounds ; so far as we can tell, without the influence of surrounding sounds, or of stress, the changes are due to a natural and spon- taneous tendency on the part of the speakers of the language to pronounce the old sounds in a new way. This class of independent sound changes are known as Isolative Changes. The new pronunciation comes about so gradually that even those who live a great many years are unaware that their own speech, and that of those around them, is changing. They are, as a rule, unable to compare the speech current in their boyhood with that of their old age. We have already noted (p. 56) that the speech of very old people often presents some perceptible HISTORY OF LANGUAGE IN ACTUAL PROCESS 75 differences, to the ear of the careful observer, from that of the young and rising generation. The examples given above to illustrate this, how- ever, were not really of the nature of actual change of sound, but only of a different distribution of the same sounds. It now remains to inquire whether it is possible to discover in the speech of the rising generation of the present day — of people, that is, of from ten to twenty years of age — any appreciable differences of pro- nunciation, any tendencies towards altogether new sounds, compared with the manner of speech of ^^ persons of the same education and class who belong to an ^lier generation — persons, that is to say, between thirty-five and fffty-five at the present time. Considering the question from the point of view of the latter class, I can perceive tendencies in the younger generation which are either lacking in my own speech, or so little developed as to be inap- preciable. On the other hand, I am conscious of sharing, to some slight extent, tendencies of change and modes of pronunciation with the younger genera- tion, which I am unable to trace in the English of persons twenty or thirty years older than myself. These peculiarities include both actual differences of sound and different distribution of the same sounds. (On this distinction, see pp. 50-54 above.) The mere differences of habit in the use of sounds in certain words are easy to note. The new tendencies towards a different series of sounds — that is, an actual modi- fication of the sounds of the older generation — are far more difficult to fix, and more difficult to describe in a popular treatise like the present, in which it 76 SOUND CHANGES IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH would be absurd to assume an exact acquaintance with scientific Phonetics on the part of those for whom it is primarily intended. At the same time, the whole question is so important, since it involves catching English pronunciation in the very act of changing — that is, in the act of making part of its history — that an attempt must be made, with the imperfect means at our disposal for such an exposi- tion, to give some indication of the changes and tendencies in question. If we can indicate in what directions the points for observation lie, the intelligent student will be on the alert, and personal observation will soon give definiteness to his ideas. The following remarks apply only to the Standard form of English, and in no way to the speech of those who are definitely influenced by Regional Dialects. On the conception of Standard English, and of Regional Dialects, see pp. 46-49 above. Examples of Isolative Changes in Progress at the the Present Time. I. Loss of Vowel Murmur. — (See notes on pp. 32- 33> 35 (/)> 36 (§'), etc., above.) The combinations -ore, -our, -or-, and war-, followed by another consonant, are still pronounced by many with the aw-sound (as in saw), followed by the vowel murmur. Probably this, pronunciation is already distinctly old-fashioned (when not a provincialism) before consonants — that is, in words like 'fourth,' 'forth,' 'ford,' 'sword,' 'port,' ' warp,' etc. In such cases the usual pronunciation of people of, say, from thirty to fifty years of age, and, of course, of the younger generation, seems to be THE PRONUNCIATION OF 'SWORD' AS 'SAWED' 77 simply ' awd,' etc., without any vowel murmur before the consonant. Thus, no difference is made between ' sword ' and * sawed,' ' Lord ' and ' Laud,' ' drawers ' and ' draws,' and so on. This is to a certain extent a combinative change. But many people whose pronunciation has lost the vowel murmur in the above cases still retain it in cases where no consonant follows, as in 'pour,' ' war,' 'floor,' 'core,' etc. Now, the younger genera- tion (and many persons of middle age also) pro- nounce no vowel murmur in these cases any more than in the former, but pronounce pour like paw, floor like flaw, core like caw, sore and soar like saw, and so on. 2. Loss of Vowel Murmur, and Alteration of Preceding Vowel. — The combinations -ure, -ur, a vowel sound, as in sure, pure, cure, endure, fury, etc., are pronounced by the older generation like ' sewer ' (or 'shewer '), 'pewer,' 'feweri,' etc. ; that is, the -ur has a sound like the word you, followed by the vowel murmur. The pronunciation of the middle and younger generations is simply the aw-sound, with no murmur after it, and the sound of y (as in yacht) before it, which might be roughly expressed by 'yaw' — thus, 'pyaw,' ' kyaw,' 'fyawry,' etc. Note that the new pronunciation ' shaw,' for sure, shows also a combinative change oi ' sy' to 'sh' {cf. p. 29 above). 3. Loss of r between Vowels. — Although this sound has long been lost, in Standard English, before consonants (see p. 31 above), it is retained by most speakers of thirty and upwards, in the middle of words before vowels and at the end of words, in 78 SOUND CHANGES IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH sentences where the next word begins with a vowel (see p. 72 (8) above). Now, there appears to be a well - established tendency among the younger generation to omit r (i) in phrases like 'for ever,' ' I'm sure of it' (pro- nounced ' shaw of it '), ' there are plenty,' ' far away,' 'four apples' { = ' iaw apples'), and so on. But the r- sound is not only disappearing at the end of words before the vowel of the next, but the tendency is being extended (2) to r between vowels in the middle of words. The result is that quite young people tend to omit the sound in words like ' fury ' (pronounced 'fydw-y'), 'fairy,' 'fiery,' 'pouring' (pronounced 'pdw-ing'), 'Victoria' (pronounced 'Victawya'), etc. So far, the present writer has rarely heard the r dropped between vowels in the middle of words, except in cases where the sound immediately preceding the r was either a long vowel or a diphthong. Doubtless in time the tendency will also spread to words where the first vowel is short, such as ' very,' ' Harry,' ' hurry.' It should be said that the disappearance of r seems to be further advanced in cases belonging to (i) above than in (2). This tendency seems directly opposed to that of an earlier generation of speakers to develop an r- sound, to avoid hiatus, when two vowels occurred together, and to say ' put your umbrella-r-up,' ' the idea-r-of it,' ' Victoria-r-our Queen,' and ' drawring ' for ' drawing,' etc. 4. Loss of Second Element of Diphthong before a Murmur Vowel.— (i) Words hke ' Kre,' ' higher,' ' sire,' ' prior,' ' iron,' contain in the pronunciation of the older and part of the middle generation the INFLUENCE OF THE MURMUR VOWEL 79 diphthong popularly known as ' long i ' (see p. 35 (e) above), followed by the murmur vowel. The new tendency is to suppress the second element (the ' i '-sound, as in ' it ') before the murmur vowel. The result is that instead of 'long f,' followed by the murmur vowel, we get simply a shortened form of the first vowel in 'father,' followed by the murmur. Thus, instead of the older 'fl-er,' we get 'fa-er,' which differs from 'far' only in having a final murmur after the a. Taking this in conjunction with what has been said in the preceding para- graph (3), we see that instead of 'fi-er-i ' (with the y-sound pronounced) for 'fiery,' the pronunciation of the younger generation is 'fd-e(r)-y,' with no r-sound and no i-sound in the first syllable. The other i-diphthong (see p. 35 (d) above) tends in the same direction before the murmur vowel. Thus, the pronunciation of 'prayer ' so as to rhyme with 'care,' and of ' layer ' so that it is identical with ' lair,' is already well established among the middle genera- tion. Now, however, such words as ' player,' ' be- trayer,' are following in the same path.* (2) The ^-diphthongs (see p. 34 {a) and (6) above) similarly lose the M-element before the murmur vowel. Such words as ' slower,' ' goer,' ' lower,' ' rower,' etc., tend to become almost ' raw-er,' ' law-er,' etc. In this case the first and remaining element of the diph- thong undergoes modification. The same process involves the oM-diphthong (as in 'house,' etc.). * For many speakers, the simple words ' betray,' 'play,' in- fluence the pronunciation of ' betray-er,' 'play-er,' so that the ■ay (' long-a ') preserves its full sound before the murmur vowel in these and similar words. 8o SOUND CHANGES IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH The diphthong is no longer clearly heard, among the younger generation, in such words as 'power,' 'shower,' 'flour' and 'flower,' "tower," etc. It would seem that what happens in these words is that the first element of the diphthong is very slightly lengthened, and then, in place of the full M-sound of the second element, only a very slight bringing together of the lips takes place, which is instantly removed, and finally comes the murmur vowel. It is this slight and momentary action of the lips which alone appears to distinguish ' tower ' from ' tire ' in the new pronunciation, while ' tar ' is distinguished from both by the absence of any vowel murmur and the greater length of the vowel a. If this tendency continues, one would expect that at last the murmur itself would vanish, thus leaving no distinction between ' tire ' and ' tar.' Later still, possibly the lip-action in 'tower,' etc., will disappear, levelling it with the present ' tire,' and with the subsequent loss of the final vowel murmur, ' hour ' and ' tower ' will be completely levelled under ' are ' and ' tar,' together with ' ire ' and ' tire.' 5. The substitution of -n' for -ng has already been discussed (p. 54 above). 6. The spread of the aw-sound to many words which formerly had the ' short ' sound, as in ' not,' seems to be typical of the pronunciation of the younger generation. (For the class of words referred to, see p. 53 above.) 7. Change in the 'ii,' sound in 'put,' 'good,' 'shoitid,' etc. — There appears to be a distinct tendency to ' unround ' this vowel. (For explana- tion of term, see p. 22 above.) It is impossible to SURVIVALS OF OLD CHANGES 8i describe the process or the resultant sound without a proper phonetic terminology, but to make the matter clear to those who are not yet trained in Phonetics, we may say that the new tendency is apparently in the direction of the sound in 'hut.' The new sound is far from having reached the sound of ' bMt ' as yet, but if the tendency really gains ground, and progresses, that is the sound which we^may expect to hear fifty years hence as the regular received pronunciation. If the reader wishes to compare the old and new sounds, he should confront a man of upwards of fifty with a youth between fifteen and twenty-five, and by listening to their alternate utterances of such words as those given in the heading of this paragraph he will probably perceive the difference. B. Sound Differences in Closely Related Words in Present-day English which are not due to Tendencies now in Operation. There are in Present-day English many pairs, and also whole groups, of words which, although very similar, if not identical, in meaning, and sufficiently alike in form to suggest some kind of relationship, are yet distinguished by certain differences in their vowel or consonant s6unds, or in both. The differences in the words referred to cannot be explained by any tendency to, or process of sound change, now active, which affects some of these words and not others, and thus causes the differences between them. Nothing in Modern English c^n produce these differences, and we shall 6 82 SOUND CHANGES IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH therefore, for the present, not attempt to explain the differences of form, but shall merely enumerate a considerable number of such pairs or groups of words, most of which will be perfectly familiar to the reader, although in some cases he may not have thought of the relationship. (a) Differences affecting Vowel Sounds — (i) Differences primarily dependent upon Alterations of Quantity. — Breathe — breath; child — children; defile — filih; one— an; leap — leapt; doom — king-rfow; Kings- town (in Ireland) — Kingstow- on -Thames; wide — width. ; lea — Beck-ley, etc. ; white — Whit-hy ; south— southern; goose — gosling; sheep — shep-herd; house — hMssy (huzzif) ; out — utmost ; street — Stret-foid. (2) Differences involving primarily Alteration in the Quality or Nature of the Vowel. — (a) Cow — kine ; drought — dry; mouse — mice; thought — think; louse — lice ; foul — de-file ; foot— feet ; doom — deem ; goose — geese; food^eed; brother — brethren; taught — teach; sought — seek, he-seech; hot — htat ; broad — breadth; blood — bleed; lode- (stone, star, etc.) — lead; dole — deal; gold — gild; fox — vixen; full^fill; thumb — thimble; bond — bend; whole — heal; borough — Bury; bought — buy; broom — bramble. (/3) Cool — cold; cock — chick; bite — bitter; water — wet; sit — sat — seat — set (p. 197); field— fold; bind — band — hound; bear — bier — bore; ride — rode a.nd road ; freeze— froze ; brought — bring; stock— stack; blind — blend. (b) Differences affecting the Consonants.— Care — cheer; cool and cold— cAill; cock — chick; cooA — kitch-en; seek — he-seech; liAe — lycA-gate; han^ — hinge; drin^— drenc/j ; stinA — stench; hdsik—hench ; VARIANTS OF THE SAME ROOT 83 thin^ — thought; seek — sought; bring- — brought; wife — wives ; life — lives ; hxe&th — hvesthe ; south — southern ,- of — off; is — a.re ; was — were ; lose — lorn, and for-lorM; freeze — fiore (obsolete for frozen); draw — drajy; sla.ughtei — slay,- dawn — day; lay and lie — ledge ; fly — Hedge ; might — main ; blight — blain. All the words in the above lists which are con- nected by a stroke are historically and etymo- logically related — that is, the various forms go back to one original form. The variety of development which one original ' root ' or 'Jbase ' has undergone in the course of time is the result of different Combinative influences. None of the above varieties are due to forces now at work in English. The causes of the differences, which are of various nature, and belong to different periods of the language, have long since ceased to exist. We see, however, that the results remain. It should be noted that these differences occur, not only in what are known as different parts of the same verb, or between the singular and plural of the same noun, but often, also, in words, closely related in meaning, it is true (such as gold — gild), but now quite independent words representing different parts of speech. The explana- tion of these changes, as we have said, is to be found in the remote past history of English. The student should bear in mind that some of the Combinative influences which we have noted as occurring in activity at the present day are tending to alter the forms of words just as similar forces have done in the past. The student should also try to collect other relics of past changes in Present-day English. 6—2 CHAPTER VII SPEAKING AND WRITING We have already pointed out, in the first chapter of this book, that originally the written language is merely a reproduction, in another form, of the spoken language. When men first began to use written symbols of an alphabetic kind, all they could do was to make as faithful an expression as was possible by this means of the language which they spoke. Thus, the symbols of the alphabet, each endowed with a phonetic value, were used to represent, as closely as their nature would permit, the sounds which occurred in the speech of him who traced them. Similarly, the general structure of the sentences, the words and expressions used — in a word, the Style of ordinary spoken English — were simply set down in writing. In the beginnings of prose writing the differences which we now observe between the language of literature and that of ordinary life did not exist. It is true that most races develop song and poetry, which is learnt by heart, and handed on by word of mouth, long before they have learnt the art of writing. 84 RISE OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE 85 The language of this, as of all poetry, would differ in several ways from ordinary colloquial speech. For one thing, it was in metre, and for another, it would necessarily soon become archaic — that is, old- fashioned, as compared with the colloquial idiom. For we must reflect that the spoken language of everyday life is perpetually changing, and would soon diverge from the language of traditional poetry, since this, from the nature of the case, could not keep pace with the colloquial language. One was fixed, and handedi on from generation to generation in nearly the form in which it was composed ; the other was ever changing and acquiring new features, while it modified or lost the old. First Attempts at Writing Language. We may suppose that when language was first written down, the early attempts would be of a very simple character. Names of Kings and other great personages were inscribed on stones, and later on a sentence descriptive of those who had borne the names ; single words, supposed to possess a magical character, were graven upon sword-hilts or rings, to act as charms. Such were the uses to which letters were first put by our own ancestors. The earliest characters employed by the Germanic peoples, of whom the English tribes formed one group, were strange angular letters, known as Runes. This word simply meant mystery, and the reason of its use in this connexion may have been due either to the fact that writing was looked upon as something mysterious and uncanny, or to the circumstance 86 SPEAKING AND WRITING that the characters were chiefly employed for magic purposes. The shape of the earhest forms of the Runic letters was such that they were eminentl}' suitable for cutting or scratching upon hard sub- stances, such as stone, metal, or wood. The very word ' write,' which we use so commonly, meant originally to ' scratch ' or ' tear.' In German the word retssen, which is descended from the same word as our ' write,' still means simply to ' tear,' and has no connexion, in that language, with the idea of ' writing ' in our sense. It is doubtful whether the Runes were in frequent and widespread use, or whether they were ever employed, in very early times, for long documents. It is true that a cross at Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire, which dates from the Anglo-Saxon period, bears a portion of a well-known Old English poem in the Runic character, but this was made after the other kind of writing, in characters borrowed from the Irish, but originally of Roman origin, had been in- troduced into this country, and had superseded the old letters for all practical purposes. The new characters were not used by the English before their conversion to Christianity in the seventh century. The oldest documents which we possess, written in the newly acquired characters, are charters or grants of land by Kings, written on parchment, in the seventh and eighth centuries. These documents are mainly in Latin, but contain a few English words — names of places, people, and landmarks. It does not seem probable that the old songs, which people knew by heart, were written down very early. In any case, we do not possess any early NEED FOR A LITERARY STYLE 87 copies of the oldest songs. The reason of this was no doubt, partly, that after the introduction of Christianity, the Clergy discouraged these produc- tions as savouring of barbarism and heathendom; partly, that they were so well known that it was thought unnecessary to write them down. If we make an exception for these old poems, then, the first attempts at writing down English were of a purely practical nature ; charters, wills, messages and letters from great people, these form the earliest written ' Literature,' and while the spelling in such works would be an attempt to express the pronuncia- tion of the writer as well as possible, the style could scarcely be other than that of ordinary speech — in its most careful and accurate form. Growth of a Literary as Distinct from a Colloquial Language. But a people who possessed the art of writing, and whose civilization was growing, would not long rest content not to have books of one kind or another. Learned men could only teach by word of mouth those with whom they came into direct contact; but their writings could be read by those who had never seen the authors, and long after they were dead. So gradually men learnt more and more, and taught more and more, with the result that prose literature began to develop. People wanted to know about their ancestors, and also that their children's children should know what they them- selves had done, and so came the beginnings of 88 SPEAKING AND WRITING English History. The great Saint and Scholar Bede wrote — in Latin, it is true — a history of the Church in England, wherein, incidentally, a great deal of such other history concerning our people as he could gather from well-authenticated tradition, and from reliable eyewitnesses, is also recorded. This he did in the eighth century. More than a century later, the greatest King, warrior, and patriot that this country has ever seen caused Bede's History to be translated into the English of his day. King Alfred was no less admirable in peace than in war, and we may date the beginnings of English Prose, so far as we have VV any record of it, from the labours of himself and his Bishops. He started a regular Chronicle of the principal events of each year in England ; he trans- lated works on History, Religion, and Philosophy ; he reissued and amended the Laws of his ancestors. Under this Prince learning and piety, and the arts of peace were fostered and established. Now, when the habit of co;nposing works in a language and of writing them down becomes fre- quent, two results necessarily follow: One is that a fixed system of spelling, which practically every one adopts, becomes established ; the other is that what is known as a Literary Style develops, which is different from, and in some ways better, more eloquent, and more exact than, the style of colloquial speech. These points may be considered separately. I. Divergence of Spelling from Pronunciation. — We assume that in all cases, when a language is first written down, the spelling is as nearly phonetic as the set of symbols at the disposal of the writers RELATION OF SPELLING TO PRONUNCIATION 89 wall allow. It is surely clear that in these circum- stances people do not use the same symbol to express several different sounds, unless they have fewer symbols than they have sounds to express. It is also certain that men do not begin by writing down symbols which express no sound at all, as in Modem English bright, where gh do not stand for any consonantal sounds which occur in the pronunciation of the word. But supposing that the spelling has become fixed, because age after age people continue to write as their ancestors wrote hundreds of years before. In this case, if the pronunciation changes, which it certainly has done in English, the spelling ceases, on the whole, to be phonetic ; for with the advance of time pronunciation grows farther and farther away from it. The only languages which are as nearly as possible phonetically spelt at the present day are those in which the pronunciation has hardly changed at all since the spelling was fixed, like Welsh and Finnish . If, in addition to this conservatism in pronunciation, the set of symbols employed is very complete, so that every sound which exists in the language has a special s}Tnbol to represent it, as is practically the case in Russian, then we get as near perfection in the correspondence between sound and symbol as it is possible to attain. In Old Enghsh (that_iSj_J:he. language from the beginnings ol our historj' down to abo ut 1080) the symbols were very nearly, though not quite, adequate ' to express the pronunciation. In addition to this, although the spelling of each age was fairly fixed, still, from time to time, as very remarkable changes 90 SPEAKING AND WRITING in pronunciation developed, the system of spelling was gradually adapted so as to record them. The process of adapting spelling to pronunciation continued in English until soon after the introduction of printing in 1475. Since thfen few changes in spelling, and these, for the most part, not of a phonetic character, have taken place, although pro- nunciation has continued to change all the time. Hence, at the present time, our spelling is very unsatisfactory. We shall return later on in more detail to the explanation of some of the more remarkable features of English spelling. 2. Divergence of Literary Style from that of the Spoken Language.— The style of prose, as we have already said, cannot differ, in the beginnings, from the style of the spoken lan- guage. The language of books at the present day is very different from that of ordinary colloquial speech. This difference is due to the fact that writers follow a Literary Tradition, and mould their style upon other writings — at least, to a great extent. In so far as writers follow literary tradition, their written style will differ from the language of every- day life ; in so far as they write more or less as they speak, the style of their books will agree with that of - colloquial English. But when the writing of books is in its infancy, there can be no literary tradition behind, and in this case prose style can only follow the best, clearest, and most expressive models which can be found in Spoken Language. But a literary tradition is soon created. Words, phrases, turns of expression, which are usual in the speech of common life, and which there seem THE LANGUAGE OF ORATORY 91 natural and suitable, appear too trivial, too common, and devoid of sufficient dignity for a permanent record of great events, or the treatment of solemn and lofty themes. Whence can a literary language come in the first instance ? What sources of vocabulary and phrase- ology, other than colloquial speech, are at the disposal of a writer in a language which as yet possesses no literary tradition ? Sources of Literary Style. The first of these would appear to be the language of oratory. Even the most barbarous peoples, such as the Red Indians of North America, or the Maories of New Zealand, who, of course, have nothing in the shape of written literature, still have considerable natural gifts of oratory. The art of eloquence, or the faculty of speaking in such a way as to stir large companies of people, to rouse their enthusiasm for a common cause, or to kindle their respect and loyalty for a chief or a leader, is one that must be practised from the moment that men are banded together in tribes or armies, under the authority of chief or captain, for purposes either of war or peaceful communal life. The devices of orators to command attention, to interest and persuade an audience, are well known. Expressive gestures, dramatic tones of voice, and phrases which strike the imagination and appeal to the hearts or minds of the hearers, are all brought into play. We are especially concerned with the last. The well-known words and phrases of every- 92 SPEAKING AND WRITING day life do not suffice by themselves for the orator's effect. He uses a vocabulary which is less common- place—a diction which is more stately, elaborate, and pointed than those of ordinary conversation. His model is the traditional language of the poet or minstrel, and of the oratory of his race. The charac- teristics of these forms of speech are that they are more or less remote and different from colloquial speech, and that they are more or less archaic — that is, old-fashioned. The comparatively high polish which the language of minstrelsy and of oratory often shows, even among peoples who have no written literature, and the care with which these are cultivated, frequently for long ages, makes them the natural models of the first efforts towards literary style, when the need for this is felt. Another source from which the language of litera- ture is enriched and beautified is the vocabulary and sentence - structure of a foreign language with a higher and older literary development. In Modern English, for instance, such a word as coruscate, instead of the homelier English glitter, is often used for the purpose of giving variety and dignity to a sentence. These, then, are the two main sources of develop- ment of literary style in the first instance : the tradi- tional poetry and oratory of the native language, and elements of vocabulary and structure adopted from foreign languages. The chief features which distinguish a literary from a colloquial style are that the former is archaic, that it is less familiar and commonplace, and that it is more careful and deliberate than the latter. The style of public speaking lies between that of 'TALKING LIKE A BOOK' 93 books and that of everyday life. It is rather more archaic and careful than the latter, rather less so than the former. Speaking and Writing in Modern English. If we now apply what has been said generally of the distinction between the language of Literature and Colloquial Speech to our native tongue, we find that it holds good. It is sometimes said, though not by way of praise, that a man talks as though he were 'addressing a public meeting,' or as though he were ' delivering a lecture.' This means that there is a noticeable difference between the English which we are ac- customed to expect in ordinary familiar conversa- tion, and that which we expect from the platform or the pulpit. To introduce the style of a lecture, a public speech, or a sermon, into private life and intercourse is an offence against good taste which is commonly resented and condemned. But a still more serious charge is sometimes brought against pompous and pedantic people — namely, that they ' talk like a book.' This is even worse than ' lecturing ' instead of carrying on an easy and natural conversation. The style of books is even more archaic, and more unsuited for the requirements of ordinary friendly converse, than that of public speech. We see, on reflection, that in Modern English there are at least these three main types of language : two forms of spoken English, that of private life 94 SPEAKING AND WRITING and that of public oration ; and in addition the language of books. The language of the public speaker is liable to almost infinite variation in the degree of homeliness which it displays; sometimes it is so measured, highly wrought, and lofty in diction that it is scarcely distinguishable from literary style. Again, it may tend in the opposite direction, towards extreme colloquialism. The precise nature of good oratorical style is determined by the occasion, the subject, and by the size of the audience. It must not be supposed that we assert that the three styles of English we have referred to are so distinct one from the other that they do not shade almost im- perceptibly into each other. The natural conversa- tional style of people who have much to do with books is liable to be much influenced thereby, and to them many words and phrases are habitual which in the mouths of other less cultured persons would seem unnatural and unsuitable, although used in similar circumstances. But the written and the spoken language, among all classes of speakers, constantly act and react upon one another. The language of ordinary life, directly or indirectly, is always being influenced by the literature of the age ; but far more important is the influence which the colloquial speech of any period exerts upon the language of literature. We shall see that the close connexion between spoken and written language, which exists under healthy circumstances, is the life of the latter, and the chief means whereby it is vitalized and made a good instrument to express the spirit of the age. GOOD TASTE DECIDES WHAT IS 'CORRECT' 95 If we wish to see the connexion between the language of literature and spoken language in a proper light, it is of the utmost importance to realize that spoken language comes first : it is not derived from books ; it has an origin which is necessarily altogether independent of literature ; it has a life and a history which are separate and distinct from those of the written language ; and if this had no existence at all, language, which is uttered, heard, and handed on from generation to generation, would still continue to live and develop. Nothing is more mistaken than the view which is sometimes taught, that the colloquial style is less ' correct ' than that of books, and that such contrac- tions, for instance, as isn't, can't^ they're (they are), I've, he'll, and hundreds of others which are habitual to all good speakers of English, are in reality vulgar- isms, which ' correct ' speakers should avoid. The fact is, that these forms are in many cases the only ' correct ' forms in colloquial speech, and to use is not, they are, he will, and so on, would be pedantic or worse, if that be possible. Whether it is at all times suitable and convenient to use these colloquial forms in public speaking is an entirely different question, and one which the good taste of the speaker must decide, with proper regard to the occasion and the audience. The use of literary or semi-literary words and expressions in colloquial speech is often a worse offence than the use of colloquial expressions in public speaking or in writing. Good writers know by instinct just how far familiar expressions may be introduced into a literary production ; good speakers 96 SPEAKING AND WRITING feel, in the same may, just where to draw the hne, in colloquial speech, between what is expressive and appropriate on the one hand, and on the other, what would be pompous and affected. When children first try to write, an essay, let us say, they have to learn that much that is perfectly ' right,' and permissible in ordinary conversation, is trivial and out of place in a serious, written prose. They must learn literary terms, and must further learn how far these can be mingled with more familiar words. The precise value of a word, whether as an element in literature or in speech, can only be felt and understood by practice and ex- perience. We need to know not merely the bare meaning of a word or phrase, but what are the associations of ideas which it calls up. This is the difficult lesson of every one who is learning to speak and write a language, whether it be his own or a foreign tongue. Foreigners make terrible mistakes by mixing up the colloquial and the more elevated styles in writing English. Thus, a native Indian writer, who compiled, in English, the life of a relative, referred to this gentleman's appointment as a Judge of the Supreme Court as ' altogether judicious and tip-top: Again, when he visited the house where the Judge had died suddenly, he found ' a house of mourning, confusion everywhere — in fact, a pretty kettle of fish.' We have here examples of expressions which, under other circumstances, would be perfectly proper, but which become ridiculous by being applied to occa- sions and in a context where they have no possible place. CHARACTER OF WORDS DUE TO ASSOCIATION 97 Finally, we must remember that words in them- selves, and from their own nature, are neither good nor bad, dignified nor the reverse. They receive their power and their precise significance from long custom and usage. The associations which cluster round them, and whence they derive their peculiar expressiveness for good or ill, for noble or ignoble use, often reach back into the roots of our race's history, and that of our language. The degree of mastery of a language which we possess, and our power to use the appropriate word, depends very largely upon our knowledge of the precise feelings and ideas associated with each element in our vocabulary. CHAPTER VIII WHAT IS MEANT BY THE HISTORY OF A LAN- GUAGE—LANDMARKS IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH How we know that Language changes. Hitherto we have dealt almost entirely with the English Language as it is at the present moment, and have only incidentally dwelt upon the fact that it was not always as we know it now, but that it has slowly reached its present form from something very different. In other words, we have up to this point hardly dwelt at all upon the fact that English, in common with all other languages which now exist, has a history in the past. The meaning of the phrase the History of a Language it is our present business to try to explain. It is easy to say that English was once very different from what it is now, but, you may say, how can we know this ? Some of the observations which we made in a former chapter (pp. 56-57, 59, 67-68, 74-81) will put us on the track of the truth. In considering the varieties which exist at the present day in English speech, we saw that not only do people from different parts of the country, or belonging to different social divisions, 98 PAST HISTORY OF ENGLISH 99 speak differently from each other, but that certain differences exist, in pronunciation, in vocabulary, and in phraseology, between people of the same class from the same district, but of different age. We have also indicated that certain tendencies to change can be detected in our own pronunciation, and that of our contemporaries. Now, as a rule, the oldest people we are likely to meet belong to the same generation as our own grandfathers, or at most our great - grandfathers. As children we may meet and speak to persons of eighty years, or a little more — persons, that is, who are from two to three generations older than ourselves. But if the English language can change so far in from sixty to eighty years that the differences are ob- servable, it is surely obvious that 600, 800, 1,000, or 1,200 years ago, it must have been immensely different from its present form. For there is no reason to sup- pose that those things which we can actually observe now going on in language have not gone on in the past and from the earliest times. If English has changed more or less in sixty or eighty years, and is still changing, it is therefore reasonable to suppose that the longer the period we allow, the greater will the changes be. We can note the changes that have taken place in the comparatively short time mentioned, but how can we know what changes took place at earlier times, the language of which we can no longer hear ? Now, although we cannot hear the living voice of the people who lived hundreds of years ago, we can yet read what they wrote if it has been preserved. We have seen in Chapter VI. that our earliest know- 7—2 loo THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE ledge of English from written sources goes back about 1,200 years. From the seventh century onwards we have an ever-increasing mass of writings, of all kinds, written in the English of the different periods. So much, then, as can be learnt from written forms of language, we can learn concerning the past of the English language during this long period. It is clear that so far as changes in vocabulary, in grammar, and in phraseology, and the way of building sentences, are concerned, we have plenty of means of studying these in the written language. But as concerns pronunciation the case is different ; we have only symbols or letters, and not the sounds themselves. How, then, can we tell what the pro- nunciation of English was like before the time of the oldest persons now living ? We have no absolutely direct means of discovering this, but fortunately we have other evidence which is pretty conclusive. A. Changes in the Pronunciation of English. There are four principal means of finding out the sounds used in English before the present day. These are : (i) changes in spelling ; (2) the evidence of Rhymes; (3) comparison with other languages; (4) the testimony of writers in the past concerning their own pronunciation. I. Changes in Spelling.— As we have seen, down to the introduction of Printing, English spelling changes from age to age in such a way that we cannot doubt but that in many cases changes of sound are implied. For instance, if down to the middle of WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM RHYMES loi the twelfth century, or thereabouts, we find ham, ban, Stan, gat, written for 'home,' 'bone,' 'stone,' ' goat,' and if after that date we find hoom, boon, stoon, goot, got, or goat ; and if in all other words which had a long vowel, expressed by a in the first period, the spelling, in the second, is changed to oo, etc., we can hardly doubt that the two spellings express very different sounds. And since in Present-day English these words all have what we call ' a long o,' we are justified in assuming that when the spelling o, etc., comes in, the pronunciation has changed to a sound approximating to ' a long o-sound.' 2. The Evidence of Rhymes. — If we examine the words which occur as rhymes in the works of the English poets of the past, we find that a very large proportion of such words would make perfectly good rhymes at the present time. The cases where the older and more recent poetry agree in rhyming the same words tell us nothing, of course, concerning the precise nature of the pro- nunciation of the words in question at any given period ; all we can gather from such evidence is that two or more words which have the same sound to-day, also had the same sound in earlier times. But so far as we can tell from this line of investiga- tion alone, the actual sound which is common to a group of words may have been precisely the same in the days of Chaucer as at the present time. But by the side of the very large majority of rhymes in the English poets from the days of Pope back to those of Chaucer which are the same as poets of the present day would use, there are others which no poet of the present day would employ, or 102 THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE if he did so, the result would be, by common consent, a bad rhyme. We may give a few instances from Pope, Shakespeare, and Chaucer, of rhymes which we have reason to believe were good rhymes at the time the poets wrote, but which would not be good from the point of view of the actual pronunciation of English in our own time. ' Fine by defect and delicately weak, Their happy spots the nice admirer take.' ^ Moral Essays, Epistle ii., 11. 43-4. ' Last night, her lord was all that's good and great ; A knave this morning, and his will a cheat' ^ Ihid., 11. 141-2. ' While the gaunt mastiff growling at the gate, Affrights the beggar whom he longs to eat.' Moral Essays, Epistle iii., 11. 195-6- ' A hireling scribbler or a hireling peer, Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shir ^, ' etc. ^ Epistle to Arbuthnot, 11. 364-5. ' Whose word is truth, as sacred as revered As heav'n's own oracles from altars heard,.' To Augustus, 11. 27-8. V ' But for the wits of either Charles's days. The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease. ' v Ibtl/il 107-8. ' At length, by wholesome dread of statutes bound, The poets learned to please, and not to wtfund. ' * Ibid., M. 257-8. 'Waller was smooth ; but Dryden taught to join The varying verse, the full resounding line, Tlie long majestic march, and energy divine.' Ibid., M. 267-9 RHYMES OF SHAKESPEARE AND CHAUCER 103 A few examples of a similar kind from Shakespeare are: ■ And midst the sentence so her accent breaks, That twice she doth begin ere once she speaks.' Rape of Lucrece, M. 566-7. From the Sonnets: Departest — convertest (xi.); herd — beard (xii.) ; art — convert (xiv.) ; come — tomb ; deserts — parts; tongue — song (xvii.); brood — blood (xix.) ; created — defeated (xx.) ; beloved — removed (xxv.) ; past — wa^e ; foregone — moan (xxx.) ; worth — forth (xxxviii.) ; feast — guest (xlvii.)- From the poetry of Chaucer we learn not only that words which do not rhyme now did so in his day, implying a difference of vowel sound, but also that some words were differently accented then, and, further, that in many words syllableswSich modern language has lost we still retained in the fourteenth century. These last two points we deduce from the requirements of metre. In the following extracts the stress is marked in cases where it differs from present usage, and syllables now lost, but retained by Chaucer, are italicized. The examples are all from the Knightes Tale, and the numbers refer to the lines of that poem. ' To ransake in the tas of bodyes dedd Hem for to strepe of barneys and of wede.' 148-9. [' To ransack in the heap of dead bodies, In order to strip them of their armour and clothes.'] The word weed in this sense now survives only in the phrase widow's weeds. 104 THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE ' And myn is love as to a creature, \_ea pronounced as two vowels. For which I tolde thee myn aventiire.' 300-1. 'The pure fettres on his shines grete [pure=' very.'] Wer(e)n of his bittre salte teres wete.' 421-2. ' To see my lady, that I love and serve In her presence I recche not to sterve.' lrecche=' reck '; to sterve =' to die,' ' if I die.' 539-40- ' In gaude grene hir statue clothed was [gaude grene =' green dye.' With bowe in honde and arwes in a cas.' 1221-2. ' Somme woln ben armed on hir legges weel, [well] And have an ax, and somme a mace of steel.' 1265-6. (The same rhyme occurs again, 11. 1299-1300.) ' With Arcita in stories as men finde, The grete Emetreus, the King of Inde . . .' 1297-8. ' An hundred lordes hadde he with him there, Al armed, sauf hir heddes in al hir gere ' [gear]. 1321-2. ' But mercy, lady bright, that knowest weel My thought, and seest what harmes that I feel.' 1373-4- ' Th' encens, the clothes, and the remenent al That to the sacrifyce longen shal.' 1419-20. Earlier Views on Chaucer's Metre. — The fact that such words as ' harmes,' ' clothes,' etc., were pronounced with two syllables in the fourteenth century was not generally realized until the ap- THE DISCOVERIES OF GRAY AND TYRWHITT 105 pearance of the essay on Chaucer's Language and Metre by Thomas T3Twhitt, which was published in 1775 in the four-volume edition of the Canterbury Tales from the hand of this editor. Previously to Tyrwhitt's discovery, Johnson, in the Rambler (No. 88, 1785) had hinted at the probability that our ancestors pronounced certain syllables which we no longer pronounce, but his remarks do not refer specially to Chaucer. The first critic who really pointed out the difference of accent and in the number of syllables of the older forms of English as compared with the modern was Gray the poet, who arrived quite independently at the truth, and embodied it in his two essays. On English Metre and On the Poems of Lydgate. These essays were written long before the appearance of Tyrwhitt's edition, but were not published until 1814, in the so- called Eton Edition of Mathias. Tyrwhitt's dis- covery is therefore perfectly independent and original. With that just insight which informs all Gray's critical work, he remarks (Mathias's Edition, p. 31, vol. ii.) : ' I am inclined to think (whatever Mr. Dry- den says in the preface to his tales) that their metre, at least in serious measures and in heroick stanzas, was uniform ; not indeed to the eye, but to the ear, when rightly pronounced. We undoubtedly destroy a great part of the musick of their versification by laying the accent of words where nobody then laid it ' (c/. also other remarks on this point on this and following pages of the Essay on Lydgate). The loss of inflexional syllables, in genitives, plurals, infini- tives, etc., is discussed with great acuteness and learning at the beginning of the Essay on Metre. io6 THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE The mention of Dryden in the passage quoted recalls the fact that he and many other poets of the seventeenth century were in the habit of referring in terms of patronizing toleration of Chaucer's verse, as being a barbarous product of a rude age. Thus, Dryden, in the Preface to the Fables, to which Gray is referring, says : ' Though he must always be thought a great poet, he is no longer esteemed a good writer.' Again : ' The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not harmonious to us, . . . they who lived with him, and some time after him, thought it musical ; . . . there is the rude music of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect.' Again : ' Chaucer, I confess, is a rough diamond, and must first be polished ere he shines ' (see Ker's Essays of John Dryden, vol. ii., pp. 258-9, 265). Thus could so great a poet and fine a critic as Dryden write of so musical a writer as Chaucer, owing to his failure to perceive what the genius and learning of Gray divined fifty years later. Imperfect Rhymes in Use at the Present Day. — Such rhymes as ' brood — blood,' ' created — defeated,' 'removed — beloved,' 'bound — wound,' 'great — cheat,' which we have noted as occurring in Shake- speare and Pope, are sometimes used by poets of the present day. They are not good rhymes, so far as the sound goes, but they are tolerated. What is the reason of this ? There is no doubt that one reason why such rhymes are used is that the pairs, although differently pronounced, are spelt alike, and many people are satisfied with what is called an ' eye- rhyme.' There are those even who would assert that words which are not spelt in the same way GOOD RHYME NOT DEPENDENT ON SPELLING 107 ought not to be associated in rhyme, even if the sound of both is identical. Thus ' gnawed — cord,' which probably all speakers of Standard English pronounce so as to rhyme absolutely, would be denounced as a ' bad rhyme,' because the same sound is spelt -or- in one case, and -aw- in the other. This is not a good argument, for rhyme is a question of sound, and not of spelling. The difference in spelling in ' cord — gnawed,' of course, shows that at one time these words were not pronounced alike ; indeed, provincial and old-fashioned speakers still make a difference between them, but the majority of speakers of Standard English at the present day do pronounce them alike, and for them, therefore, the words con- stitute a perfect rhyme. It is a strange thing that ' love — prove,' which have quite different vowel sounds, should yet be considered a good rhyme, merely because they are written with the same symbols. But it is probable that rhymes of this class have come to be regarded as ' good,' not solely on account of the spelling, but because, as a matter of fact, such words formerly were pronounced alike, and were employed as rhymes, as we have seen, in the works of great poets several centuries ago. Thus, these rhymes have become traditional ; they are still used by good poets, because it has been an unbroken custom to do so from the days in which the words really did rhyme ; and now people who know nothing of the history of such rhymes are satisfied with them, because they are accustomed to find them in the works of poets, and also because of the identity of spelling in that part of each word which is supposed to rhyme with the other. io8 THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE Rhyme and Spelling. — We may assume that the earlier poets cared nothing about spelling in connexion with rhyme. SpelHng, down to the introduction of printing, was exceedingly vari- able, and remained so for centuries after, though to a less extent. The essential element of Rhyme, as poets in all ages feel, is sound. Now, it is a curious thing that in the sixteenth century identity of spelling was regarded by some as essential to a good rhyme, side by side, of course, with identity of sound, for there is no evidence that at this time words were rhymed together apart from their sound, and merely on the ground of spelling. Puttenham, who wrote an elaborate Arte of English Poesie in 1389, seems to think that unless words are spelt alike they cannot rhyme, and apparently believes that by altering the spelling of one, so as to make them alike in this respect, a good rhyme is thereby obtained. He does not approve of altering spelling (though his own seems to vary without any par- ticular principle), but still thinks that, ' if by neces- sitie constrained, it is somewhat more tollerable to help the rime by false orthographie, then ( = than) to leave an unpleasant dissonance to the eare, by keeping trewe orthographie and loosing the rime' (see Arte of Poesie, pp. 94-5. Arber's Edition, Constable, 1895). It is interesting to note that Edmund Spensfer writes despight to rhyme with fight, spright to rhyme with night, delight, and even quight (quite), to rhyme with light, and so on. Now, in Spenser's day all these words rhymed perfectly well, but fight, might, light, which originally contained a sound like that in EYE-RHYMES' IN SPENSER log German 'gesic/it' after the i had lost this sound, although the spelling -gh-, which originally expressed it, was retained, as it still is to the present day. The other words, delight, spright, quight, never contained this sound, and were never spelt in this way at an earlier period. Spenser has apparently introduced the -gh- purely for the sake of the eye. We have retained the -gh- in delight (delite in Chaucer), and spright is sometimes so written instead of the more historically correct sprite, but we never write quight. In Chaucer's day such pairs as those cited above could not have been rhymed together, because -gh- was still pronounced in fight, etc. But by the time of Spenser, this sound, as has been said, no longer existing, the pairs were thoroughly good rhymes. Anyone who turns over the pages of the Faerie Queene will find plenty of examples of such altera- tions of the spelling, to make good rhymes on paper, of words that were already good rhymes to the ear. 3. Comparison of Other Dialects and Languages. — The third source of light upon the English sounds of past ages is the pronunciation of corresponding words in the various English dialects of the present day, and in other languages closely related to English, both in the present and their earlier stages. To take the point we have just been considering, of the pronunciation of -gh- in 'sight,' 'light,' etc., when we find that all the old Germanic languages, including Old English, write -ht- in these words, that at the present day German, Dutch, etc., pro- nounce what is popularly known as a ' guttural ' in them, and that the same is true of the Modern no THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE Scotch Dialect, we can have little doubt (i) that these letters do express a sound which once existed, but which has now disappeared in Modern English, and (2) that the sound must have been approximately either the sound now heard in these words (sight, light, etc.) in Scotch and Dutch, or that heard in German at the present time. Again, when we find that Chaucer never rhymes words which are spelt with -gh- with those spelt without it, but that Spenser does make such rhymes, as we have seen above, then we may further conclude that the sound still existed in the pronunciation of Chaucer, but had been lost by Spenser' s day. 4. Direct Statements of Contemporary Writers. — From the year 1530 onwards there has been a series of writers who have dealt with considerable accuracy and minuteness with the pronunciation of English at the time at which they wrote. Even earlier, in 1500 or thereabouts, an English Hymn to the Virgin was put into Welsh spelling, so as to "^express the English pronunciation for Welsh readers. This work, together with an account of English pro- ' nunciation written by Salesbury, a Welshman, in 1547, with a comparison between it and Welsh, and a tract on Welsh pronunciation by the same writer, in 1567, which shows that the sounds of Welsh were nearly the same then as now, is a most valuable foundation to start from, and is of the greatest service in understanding the descriptions given by other authorities. The usual method followed by the sixteenth and seventeenth century writers is to compare English sounds to those in other languages, many of which, such as Italian, we know have CONTEMPORARY DESCRIPTIONS OF SOUNDS in undergone very little change since these periods. Otlfer writers, again, give a very clear account of the actual position of the tongue and lips during the pronunciation of each sound. This makes it doubly certain what sound is meant, and, taken with the other accounts, leaves very little doubt. The main changes in English pronunciation since 1500 have been in the vowel sounds, and these have been very considerable. But some consonantal changes have also taken place, such as the dropping of the , ' guttural ' in words like sight, light, etc., as men- *' tioned above, and the dropping of initial k and g before y ^< n, as in know and gnaw. A single example of the kind of description by comparison with Welsh, which is of sq^ much use, may be given. Speaking of the pronunciation of English a, Salesbury says : ' A in English is of the same sound as a in Welsh, as is evident in these words of English — all, aal ; pale, paal ; sale, sal.' Welsh a at the present time still has the pronunciation of French or Italian a. The doubling -^ of a in aal, etc., is intended to indicate that the sound was long in these words. We have no doubt. ^^^ . therefore, that ale and pale were pronounced in the year 1547, with the same vowel as that in Modern English father. When once the pronunciation of the sixteenth century is established, there is comparatively little difficulty in working backwards therefrom to Chaucer (died 1400), and even further back, to the pronuncia- tion of the oldest forms of English". When all four sources of information now enumer- ated are applied to every case, and carefully weighed and checked one against the other, we arrive at a lie THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE very considerable degree of certainty regarding the pronunciation of English at different periods in the past. Landmarks in the History of English. There are certain great historical events which have so profound an influence upon men's lives, either by giving them new ideas, by changing their way of living, or by bringing them into contact with other races, that the language which they speak, and by which they utter their thoughts and feelings, is itself influenced in various ways. We must enumerate as briefly as possible those external events in the history of our people which in one way or another have left a definite impress upon our language. The Main Periods in the History of English. We may divide the history of > English into three great periods of growth : Old English (O.E.), which '^ lasts from the landing of the English tribes in Britain until about r_jnn ; Middle English (M.E.), from iioo till about 1475 ; Modern English (Mod. Eng.), from 1473 until the present time. Of course, these are not sharply marked periods : O.E. passes gradually into M.E., and this into Modern. In fact, it is usual to subdivide the above three great periods into First Transition (from O.E. to M.E.), 1100-1200; from 1200-1300 we speak of Early M.E. ; and from 1300-1400 Late M.E. Then we have another Transition Period (from M.E. to Mod.), from 1400 (the year in which Chaucer died) to 1475 (the year in which Caxton began to print), THE INVADING ENGLISH 113 or to the end of the century. Again, we speak of Tudor English or Early Modern, from 1500-1650, or thereabouts. I. The Old English Period. The ' English ' tribes, which included Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, began to settle and fight their way up the rivers and along the coasts from about the first half of the fifth century. They came from the North of Germany, from near the mouth of the Elbe, and they found in Britain a race superior to them in civilization, and in spiritual and intellectual development — a Celtic race who spoke a language some form of which was the ancestor of Modern Welsh. The English drove the Welsh more and more westwards, but they probably incorporated a good number among their own race ; for from them the English acquired a large number of words, mostly, it is true, of Latin origin, and the Welsh also learned a fair number of words from English. This implies that the two races had some considerable and pro- longed contact with each other. But the English renamed practically the whole country in which they lived, all except the extreme West — Cornwall and Devonshire, and what we still call Wales. Dialects of Old English. — All these tribes spoke the same language, with more or less slight dialectal differences. The Angles divided into the North- umbrians and the Mercians, the former of which occupied the North, down to the H umber ; the latter the Midlands, between the Humber and the Thames. The Saxons settled all the South, except the Isle of 8 114 THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE Wight, part of Hampshire, and Kent, which were peopled by the Jutes. There were thus four chief dialectal types of O.E. — Northumbrian, Mercian (which, although presenting certain differences, are often grouped together as Anglian), Saxon, and Kentish. These dialects were each at different times in the ascendant, a ccordin g as the group whic h spoke^ it werfi.pQlil^cally£mportant ; but from the ninth century onwards the West Saxon government and the West Saxon dialect won and maintained supremacy over the others. This was chiefly due to the genius of King Alfred. The Mission of St. Augustine. — St. Augustine, afterwards the first Archbishop of Canterbury, came to England during the closing years of the sixth century, and was allowed by King Ethelbert of Kent to live in Canterbury and preach Christianity. Ethel- bert himself embraced the new religion, and most of his people. From Kent Christianity spread, until, in less than a hundred years after the coming of Augustine and his monks, the whole of England was Christian. It need hardly be said that the Welsh or British Inhabitants of these Islands were, for the most part. Christians before the coming of the English. The Coming of the Danes. — In the year 787 piratical rovers from Scandinavia first visited England, and for more than a hundred years continued to make onslaughts, for the sake of pillage, upon various parts of the coast. Later on, they landed consider- able forces, and overran the country. For instance, in 840 thirty-five shiploads of Danes landed in Dorset ; in 851 three hundred and fifty ships came up THE DANES 115 the Thames ; and, apparently for the first time, the heathen wintered in England that year. From this time onwards King Ethelwulf of Wessex, and his sons after him, were continually fighting the Danes, until the youngest, Alfred the Great, finally reduced them to submission in 878. The southern part of Northumbria and Mercia had already been invaded and settled by Norsemen ; and after Alfred's victory over that part of the host which had invaded Wessex, this section accepted Christianity and settled in East Anglia. In the course of time those Danes who remained in England became absorbed into the English population and acquired the English lan- guage, whose vocabulary, however, they influenced to a considerable extent (c/. pp. 158 and 165-6). More than a hundred years later a fresh army, led by the terrible Svein, again invaded this country and plunged it into bloodshed. Our miserable King, Ethelred, after vainly trying to purchase peace with gold, fled to Normandy in 1013. He returned, how- ever, the following year, on the sudden death of Svein, and endeavoured to win back the country. Ethelred himself died in 1016, and was succeeded by his son Edmund Ironside, a man of a very different stamp. Cnut, tbte son of Svein, had been elected King by the Danes, and after many battles with Edmund, it was agreed that they should divide the country between them. Edmund died, however, within a year, and Cnut became sole King of Eng- land. Henceforward, until the death of Harthacnut in 1042, England was ruled by Danish Kings. Norman Influence. — After the death of Cnut's son men wanted to be ruled once more by Kings of 8—2 ii6 THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE their own blood, and the pious Edward, known as Confessor, the son of Ethelred, was called back to England from Normandy, where he had lived from childhood. Edward was half a Norman, for his mother was Emma, known in England as ^Ifgifu, the daughter of the Norman Duke. With the reign of Edward Norman influence began, for he was far nearer to his mother's people than to the English in feeling, and filled his Court with Normans. 2. Transition and Mid dle English Perio d. The invasion of England by the Normans resulted in f undamentaL jdiailges..in.-ihfi- social and political life of the people. No series of events has ever had so profound an effect upon our language as those which followed the coming of Duke William and his followers. The Normans, originally of the samfe race, known to the English as ' Danes,' who so long wrought havoc in this country under the Anglo- Saxon Kings, had settled in that part of France known as Neustria, under their leader Rolf, in 921. They appear rapidly to have assimilated the language, customs, and methods of government of the people among whom they settled. At any rate, the Conqueror and his Knights were thoroughly French, and spoke a northern dialect of French as their native tongue. The immediate results of the Norman Conquest were that government passed out of th^ hands of English- men into those of Normans — Norman Bishops filled English sees, and Norman Barons and Knights be- came the principal owners of land in England. Thus, broadly speaking, we may say that the land- owning and official classes were chiefly Norman in THE PASSING OF O.E. LITERARY TRADITION 117 blood, and therefore, at first, in language also. But Englishmen naturally clung to their own speech, and even continued to produce literary works in it. The rapid change which is observable in the style and grammar of the English language pretty soon after the Conquest is probably only indirectly due to this. We must remember that the written language is always rnore old-fashioned than the spoken language, so long as there is a continued literary tradition. Old English probably continued to be written, rather better than it had been in the days of Alfred, long after the spoken language had changed considerably in inflexions and in structure. But we may suppose that the literary tradition died out after,^Jie Conquest with the passing of the older generation, so that when the men of, say, 1100-1150 wrote, instead of following the old literary convention, they wrote much more as they spoke, and as their people, indeed, had spoken for a long time. As we shall see later, in spite of the loss of elegance (though not of expressive- ness) and the dropping of many inflexions which characterized Old English proper, the introduction of Norman French words into English writings was rather a slow process (c/. pp. 166, etc, below). J jorman Frencj i, then, and English continued to be spoken for a long time side by side, and the former became more and more the official language for the Court , the Law , and the Government g enerally. There was no attempt to put down or discounten- ance the speaking of English. The Laws of William the Conqueror in Norman French contain many English law terms, and in his day writs were issued in English. There is no evidence that William or ii8 THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE his sons knew any English themselves, but it is pretty certain that Henry II. could at least under- stand it when he heard it. Gradually the racial distinctions of Englishman and Norman faded ; they were both Englishmen by the beginning of the fourteenth century. Men of Norman origin spoke English quite naturally, as well as French, and the English also learned the latter language. Latin was used in charters and other documents more frequently than French in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. French was spoken in the Law Courts and in Parlia- ment down to 1362, and in the schools until 1385, when, says a writer of the period, ' children leave off French and construe and learn in English.' However, for .300 years Norman French had a life of its own in England, and thus underwent development dis- tinct from that followed by the Continental form. The influence which this language exerted upon English was a direct and living influence, and that influence ceases when the language ceases to be spoken. We may take it that it was dead before the year 1400. /"Other direct linguistic influences of the M.E. Lperiod are Central French. English alone remained, deeply penetrated with Norman French words, a dialect different in many respects from Norman French, which came in through royal marriages and from the frequent presence of Englishmen in France on warlike expeditions, and some slight Italian and Arabic influence derived from the Crusaders. Of indirect influences, Latin must be mentioned as having at all times been a more or less fruitful source of enrichment for our vocabulary. DIALECTAL VARIETY IN MIDDLE ENGLISH ug The Dialects of M.E. — The four main types which we noted as existing in O.E. are represented in M.E., and the diversity seems to be intensified. Almost every author, even in the same province, differs more or less from almost every other. T4je-feas€)a4bt 4ii« a pparent i ncrease of dialectal_ variety in the M.E. period may be partly due to the lack of a_more or less, fix ed tra dition of spelling, such as existed in late O.E., and"wKicFr^oubtIess covered up many existing differences. The curious thing is that the peculiarities of the Modern English dialects can only be traced to M.E. types in very few cases, and, apart from the mixture of dialect elements which exists in the Standard Language, and which can be to some extent disentangled, and from such well-marked features as occur in the Northern English and Scotch dialects, it seems as if thg ^M.E-, Regional Dialects had been, as it were, melted down to a widespread uniform type, which developed anew fresh local varieties in the Modern period. For instance, the Kentish djalect is one of the most clearly marked and characteristic types down to the fourteenth century. But the modern dialect of Kent has pre- served not a single distinguishing feature of Middle Kentish, except such as were incorporated into Standard English, and which have remained there to this day, 3. The Modern Period. The Rise of Standard English. Out of the variety of the M.E. dialects there emerges, at the beginning of the Modern Period, or just before it, a form of English which is destined to I20 THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE have a wonderful history, for it becomes, first, the form in which all English literature in future is written, and, secondly, the main spoken form throughout the country. The questions to be answered with regard to this form of English are : (i) What are its characteristic dialectal features ? (2) Where did it arise ? (3) How r did it obtain its widespread currency and prestige ? We may briefly answer these questions in the above order: I. Dialectal Features of Standard English. — If we compare Standard Spoken English of to-day, or the recognized written form of English, with the various dialects of, let us say, the thirteenth century, we find that they resemble most closely the East Midland type of Middle English — that is, that in the main Modern Stan dard_Eng^li^ is what thirteenth- ceiitury East Midla nd might havejaeen expected to Sevelopjnto. But wefin3~aisoThat Modern English contains certain features peculiar to the thirteenth- century dialect of Kent ; others, though not many, which resemble more closely the Saxon type^fspeech (c/. e.g. pp. 135 and 180) of the same period, and a few peculiarities which seem to belong to the North. It is clear that Standard English is not the representa- tive of any single, pure, Regional M.E. type , but is a ,^j^ mixturej3£_SfixexaL It appears that the language of Chaucer (fourteenth century), itself a mixed type, is a form of English which may be regarded as being to a great extent, though not completely, the ancestor of Modern Standard English. Chaucer's English con- tains more purely Southern, or Saxon, features than ours does. THE MIXED DIALECT OF THE METROPOLIS 121 2. The Place of Origin of Standard English. — Chaucer's English is, in the main, the English of London, more particularly that of the Court of his day. There are many other documents, public and private, written in London about the same time, which have been preserved. There are documents written in London which go back a century earlier than Chaucer. The dialect of these documents is also of a mixed dialect type, only the Southern elements are stronger the further we go back. It appears, then, that London legal documents between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, the works of Chaucer, and Modern Standard English, are all characterized by a mixture of dialect ; that the mixture in each case is very much the same, except that as time goes on the purely Southern elements become less numerous, their place being taken by Midland elements. Other writings — e.g., those of 'ffi^cliffie, which ema- nated from Oxford about the same time as those of Chaucer were being produced — also showa bl end of Midland and Southern elem ents. It is believed that from these two great types of speech — that of^- i^— t London, the centre of Law, Government, and Com- merce, and that of Oxford, the centre of learning(^ and culture — the Standard English which we all write, and which we all try, at any rate, to speak, has grown up. It is not surprising that in Oxford, the meeting-place of scholars, and in London, the home of Government, the seat of the Court, the mart of the kingdom, forms of speech should arise which were not the original Regional Dialects of the two centres, but which included features of all the chief dialect types. Again, the geographical position of London 122 THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE exposes it to the -direct linguistic contact of the South, of Kent, and of the Midlands. The problem which confronts us, in considering the origin of Present-day English, is to determine the sources of its various dialectal elements. As for the modern provincial dialects, in the comparatively few cases where these differ considerably from the Standard Language, we shall be disappointed if we expect to find that they preserve some characteristic feature of this or that M.E. Regional Dialect. In the vast majority of cases, the differences of the modern dialects appear to have arisen, during the Modern Period, out of divergences from a form of English almost identical with that from which Standard English has sprung. 3. The Spread of the Standard Dialect. — During the fifteenth century the London type was gradually spreading as the language of legal documents, wills, etc., throughout all parts of England, so that speakers of all dialects, provided they could read, were made more or less familiar with it. Again, the works of Chaucer were widely read, and found many imitators. This only shows that there was a growing tendency to adopt a uniform mode of writing English. There is no reason for supposing that men tried to speak as they wrote ; on the contrary, there is good evidence that provincial varieties of speech still flourished. Already in the fourteenth century that form of Northern English spoken in Scotland had attained a sufficient degree of individuality to be regarded as a separate group of dialects — Scots, as contrasted with English. Scotland, therefore, henceforth develops a literary language of its own, quite independent of England. DISSEMINATION OF STANDARD ENGLISH 123 In the third quarter of the fifteenth century the introduction of printing gave a still further and wider currency to the London dialect ; for all books were printed in it, and henceforth no English writer used the dialect of his province for literary purposes, but acquired, if he did not already possess it, that form of English in which the business of the realm was conducted — the form, or nearly so, in which Chaucer had written, and which the labours of Caxton made accessible to all. The translation c£Jhe Bible by^yndale (1525-1531), and, a little later, the Prayer Book, must be counted among the works which, universally known, up and down the country, must have contributed to spread the knowledge of the literary form. But the same form of English which became the vehicle of literature came also to be regarded as the best and most ' correct ' form of Spoken English. At the present time, some variety of this dialect is almost universal among all educated people. It was originally, no doubt, a. £lass dialect, p rimarily that o f the Cour t. It is now spoken by all classes who have received any education. Of course, there are well-marked varieties of Standard English, which, as we have seen, differ chiefly in pronunciation. This is natural in the case of a dialect which is so widely spread. Each class and each province into which it penetrates modify the language in a characteristic way. Still, it is a fact that both Regional and Class Dialects are giving way before the encroaching Standard English. The reasons for this, at the present time, are not far to seek. The main factor in obliterating Regional 124 THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE Dialects is our system of Primary Education, which places, in schools all over the country, teachers, trained according to a uniform scheme, whose own pronunciation and general way of speech has been carefully supervised in Pupil Teachers' Colleges or Training Colleges. Another important class of speech missionaries are the Clergy of the Church of England; and last, but by no means least in importance as an agent in smoothing out the most marked local peculiarities of dialect, is the wonderful increase of facilities in locomotion, which enables the population to move about freely, and to visit easily districts comparatively far removed from their place of abode. A uniform literary language is spread, by means of the Printing Press, quickly and thoroughly; uniformity of uttered speech is attained far slower, with much more difficulty, and, when reached, is certain to be broken up again by new tendencies of variation. The M.E. dialects must have been considerably weakened in their individuality by such a mingling of the population from different provinces as would take place in the iifteenth century, during the Wars of the Roses ; or in the seventeenth through the war between King Charles and his Parliament. It is perhaps necessary to point out that the spread of a certain uniformity of speech throughout a con- siderable portion of the country is in no case the result of a tendency of different dialects to converge towards the same form, or, in other words, to grow like each other. On the contrary, it always means that one type of speech is being acquired over a large area by persons who are, by that very process, giving up their former type of dialect. THE VOYAGERS 125 The Revival of Leamingr "' •- With the closing years of the fifteenth century, what was known as the New Learning spread to England from Italy. With the introduction of Greek into Oxford and Cambridge, a new era began in Religion, Philosophy, Art, and Letters. The new ideas and aspirations thus awakened in men's minds demanded an expression which could best be found in those classical languages which enshrined the culture that was now fermenting afresh, and with new power, in England. Hence, Greek and Latin elements filter into our language in the Tudor period, not only because they were necessary to the new needs, but also because these languages were so zealously cultivated, that scholars borrowed, perhaps some- times unconsciously, from them, when plain English would have sufficed quite well. This influence lasted for a long time — in fact, it lingers on still — and the English style of such writers as Bacon or Sir Thomas Browne is stiff with Latin words that have never been naturalized. During the sixteenth century, not only was the interest in classical learning revived, but the modern languages and literatures of Italy and Spain were known and studied by many Englishmen. Travel in Italy was fashionable, and political events brought England and Englishmen into close touch with Speiniards. French was now, as always, known by the upper classes. While scholars, statesmen, and men of letters were enriching the fund of national ideas from redis- covered worlds of thought, men of action — navi- 126 THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE gators, fighters, and settlers — were discovering new worlds beyond the sea, and bringing home wonderful tales of 'feathered peoples,' countries 'roofed with gold,' as well as new and delicious fruits, and herbs and spices with strange and outlandish names. By no means without their importance for the English language were the adventurous voyages of Raleigh, Drake, and Frobisher. The characteristic of the Modern Period of English history has been Colonial expansion in every quarter of the globe. The effect of this has been to bring us into contact not only with new ideas of Society, Religion, and Government, but also with an extra- ordinary variety of races and languages, most of which have added something to our vocabulary — the names of Animals, products, -or institutions. CHAPTER IX ENGLISH SOUND CHANGES OF THE PAST Now that we have seen what are the principal ways in which we ascertain the nature of the sounds used in earlier periods of our language, and have further distinguished the chief periods of development into which English may conveniently be divided, we may proceed to note some of the most important sound changes which have occurred during its past history. Wo saw, in an earlier chapter of this book (pp. 71-81), that at the present time certain sound changes, both of an Isolative and of a Combinative character, are actually in progress in our own pronunciation, and throughout its whole history the English language has been subject to tendencies of change of either class. What we can now observe in contemporary English speech is nothing new, it has always been so : English is changing now, as it changed in the Tast, and as it will continue to change in the Future. The account, description, or statement of a change of sound which takes place at a given period in the history of a language is called a Sound Law, or a Law of Sound Change. A knowledge of the Sound Laws of a language is 128 ENGLISH SOUND CHANGES OF THE PAST one very vital element in the study of its history. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that in consider- ing the development of English, or of any other language, we must pay the strictest regard to the facts of sound change. A guiding principle of philological method is that Sound Laws admit of no exceptions. This axiom means that when we have discovered, from the evidence of a sufficient number of examples, that in a given dialect, at a given time, a certain sound, under certain conditions, tends to change in a particular direction, we are not justified in assuming that this is not invariably the case. It will not do to suppose that in the same dialect, at the same time, there can be two different tendencies at work upon the same sound. If we find what appear to be exceptions to Sound Laws, it means either that our Sound Law has been im- perfectly stated, that we have not reckoned with all the conditions, that the supposed ' exception ' is borrowed from another dialect, or, lastly, that the principle known as Analogy has been at work in this particular case, and that the sound in the word in question is not the result of ordinary sound change at all, but owes its form to association with some other word or group of words. A disregard for these strict scientific methods of dealing with the history of language has produced in the past much misleading statement, and vitiates a great deal of the amateur etymologymaking, which is still not infrequent. It may be as well to state here, that at the present time there are in England, Germany, and Scandinavia, a large number of scholars engaged in investigating AIMS OF HISTORICAL STUDY 129 in great detail the development of English sounds in all ages and in all dialects. The aim of the Science of Historical Linguistics, as applied to English, is, amongst other things, to discover all the sound changes which have taken place in English, in all its dialects, from the earliest period up to the present day. In a little book for beginners, like the present, only a few of the results of the labour of all these workers can be laid before the student. English, as it now exists, is the outcome of hundreds of years of development, and some of those sound changes which took place in past ages, and whose traces are still discernible in our own speech, may with advantage be stated as briefly as possible. The simple but important principle to be borne in mind is, that if two closely related words show differences in sound (c/. pp. 82, 83 above), something must have happened to one in the past which did nof happen to the other. Our business is to discover what it was, and why it happened. Combinative Changes which occurred in the Old English Period. (a) Changes in the Nature of Vowels. — On pp. 83, 83 above (2, a) there is a list of pairs of words in Modern English which have quite different vowel sounds, although closely related, and in some cases being merely the Singular -and Plural forms re- spectively of the same word Nothing that we know of, or can learn from. Modern English will explain the reason for the different vowels in mmtse and tuis^t 9 130 ENGLISH SOUND CHANGES OF THE PAST etc. Indeed, in the oldest written documents which we possess (seventh century) in English the difference in this or in similarly related pairs of words is already defined. Thus, O.E. has mils, ' mouse,' in the Singular and mys in the Plural; /o^, ' foot'; fit, ' feet,' and so on. By comparison with other languages, however, we are able to assert positively that the Plural was originally musij foti, with u and 6 respectively in the Plural as in the Smgular. In fact, we are able to state the law as follows : When, in Primitive O.E., the vowel 4- (pronounced like * ee ') or the consonant sound j (pronounced like English y in yovi) follow u, 6, in the same word, these vowels become respectively j/ (pronounced like French w . in ' lune ') and e (pro- nounced like French e). This process is called Mutationj it probably took place in England in the sixth century. The nature of the change is a very simple one. All the vowels which underwent it (with one exception) were back vowels (i.e., pronounced with the back of the tongue), and the result of the process was that they were replaced by vowels pro- nounced with the front of the tongue. The reason for this change was that the sounds -i- and -j- (de- scribed above) were front sounds, and had the effect of making the vowels which preceded them in a word into front vowels, and therefore more like themselves. When once mys, fet, were developed, they remained for ever distiiict from the singular forms, and developed later on into mice, feet, just as the singulars developed into mouse, foot. All the vowel differences in the pairs in the list on p. 82 {a. 2.) were produced originally in this way. The verb fill (O.E. fyllan) was derived from the adjective full, COMBINATIVE CHANGES IN OLD ENGLISH 131 because the suffix of the verb was formerly -jm. Borough is from an' old nominative burg or burug, while Bury is from the dative of the same word — O.E. byrig. It is interesting to note that the celebrated Saxon King Hengist lived and died long before the period of mutation, and that his own name had not yet received the form familiar to later generations during his lifetime. He knew himself as Hangist. In all cases in the list, the words which contain front vowels (Mod. Eng. i, ea, e, ee, etc.), or the so-called ' long i' — that is, the diphthong at; cf. p. 35 (e) — are derived from the form found in those cognates which contain back vowels, and the front vowels are due to the existence at an early period of a suffix with -i or -;. (6) Changes in Consonants (see b, p. 82 above). — (i) Such differences as the ^-sound in cock compared^-, with the ' cA-sound ' of chicken are due to the fact '^^ that in O.E. k was retained before back vowels such as 0, but was ' fronted ' — that is, shifted to a sound- very like the present ' cA-sound ' — before front vowels. Thus, we have in Q.p. cncc ( ■with ^-sound), but clecen , where the initial c was pronounced almost like ' ch ' before the vow el I. _ These represent two different forms of the same 'root,' the vowel difference here being far older than the O.E. period, as we shall see later on (p. 197). When c occurred in the middle of a word in O.E., it remained as a ^-so und before back vowels and some consonants, but became 'xit! befojre ■i- or -;'- ; thus, we have drink, O.E. (Infinitive) drincan, but drench, from Primitive O.E. dranki. Similarly, both consonants in cook, O.E. c5c, are /j-sounds, but in 9—2 132 ENGLISH SOUND CHANGES OF THE PAST kitchen, early O.E. cy'cine, the ' -c/s-sound ' developed in the middle of the word. A similar explanation accounts for the difference in the final sounds of hang and hinge. The latter had a -j- suffix. (2) Differences of Voice and Breath. — The sounds s, /, and th seem to have been voiceless in O.E. ' when final, but to have been voiced between vowels. Hence, ' to breathe ' (with voiced th), from O.E. hrce\an {p = th), hut breath, from brcB^ ; wife, O.E. wif (voice- less /), but in the oblique cases of O.E. wife, dative singular, wifum, dative plural, etc., the / was pro- nounced as V. Strange to say, we still express this difference in our spelling, preserving thus a Middle English spelling with v. The change of s — r, as in was — were, etc. (c/. p. 83), represents an original change of s — z ; but this took place long before the O.E. period, and was due to a difference in the position of the accent. Changes which occurred during the Middle English Period. Perhaps the most important combinative changes in M.E. which have left important traces in Present- day English were changes in the quant ity of vowels. The resulting differences in the modern forms are not always recognizable as mere differences of quantity, so diverse was the subsequent development of the same vowel according to whether it was long or short in M.E. {a) Shortening of O.E. Long Vowels. -^ Long SHORTENING OF VOWELS IN MIDDLE ENGLISH 133 3^.0wels were shortened in M.E. fi\be fore mo re than t wo consonants. Hence, "while -O.E. cUd, 'child,' retained its long vowel in M.E. {-Id being favourable to length in preceding vowel), thepflural clldru becomes chtldre, and the short vowel undergoes ho further change. The result is that we have children, and the dialectal childer. On the other hand, the long ?-sound of M.E. child becomes the diphthong of Mod. Eng. child. There is no difference in the spelling, but the sounds of singular and plural are very different. . (2) Most groups of two consonants have the •£i*»^'*' faculty of shortening a preceding long vowel in M.E. srirt-^^^ A few examples of such shortenings are — before two ^ /i4- stops : kepte, ' kept,' compared with kepen, ' keep ' ; ,j, ^^ru before stop + open consonants: depthe, 'depth,' ■ ''" compared with d^e, 'deep'; before open consonant + stop : O.E. softe, ' soft,' M.E. sofie (the Modern pronunciation with the ' aw '-sound in this word is the result of a recent lengthening process); before open consonants and I : gosling, compared with gos, 'goose.' Here the long of gos has normally developed in Mod. Eng. it, but the short d has remained unchanged. Shortening took place, further, before I followed by an open consonant — M.E. filthe, 'filth,' compared with M.E..verb fllen, 'to defile.' Here the short i has remained in filth, but the long i of the verb has become the Mod. Eng. diphthong in ' de-file: The application of the rules which these examples illustrate will explain the differences that exist in a large number of words of the same class as the pairs on p. 82 {a) above. {b) Lengthening of O.E. Short Vowels.— The 134 ENGLISH SOUND CHANGES OF THE PAST most important case is that which involves the vowel of the first syllable in two-syllabled words when only a single consonant intervenes between the first and second syllable. O.E. na-md, ho-pU (hope), etc., appear to have been divided as shown, so that the stressed vowel stood in an open syllable — that is, had no consonant after it in the same syllable. Short vowel s in this position were lengthened by the middle of the thirteenth century. Thus, the above words in early M.E. were still name, hopS. Similarly, ' to eat ' was eten, and so on ; but these words became later name, hope, eten. Concerning the later development of these long vowels in Mod. Eng., see under that heading (i, 2, and 4, b below). It some- times happens that the Mod. Eng. word is not derived from the old nominative, in cases where this had only one syllable, but from an inflected case which had two. Thus, Mod. Eng. late can only be from M.E. late, itself from earlier late, and not from O.E. IcBt, M.E. lat. This lengthening process does not affect the old vowels t and ii, only a, e, o, Isolative Change in M.E. The most remarkable change of this class which took place in early M.E. (circa iioo) was that which affected O.E. a (pronounced like the first vowel in Mod. Eng. father). This sound (a) became a variety of 6 sound in the South and Midlands ; thus, O.E. ham, ' home,' ban, ' bone,' stan, ' stone,' hlaf, ' loaf,' became M.E. ston, bon, horn, lof. It sometimes happens that' the O.E. a was shortened before it had ISOLATIVE CHANGES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH 135 become 6, and the result is that it then remained a short vowel with very little change until the Modern period. Thus, in the old compound Stanla;h, literally ' Stony field,' * Stony lea,' the a was shortened in early M.E., giving the form St&nlei [p. 133 (2)] ; whence Present-day Stanley, instead of 'Stoneley.' Such a name as Stoneleigh, which is found, is a new com- pound of the two independent words stone and leigh, and not the descendant of an old formation. In the North of England and in Scotland O.E. d did not become 0, but developed into a sound some- thing like that in Mod. Eng. ' hat,' only long. This sound subsequently became e (like French f), and this is the sound which we find in Mod. Scotch and the Northern dialects of England. The above ^ words are popularly written ]Minc, static, bane, to express the Scotch pronunciation. The English hah, 'strong, healthy,' etc. (,'hale and hearty'), is simply a Northern form of O.E. Ml, which in the South became J0I in M.E., and survives as whole in Present-day English, with a quite unnecessarj? tc in the spelling. In the same way road is the Southern and raid the Northern form of O.E. rod (connected with 'to ride'). In this case the meaning is also different. Principal Sound Changes since the M.E. Period. These are chiefly isolative, and affect the long vowels. Of the short vowels, only two have under- gone change. (i) M.E. o (' as in father ') has become what is popularly called the ' long a-sound ' (c/. p. 35 (d), aide) : 136 ENGLISH SOUND CHANGES OF THE PAST M.E. name — name; gate — gate; blame — blame. No change has taken place in spelling. (2) M.E. c (as in French e) has become * ee ' (as in 'speed'). Here, again, no change has occurred in the spelling as a rule. Mod. Eng. feet, greet, deem, sheet, he, cheese, etc., are all of this origin. Another sound in M.E., often written e, but also ea, which was different from the above and more like French e in tete, has also developed in most dialects of English into the ' ee '-sound. Words of this origin are generally spelt with ea in Mod. Eng. It will be observed that in the ' Irish Brogue ' such words as beat, heat, lead (verb), etc., are usually pronounced with a sound like French e, while he, bee, seed, heed, etc., as often with the English pronunciation. This means that Irish English preserves an original distinction of sound, which lasted down to the seventeenth century in this country, but was then lost. (3) M.E. i (pronounced like Modern 'ee') has been diphthongized to ai (the ' long j-sound ' ; cf. p. 35 (e), ante) : wlf — wife ; llf — life ; nln — nine, etc. No change in the spelling marks the change of sound. (4) M.E. 0, which symbol expressed two distinct sounds, preserves the distinction in the mocjprn language. (a) M.E. o=the sound in French beau, etc., has become u (that is, the ' 00 '-sound, as in moon) : M.E. sone — soon; col — cool; stol — stool, etc. Words like book, hook, good, and others spelt with 00, but pronounced — in the South of England, at any rate — with the «<-sound of ' put,' also had this 6 originally, and developed ft, but underwent shortening com- VOWEL CHANGES IN MODERN PERIOD 137 paratively recently (eighteenth century). In goose we have the result of this 0; in gosling it was shortened before it became u {cf. pp. 133 (2) and 136 (4) above). [b) The other M.E. which had the sound of Mod. Eng. ' aw ' has become what we now call ' long 0,' but what is really a diphthong (cf. p. 34 (b), ante) : M.E. horn — home; ban — bone; throte — throat, etc. [N.B. — The student will note, in reading Chaucer, that this poet keeps the two e's and the two o's distinct in rhyming, and does not make one rhyme with the other.] (5) M.E. u, often written ou [cf. p. 142 (b, i) below), has been diphthongized to au {cf. p. 34 {a) above) : M.E. cu or cou — cow ; nu or nou — now ; hus or hous — house, etc. [N.B. — The diphthongizing of M.E. * and u began in the sixteenth century.] (6) M.E. ■U,, and the long il dealt with in No. 4 {a) above, which developed out of earlier 0, when shortened to it shortly after the beginning of the sixteenth century, both underwent, in the seventeenth century, a change to a sound not unlike that in Present-day cut, but, into which it soon passed. Original M.E. « is represented by this sound in Mod. Eng. dull, sun, run, hunt, etc. ; also in come, son, etc. (For the spelling in these words, cf. p. 146 (3) below.) '^ Sixteenth-century ii from u, which in its turn had sprung from 6, has acquired the same sound as we find in but,, in blood, among, flood, etc. (7) M.E. a, a sound like that in German 'mann,' acquired in the seventeenth century what we now 138 ENGLISH SOUND CHANGES OF THE PAST call the ' short a-sound,' which is heard in cat, bad, can, sat, etc. The old sound still survives in pro- vincial modes of speech, especially in the North Midlands and North of England. Changes in the M.E. Diphthongs. (i) M.E. au (pronounced like the diphthong in house) developed during the seventeenth century into a sound approaching the Mod. Eng, • arc '-sound. The spellings au, aw, axe retained in words where the new sound now stands. The diphthong occurred in English words Uke draw, saw, dawn, daughter, taught, etc., and in French words such as fault, cause, vaunt, etc. (2) M.E. ai, ei (pronounced like the Modern 'long i' sound), lost their diphthongal character during the seventeenth century, and developed subsequently on the same lines as M.E. a {cf. pp. 135, 136). In common with this sound they have developed into the Mod. Eng. ' long a '-sound. These words still retain their diphthongal spelling, ai, or ay. Examples of English words are rain, pail, way, day, etc.; of French, faith, gay, pay, are examples. These are some of the chief changes in the vowels of stressed or accented syllables which have taken place during and since the M.E. period. Vowels of the Unaccented Syllables. The vowels of inflexional syllables in O.E- a, e, u, were all levelled under ? in M.E., and towards the end of this period, probably by the middle of the fifteenth century, the unstressed e was dropped in pronunciation, although it has often remained to the EFFECTS OF THE CONQUEST ON ENGLISH 139 present day in the spelling. Examples of levelling under g and subsequent loss of this are; O.E. ndma, M.E. name, Mod. Eng. name; O.E. sunu, M.E. sUne, Mod. Eng. son (often written sone in Early Modern) ; O.E. stdnas (nom. and ace. pi.), M.E. stones, Mod. Eng. stones ( = 'st6nz' in pronunciation). In old compounds in which the second element was originally long, and stressed as strongly, as the first element, this second element gradually lost its independent accent, and was then shortened. Thus, Kingston - on - Thames was originally Kinges tun = ' the King's town '; then the strong stress was con- fined to the first word Kinges, and the vowel of tim was shortened. This is the reason for the modern pronunciation of Kingston. Kingstown in Ireland, on the other hand, is a new name, created afresh out of the two separate words. King's town. In this name the second element is always pronounced quite clearly as town. In concluding this chapter we may remark that it is often wrongly suggested that the changes which occurred in the passage of Old into Middle English, as they affect both pronunciation and the in- flexional system, were largely due to the influence of the Normans. This is not the case, for there is every reason to believe that those changes, which are, for the most part, first expressed in the spelling during the M.E. period, were due to tendencies which began long before, as part of the natural development of English, and which would have been carried out just as completely if there had been no Norman Conquest. The influence of this event upon the vocabulary is an entirely different question, as will be shown in a later chapter. CHAPTER X ENGLISH SPELLING The spelling of Modern English is so full of curiosities and inconsistencies that a short account and explanation of the chief of these seems necessary. The general fact that our spelling is so far behind our pronunciation results from the comparatively early fixing of the former — at the end of the fifteenth century, with the introduction of Printing — and the active tendencies of changes which have affected English pronunciation since that date. This early fossilization of the spelling accounts, too, for some of its inconsistencies, for words which once contained the same sounds have developed differently, while others which originally contained different sounds have now levelled these under one and the same sound. But another reason why we often express the same sound in different ways, or, on the other hand, express several different sounds with the same symbol, is that our system of spelling is a mixture of a method inherited from O.E. and of one derived from Northern scribes. A third cause of the strange nature of some of our spellings is a deliberate attempt to make them reveal the etymology — that is, to throw light on the past history of the words. 140 NORMAN FRENCH SPELLINGS 141 A comparatively small residuum of words may be said to be phonetic in spelling, but this is the result of accident. Thus, such spellings as not, hot, sin, din, lend, spend, and the majority of short words which contain the short 'o,' 'i,' and 'e' sounds, do not owe their regularity of spelling to any design bestowed upon them, but not upon other words, but merely to the fact that these three vowel sounds have remained practically unchanged for hundreds of years. Norman- French Influence. .{a) Consonants. 1. c written for s. This is found not only in words of Norm.-Fr. origin, such as city, face, receive, but also in a 'few English words, such as mice. In M.E., c is written oftener than at present to represent the sound of s in pure English words. Thus, we find wice, 'wise'; cene, 'seen'; alee, 'also,' etc. 2. gu for g. Since the English scribes used the latter S)mibol at one time to express several quite distinct sounds,' French scribes found it convenient , to distinguish the back-stop (as in ' ^ood ') from the others by writing gu for it. We have not many survivals of this practice now, but guess, guest, guild, may be mentioned. Tongue may owe its spelling originally to this common habit, for we often find hingue, etc., in M.E. ; but the retention of this spelling in the former word may be partly owing to the spelling langue of the French word for the same thing. In M.E. we not infrequently find ' good ' written guod, etc. 142 ENGLISH SPELLING 3. V for/. This was a convenient French device to distinguish the voiced from the voiceless sound : O.E. wrote/ for both. 4. qu for O.E. cw. This has become universal, and was a natural habit to adopt from the moment that the symbol c, besides the association with the A-sound, which is still retained, was also associated with the sound of s. Examples are quick, O.E. cwicu; qiieen, O.E. cwen; quell, O.E. cwellan; etc. 5. _;■ (initially) for the ' dge '-sound. This sound only occurs initially in M.E. in French words, and to this day there are no English words in Standard English which have the sound in this position. In fact, its occurrence initially is a sure test of Norman- French origin — e.g., judge, jest, joy. The word jaw appears to be from French joue, and the vowel sound in the Modern word, which, indeed, it would be difficult to derive from French ou, is perhaps influenced by that of M.E. chawl, from O.E. ceafl, 'jaw, muzzle.' Mod. Eng. jowl, on the other hand, is normal as regards the vowel sound, if derived from O.E, ceafl, but the voicing of the initial consonant can only be explained by confusion with the French joue. (6) French Vowel Spellings, I. oti, or ow, was the French symbol, as at present, for the w-sound, the sound which we generally express by 00 in Mod'. Eng. This old vowel, as we have seen (see p. 137 (5) above), was diphthong- ized in the sixteenth century to something like its present sound. This fact accounts for the apparent FRENCH VOWEL SYMBOLS 143 attempt at phonetic spelling of the diphthong in hotise, mouse, cow, etc. 2. The sound of Modern French « in lune existed in Norman French, and also in O.E. It was written u by French scribes, when short, in both French and English words where it existed. Since it only sur- vived (in English words) in M.E. in the Southern or Saxon dialect, we have few, if any, words of English origin which contain the representative of this sound at the present day. It survives, however, in the spelling of the verb bury, although the Standard pronuncia- tion here is that of the old Kentish dialect. In French words, however, the sound was very common, and was nearly always written u in M.E. The spelling survives in such words as lute, nature, brute, etc. When long, this sound was often written ui. This spelling survives in the French words fruit, bruit, suit, etc., and in the English bruise. The latter is the only case in Standard English where the old Southern sound is represented, and therefore the only one where the spelling survives in a Native English word. Other Survivals of M.E. Spellings. («) Consonants. I. The symbol gh. We may distinguish four cases of what we may call an improper use of gh in Mod. Eng. : (i) bright, sigh ,- (2) sought, daughter ; (3) plough, bough (in neither of these cases does the symbol express any sound in our present pronun- ciation) ; (4) rough, laugh, etc., where it expresses the sound of/. 144 ENGLISH SPELLING In (i) gh or h in M.E. expressed the sound now heard in German ' ich,' ' I,' etc. This sound was gradually weakened, until it was assimilated to the short ^'-sound, which it lengthened, and then it disappeared from speech. In (2) gh expressed the sound of ch in Scotch loch. This sound seems to have been the cause of the development of a diph- thong with the preceding vowel, out of which sound the Mod. Eng. 'aw '-sound has developed (see p. 138). In (4) the sound of Scotch ch in loch became, by a common M.E. change, the /-sound. In all these cases there was once a good reason for writing gh ; there is none now, except custom. The words in (4) are very curious, for the spellings show that they represent the type which developed /in M.E., and yet the pronunciation is quite different. The fact is that there were in early M.E. two types of the word plough, etc., one derived from the Nominative, in which gh was final and voiceless, and ultimately became / in pronunciation, as in rough, enough, and as in the provincial Mod. Eng. ' pleuf,' ' plough ' ; the other derived from the oblique cases {ploghes, etc.), where gh was voiced and normally developed into a w-sound, or assimilated with the preceding vowel to form a diphthong. This type is represented in our present pronunciation of plough and bough, and in the old form enow (compared with enough). The old spelling plow accurately expresses this M.E. type. Therefore, in plough and bough we write one histori- cal form and pronounce another. 2. The use of c and k for the same sound. If we examine the words which contain the ^-sound GRAPHIC DEVICES 145 initially in Mod. Eng., we shall find that as a general rule there is a certain method in the employment of the two symbols to express it. We shall find that k is generally used in such words as kith, kin, kind, keen, ken, kiss, king, etc. ; that is, in words where the vowel still is, or was in early M.E., a front vowel. On the other hand, we have c in cot, cut, comb, cool, came, etc. ; that is, in words in which the following vowel is, or was in early M.E., a back vowel. The reason of this distinction is plain. The letter c in O.E. represented two sounds, a back, or ^-sound, and a front, or very nearly a ' ch '-sound. Now, the symbol k first came into general use in early M.E., and its use was perfectly regular and uniform ; it stood only for one sound — that which we still associate with it. Before back vowels there could be no doubt that c always represented a A-sound in English words, and it was therefore retained in the spelling before these. On the other hand, c before front vowels was ambiguous ; it represented the ^-sound in some words, but the cA-sound in others. Again, in words of French origin it also stood for the sound of s, as we have seen. Under these cir- cumstances, it was very convenient to use the symbol k in words like kin, etc., where the spelling cin might stand either for ' chin ' (if an English word), or for ' sin ' (if a French word). 3. Final -e as a sign of length. In M.E., as we have seen (pp. 133, 134), in words like hope, the vowel of the first syllable was always long. Then the e dis- appeared in pronunciation, but was still often written, after the word was pronounced merely hop. The ' silent ' e thus was looked upon as an indication that 10 146 ENGLISH SPELLING the preceding vowel was long, and was found to be a useful device to express this fact. (6) Vowel Spellings. 1. Mod. Eng. 00, which now in most cases expresses the sound of u (French sou, German blume, English bloom), is originally a doubling of the symbol to express a long vowel. In Early M.E. this was simply a long o-sound (c/. p. 136 (4) above). This 00, originally the sign of the long close 0, has been retained, in spite of the complete change of sound. Hence English people have come to regard this as the natural means of expressing the « -sound. A reference to pp. 136 (4) and 137 (6) will explain why we also write 00 in blood and in good. The old ' close ' o, whether in words of English or French origin, was, and still is, written in this way. For English words, see above, loc. cit. Fool is an example of a French word with this spelling. 2. ee or ie, and ea were used to distinguish respec- tively the sound of close e (French e), and of open e (French e). These sounds have now been levelled under a single sound, as in believe, seed, and bead respectively, but the difference in the spelling is still kept (c/. p. 136 (2) above), ie is used only for the close e in M.E., and many words were spelt thus, especially by some writers of the fourteenth century, which are now written with ee. 3. was written in words like some, son, Mon- mouth, come, etc., instead of u in M.E. This was simply a graphic device, and implied no change of sound. Its purpose was distinctness, for sum, cume SPELLING AND ETYMOLOGY 147 etc., in M.E. writing looked very like a confusion ot strokes, u, n, and m being very much alike. The history of M.E. ^ has been discussed (p. 137 (6) above), and of course the development of the sound had nothing to do with the graphic expression of it. This habit of writing instead of u explains the occurrence of the former letter to-day in several words which have the vowel sound of but. In M.E. the spelling was far commoner than now, for the u has been restored in a large number of words. Attempts at Etymological Spelling. In Norman French the words debt and doubt were spelt dette, doute, respectively, and they retained this spelling in English. At a later date a b was intro- duced into each, as if to show that they were derived from Latin debitum, dubit^m. This belief is true to some extent, but the 6- sound had been lost long before they were introduced from French into English. Fault and false were spelt faut and fause in M.E. ; the I of popular Latin fallitum, falsum, had disappeared already in Norman French before the words passed into our language. Indeed, Pope still rhymes fault — thought, and no I is heard in Scotch pronunciation at the present day. Island has a curious history as regards its spelling. It stands for O.E. igland, M.E. lland, a compound, of which the first element ig, I, itself means ' island.' But the word was very early connected with French lie, from Lat. insula. Now, the s was restored to the form isle in Continental French, from the same tendency to etymologize which led our forefathers to 10 — 2 148 ENGLISH SPELLING write debt, etc. This spelling isle then found its way into England, and the word iland, being regarded as really U-land, was also endowed with an s. Could, from M.E. coude, has absolutely no right to / in the middle from any point of view, since no such sound ever existed in this word. There is no doubt that the spelling is due to the pattern of should and would, where I was once pronounced — M.E. sholde, wolde. gh in ghost, ghastly, is apparently the result of Italian literary influence in the Early Modern period. Influence of Spelling on Pronunciation. .That the mode of writing a word, which is in English purely a survival of a bygone age, and often, as we have seen, not even a genuine record of an earlier pronunciation, should have any effect at all upon living, traditional utterance is remarkable, and a process which could only come about in an age when men cherished the written symbol with a kind of superstition, as enshrining some essential truth which should hold good for all time. The very worst way, as a rule, to form any idea of the pronunciation of an English word at the present time is to consider its spelling. Yet, strange to say, there are a few cases in which the natural course of development has been interrupted, as regards common usage, and a deliberate return has been made to a pronunciation suggested by the spelling. Fault and false are cases in point, and here, curiously enough, an altogether new sound, so far as these words in English are SPELLING INFLUENCES PRONUNCIATION 149 concerned, is introduced. There is a considerable tendency among some classes at the present time to consider ordinary colloquial pronunciation as some- thing ' corrupt ' and ' vulgar,' something which needs correction. For instance, an initial h has been intro- duced into the pronunciation of humble, herb, hospital, words of Norman-French origin, where, as it seems likely, no aspirate has been pronounced for hundreds of years, although we have continued to write h. How long will it be before h is pronounced in hour, honour, honest, on the same principle ? Again, h has been restored for more than a generation in ' neigh- bourhood,' although h in such a position has normally long disappeared from pronunciation, h is now being restored by many of the rising generation in forehead, and a pronunciation 'faw Aead' is now common. When the present writer was a boy this pronuncia- tion was an unpardonable vulgarism, only heard from semi-educated persons who were trying to ' speak fine.' But the class of words most affected by ' spelling- pronunciation ' are Place and Personal Names. Here the traditional pronunciation often cannot be guessed by those who know neither the people nor the places. The increase of railways opens up and connects all parts of the country, and names like Uttoxeter, Cirencester, the spelling of which is very old, seen in print for the first time by people who have never heard the names from natives, are certain to mislead. It constantly happens in such cases that the sham spelling-pronunciations given by porters and tourists gain ground in the neighbour- hood itself. This is the case of Cirencester, many ISO ENGLISH SPELLING of whose inhabitants, instead of ' sissiter ' or ' sis- sister,' pronounce 'syrensester,' or even, for short, 'syren.' It is notorious that Oxford tradesmen always correct one's pronunciation of ' mawdlen ' to • magdalen ' College. CHAPTER XI THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY— LOAN-WORDS When we speak of the development of the vocabulary of a language, we have to consider not only the new words which pass into it from age to age, but also of the new significance which many old words acquire. But the history of the vocabulary of English, or indeed of any other language, is not a chronicle of pure gain. Words often fall out of common use ; they may pass out of everyday speech into that of the higher forms of oratory ; then they may linger on in occasional literary use, and finally disappear altogether. The place of these losses often has to be filled, and they may be replaced either by words which existed of old in the language, side by side with those which have vanished, or by entirely new words which come into the language from outside — that is, from some other language. The best way to get a sound and clear idea of the nature of the English vocabulary is to take a piece of Old English of moderate length, say the New Testament, or of Middle English, say of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, The Prologue, or The Knightes Tale, and carefully compare .the vocabulary of these selections with that of the present day. The words 151 152 THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY may be grouped into the following classes : (i) Words which survive with the same meaning ; (2) words which survive in form, but which have acquired so different a meaning that the modern forms could not be used in the particular context ; (3) words which have been lost altogether. In this case it should be noticed what kind of words have replaced them, whether native English or words of foreign origin. Again, the student may start from Modern English, and analyse the vocabulary of a simple piece of prose or verse into groups of words of various origin — native English, Norse, Norman French, Later French, Latin, and so on. In both of these opera- tions the aid of a reliable Etymological dictionary of moderate size, such as Mr. Skeat's Concise Dictionary, is indispensable, and in case the student starts from Old or Middle English, a good Old or Middle English dictionary is necessary. Most people of some education will recognize a word as English, French, or Latin, in the majority of cases, and these are the most important foreign elements in English. The next important element is Old Norse, which is not so readily distinguished by the ordinary student from native English. The most vital point for the young student is to know at least which of the words which he uses are really English, in the sense of being survivals of the original vocabulary of our race, which it had in common with the other closely related tongues of the Germanic family. If, in addition to this, he also knows which the most familiar words now in use are of Norse origin, and can recognize as such the Norman-French words and the Latin, so much the better. But this MODES OF LINGUISTIC CONTACT 153 knowledge must be obtained by the student for him- self by the means suggested above. It is of no educational value whatever to bloat out the pages of a small book on the History of English with long lists of words, which exist in English perhaps, but which are derived from languages with which the student has no first-hand acquaintance. We shall now endeavour to make clear, in as brief a space as possible, first how the vocabulary of one language is influenced by that of another ; secondly, the principal tests which determine the origin of a foreign word, and the approximate date at which it was borrowed ; and, thirdly, what is the subsequent fate of words which are borrowed from one language into another. We shall then be in a position to discuss the principal sources of the words from foreign languages borrowed by English at an early period, and to give a few typical examples of such as survive in familiar Modern English speech. How One Language influences the Vocabulary of Another. This influence may be exerted either directly, by the actual personal association of the speakers of the two languages, or indirectly, through books written in a foreign tongue. The former of these modes is obviously the more potent and thorough in its efiects. Supposing that two races, speaking different languages, live side by side, associate intimately with each other, intermarry, and finally merge into one people. What happens in such a case is that gradually a large number of 154 THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY speakers of both races know and speak both languages equally well and equally frequently. For several generations, probably, the two races which are in process of fusion are bilingual — that is, they can speak two languages. Gradually one language is spoken less and less, and finally gives way entirely before the other. .This is what happened in Eng- land when Englishmen and Danes lived alongside of each other, and again later on, after the Norman settlement. Now, the bilingual period is the time when the two languages influence each other. A Dane who knew English as well as his own language, would often mingle — perhaps without realizing it — English words with his own language, and these would be perfectly well understood lay his hearers, both English and Danish, since they all spoke both tongues. Similarly, an Englishman living in a district settled by Danes, and who very likely was half a Dane in blood, introduced Danish words when speaking English ; he spoke, in fact, a mixture of both languages, so far as the words used were concerned. Thus, Danish words came to be used instead of, or as well as, English words of the same meaning. The result of such habits, when Danish had died out as an independent language, was that hundreds of Danish words remained in common use, and these sometimes ousted the native English words. This is the most complete form of influence exerted by one language upon another. Less powerful than this, but still not without effect, is the case where a number of inhabitants of a country visit another land, either to fight, govern, or INDIRECT INFLUENCE 155 trade with the natives. They learn something, at least, of the foreign language — the names of foods, weapons, or words to express native customs which have no counterpart in their own country. When they return home, these new words become current among their immediate circle, and some of them spread to wider spheres. Indirect influence upon vocabulary is often exerted through, a language whose literature is much studied, and whose Art, Philosophy, and Culture are highly prized and widely known by foreign races. Latin had in this way a profound influence upon all the civilized languages of Europe in the Middle Ages, because the old literature of Rome was universally read, and also because the Roman form of Christianity had a wide acceptance, and the official language of this Roman Christianity was Latin. With the' revival of learning, Greek became a common means for the precise expression of the technical ideas of Art, Science, and Philosophy, while French has been, of all the Modern languages, the chief vehicle of culture from the Middle Ages down to the present time. Hence all European languages have felt more or less deeply these influences — indirect for the most part in the case of Latin and Greek, but in that of French, directly, as well. Tests of Origin of Foreign Words, and of the Time of their Adoption. When during the late war in South Africa the style of newspaper correspondents bristled with such words as ' kop,' ' kopje,' ' spruit,' and the rest, or iS6 THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY when our friends returned from the war and used these words in their conversation (they pronounced them, for the most part, Hke ' copy ' and ' sproot '), there was Httle doubt in anyone's mind that these strange words had been learnt during the last year or two from Dutch speakers in South Africa. But in the case of words borrowed hundred of years ago, perhaps, it is not always so easy to settle the language from which they came, or the period at which they were acquired. The first point is that the form of the words must be such that we can recognize them as belonging to a particular language, and the next that we should be able to establish the possibility of the contact, direct or indirect, between the speakers of the language whence the words come, and those of the language which has, as we assume, adopted them. Therefore, if we assume a certain foreign word in Old English to be of Latin origin, the first question is. Could Old English speakers and writers at any period have come into contact with Latin in any shape or form ? Supposing this point to be satisfactorily — that is, affirmatively — settled, the next is, When did the borrowing take place ? Now, Latin, while it was a living language, underwent changes of pronunciation like other languages, and varied considerably, in its spoken form, from the stereotyped and fixed form of the Classical writers. Therefore, we have to inquire, At what period was this particular word pronounced in spoken Latin in a way approximating to the form which it bears in Old English ? If we can settle this, then we shall be pretty near being able to fix more or less exactly the date of the loan, since the Latin word DATE OF BORROWING 157 was differently pronounced at different times, and among different races. All the good little books on English tell us that the same foreign word may be borrowed several times over into English, at different periods, and each time with a new pronunciation. A stock example of this is the Low Latin word hospitalia, which we have in the forms hostel, from an early form of French which had changed it consider- ably; hotel, from Modern French hStel, which has changed it still more, having lost the s ; and hospital, which is the Latin word practically unchanged, and which the English may have borrowed any time direct from the language of Latin books. Therefore, if we wish to have an intelligent know- ledge of the origin of such loan-words as are of any antiquity, it is of the highest importance to pay attention to their form or pronunciation at different periods, both in the language from which and into which they are borrowed. It is further necessary to possess sufficient historical knowledge to show how and when the two peoples came into contact, direct or literary. The Fate of Foreign Words in a Language. When a foreign word passes into common use in a language, by one of the processes described above, it has at first, a form as near as possible to that which it bore in the language from which it was taken. It is necessary, for clearness, to distinguish between words derived direct from living speech and those derived through the written language. We will consider first the fate of words taken from iS8 THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY a living spoken language. When a speaker acquires a foreign word, and, for some reason or other, uses it when speaking his own tongue, the pronunciation which he gives the word will be as near as he can make it to that current at the time among those from whom he has learnt the word — that is, the native speakeiS of the foreign language. The degree of fidelity to the original native pronunciation which the word retains in the language into which it is introduced will depend upon the familiarity which speakers of the latter possess with the language from which they borrow, and also upon how far the sounds of the two languages differ or agree. In the case which we discussed above, of Danish words passing into English, we must remember, first, that the Englishmen who adopted Danish words probably knew this language very well, and, secondly, that the sounds of English and Danish were probably very much alike. In fact, Danish may well have been spoken by the Danes themselves with an ' English accent.' Therefore, the Danish words might retain in English a pronunciation almost identical with the Danish pronunciation then in vogue, and yet not sound strange to English ears when used in an English sentence. As a general rule, we may say that a foreign word does not retain, in wide and common usage, among speakers of a different language, a pronunciation which is quite strange to that language. Speakers give to foreign words the nearest corresponding sound of their own language to that of the word in its native dialect. The dif- ferences, if any, between the two are often so slight that they cannot be expressed by ordinary spelling. DEVELOPMENT OF BORROWED WORDS 159 By examining a certain number of borrowed words in any language, we are enabled to say how any particular sound is treated by the borrowers. We can say such and such a sound in this or that language appears as such and such a sound in this or that other language, in words borrowed by the latter from the former. But if the sounds of a language change, words borrowed after the changes will naturally show the results of these changes. Now, the word for ' rope ' in Welsh is rhaff, which we believe to be a loan-word from English. But it cannot have been borrowed from Mod. Eng., on account of the difference of vowel. We know, however, that in O.E. the pronunciation was rap, and we therefore conclude that this word was borrowed by the Welsh before the sound a had become 6 — that is, in the Old English period. In Welsh a has undergone no change. Again, the words ^street' and 'strath' are both ultimately derived from the Latin strata via, 'a paved way.' In one case the Latin t has been preserved to the present day in English, in the other it has become th. Clearly these two forms of the same Latin word could not have come into English at the same period, and through the same linguistic mediuni, for if the English were able to reproduce the Latin ^-sound, they would not at the same time, and in the same word, have been obliged to substitute another sound for it, as in strath. Therefore, the latter word must have been borrowed from speakers who at the time of the borrowing had changed the pronuncia- tion of Latin t to th. Loan-words, then, appear in a language with a i6o THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY pronunciation which, while it does not in itself proclaim them to be foreigners, at the same time reproduces approximately the native sounds. The next point is that when once words have got a footing in a language their subsequent develop- ment is identical with that of the native words of the language. Their sounds are those of the language which has adopted them, and any changes which these sounds undergo extend naturally to the borrowed and native words alike. For example, we have seen (p. 135 (i) ante) that M.E. a became e (like French e) in Early Modern English. The words which had a in M.E. were not only native English words like name, but also Norman-French words like blame ; but both classes of words have developed alike, and in Present-day English name and hlame have the same sound. When once established in English usage, foreign words become, to all intents and purposes, English words. Although it is not usual for foreign words to preserve, when borrowed, a sound which is altogether alien and unknown in the language into which they have passed, this sometimes occurs in the case of words taken from a language which is commonly studied by educated persons. In this case the knowledge of the spoken form of the foreign language sometimes influences the pronunciation of words among the educated classes. Thus, the word envelope, which is Modern French, although thoroughly naturalized in English speech among all classes, has three pronunciations in this country — (i) That which gives the French sound of a nasal vowel to the first syllable ; (2) ' owvelope,' which is the English SPELLING AND SOUND IN FOREIGN WORDS i6i imitation of the French sound ; (3) ' envelope,' which is what is called a 'spelling-pronunciation,' and originated among people who did not hear the word, but made their first acquaintance with it in its written form. This last is probably the commonest at the present time among all classes, ' OMvelope ' being old-fashioned, and the pure French pronunciation, as is natural, being given up in the case of a word which is felt by the community at large to be thoroughly English. In any case, the foreign sound could never occur except among those who had studied French pronunciation. It will be readily understood that the only kind of pronunciation which is possible for words which we have never heard pronounced, and know only from books, is one in which the most usual English value is given to the letters. This kind of pronunciation may become fixed and traditional as the words in question become popular. An example of this is the French word route, often pronounced to rhyme with out, although the French pronunciation (like ' root ') is still the most usual among the educated. In this case there is no reason why the native sound of the word should not be retained, as it is a common sound in English, but those unacquainted with French who saw the word for the first time in a book could not know that ou is pronounced like English ' 00.' Such a word as machine, on the other hand, which everybody is bound to know, long before they learn to read, retains the French pro- nunciation of ch and i, in spite of the spelling. II i62 THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY Words from Purely Literary Sources. The principle which determines the form of this very large class of words is that which we have just noted in the pronunciations route, envelope. While some words are living forms for one class, but merely book forms for aniDther, words which are taken from the literature of languages no longer spoken must, of necessity, be, in origin, book forms for all. Words taken from Latin and Greek direct are simply Englished by giving- the ordinary sounds which are associated at the time of borrowing with the letters in the word. In a large number of cases we have in English words of Latin origin which have come in through Norman or Continental French, and which before they passed into English had undergone the normal sound changes in popular speech, and also the same word, taken, at a different time, direct from literary Latin, and preserving sounds which had been lost long before in the spoken language. Caitif, captive, both = Latin captivus ; chief, Norman-French chef, from a popular Latin capo, from Latin caput, compared with capii-al, etc. ; benison and benediction, from Latin benedictionem, are among the stock examples of this. The Sources of Foreign Loan- Words in Old English. I. Celtic. — The influence of this family of lan- guages has not profoundly affected English or any other Germanic language. It is, however, one of the earliest foreign influences that can be traced in our EARLY INFLUENCE OF LATIN 163 language, and was first exerted before our forefathers left the Continent. A word from Continental Celtic which is found in O.E. and its cognates in the other Germanic languages is r%ce, ' kingdom,' ' rule.' This word survives in the present day only in the com- pound bishop-n'c. 2. Latin. — There are three distinct groups of words from this source found in O.E. : those bor- rowed on the Continent by the English, in common with other Germanic peoples ; those borrowed from Latin-speaking Britons in these islands ; those ac- quired at a later period through the direct influence of Roman Christianity after the conversion of the English. The loans of these three periods are dis- tinguished by their form in O.E. Only words of each class which survive in Mod. Eng. are given in the following examples. {a) Continental Latin. — Among the principal tests of this class of loans are the retention in O.E. of Latin p, t, c (-k) between vowels, and the presence of the word in other Germanic languages in such a form as to imply that it was acquired before the languages separated, and then underwent the char- acteristic sound changes of each language. These tests are fulfilled by the following words : O.E. nt§p, from Lat. ndpus {cf. Scotch neap and Eng. tur-nip, in which last the vowel of the word has been shortened in the unstressed syllable of a compound) ; O.E. tnynet, 'coin,' from Lat. moneta, Eng. mint; O.E./wj-beam, 'fig,' Lat. yicMs. This word has been lost, our fig, as its final g shows, having come to us through Norman French. Latin strata-via. survives in O.E. str^t, Mod. Eng. II— 2 i64 THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY street ; O.E. 6yse, cese, from Lat. cdseum, has become Mod. Eng. cheese. Kitchen, O.E. cy'cene, Lat. coquina, is probably a Continental survival. (6) La^w Words acquired in Britain. — It has been maintained with great probability that the educated upper classes among the British of the towns in these islands still spoke a form of Latin at the time of the arrival (fifth century) of the English from the Continent. In any case, it is certain that a large number of Latin words were in common use among them, and many of these passed into English. But the Latin in use in Britain had changed considerably in pronunciation from the older form of it which the English had already met in their old homes. For instance, c (k) between vowels was voiced, as is seen in O.E. cugele, ' cowl,' from some such form as cugul, earlier Latin cuculld. Similarly, p had become b between vowels, and this sound had still further developed into a sound something like v, though written/ in O.E. — prafost, L,a,t pnspositus, but Brito- Lat. prdvost. This is Eng. provost. Another very common O.E. word which would appear to have been borrowed in this country is ccester, ' city,' Brito- Lat. castr, Lat. castra. This word survives in Chester, and in other place-names such as Rochester, etc. The vowel change seen in the O.E. word is of English origin, and took place in English mouths after the borrowing. (c) Latin Words of Later Date derived from the Roman Missionaries. — Many of these words, which were very numerous in O.E., have been lost. Among survivals of the class are probably pope, O.E. papa, Lat. papa ; martyr. THE BRITONS— THE DANES 165 There are words associated with the Christian religion which were undoubtedly borrowed on the Continent while the English were still pagan, such as devil, O.E. deofol, Lat. diabolus; church, O.K. &yrce, from Gk. Kvpiaicd, ' belonging to the Lord ' ; bishop, O.E. biscop, Lat. episcopus, from Gk. eTri(TKoiro), crown {cynehelm), power (onwald), poor {earm), turn (verb, wendan), saint (halga), prison (cweartcern), and many others. The English word is preserved in • All Hallows.' Words which have come into English from Norman French, a language spoken for several hundreds of years in this country, and others, intro- duced from other French dialects during the M.E. i68 THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY period, have become so much part of English that they are not felt to be exotic or strange in any way, and are as essential as elements of speech at the present day as the words of the old native English or Scandinavian stock. It is calculated that about 45 per cent, of our vocabulary is Norman French. It is not always easy to distinguish from among the French words common in M.E. those of Anglo- Norman or Anglo-French origin from those which may have come from a Continental form. The most certain of the latter are words like catch, compared with Norman chase (both from Latin captiare) ; market, compared with Central French marche, where the Picard origin is shown by ck instead of ch. Other words, such as decoction, hospitality, existence, triumph, which are found in the works of Chaucer and his contemporaries, and for which a Parisian origin is claimed, might have come direct from Latin, with certain modifications of form to adapt them to the ordinary pattern of English (or French-English) words. We may contrast Norman French convey, leal, realm, caitif, with Central French convoy, loyal, royal, captive. The last is, however, a learned French form, direct from Latin, the popular form being chetif. There is no doubt that many words of purely Latin origin and form were incorporated into English from the Vulgate. These were generally modified according to the French model in dealing with such words. Some Latin words from this source belong- ing to the M.E. period are benediction (the popular form of which is benison), corrupt, aggravate. Such words, however, are of little interest con- ITALIAN LOAN-WORDS 169 sidered as typical M.E. borrowings, since if they were borrowed to-day direct from Latin they would receive precisely the same forms. Latin words borrowed since, or even during, the late O.K. period from literary sources have undergone practically no change, beyond that involved by the change of vowel sounds which has taken place during the Modern period. These changes affect also our pronunciation of Latin itself. Other Foreign Influences during M.E. Period. Italian. — ^The word pilgrim appears to be from Old Ital. pelegrino, 'wanderer,' the Old Fr. form being pelerin. This word was no doubt acquired direct by persons who went on pilgrimages to Rome. Other words of Italian origin which were intro- duced during the M.E. period, not direct, but through French, were : alarm, from Italian allearme ; florin, the Old Fr. form of Italian florino ; and brigand, Ital. brigante. There are a few words of Arabic origin which got into English in the M.E. period through French, from Spanish, such as sugar, alembic. The Loan- Words of the Modern Period. The principal sources of these are Latin, Greek, Spanish, Italian, French, and some few from out- landish tongues, such as tobacco and potato, through Spanish from the language of Hayti. The literary language of the sixteenth century does not, on the whole, show a heavily Latinized vocabulary. The Prayer Books of Edward VI. con- I70 THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY tain few words which are not at least in literary use at the present day. A beautiful phrase, ' the immar- cescible crown of glory,' occurs, it is true, in the later versions with the Latin word changed to ' never- fading.' At a later date, Francis Bacon crowds his writings with Latin words in a thin English disguise, which have never obtained a footing in the language, and the same is largely true of Sir Thomas Browne in the next century. The taste for a Latinized diction fluctuates from age to age, and among different classes of writers and speakers. There are very few of these later Latin words that we cannot very well dispense with. Words like megatory and meticulous can generally be replaced with advantage by genuine English words. However, a good writer or speaker may occasionally use an exotic word with telling effect, the slight vagueness of the new coinages frequently imparting a certain suggestiveness to a rhetorical phrase. Italian influence, which began again, after the time of Chaucer, in the sixteenth century, and has continued more or less ever since, has given us many words relating to art, and also to objects of every- day life, which are familiar to all. Balcony, broccoli, colonel, gondola, gusto, macaroni, musket, umbrella, are a few words of this origin which we could hardly do without. Spanish influence was not inconsiderable in the sixteenth century, through literature, through the Court, and through the navigators who explored the New World. A hove, don, dulcimer, lackey, commodore, flotilla, coral, ranch, cork, are enough to show how essential some Spanish words have become. SPANISH— MODERN FRENCH 171 The Greek element is chiefly of modern introduc- tion, and is used much to express sciences and scientific conceptions. Words of this kind are being coined every day, and they offer no difficulty in recognition. Such words as geology, chiropody, phonograph, philology, telescope, telegraph, etc., are easily explained by the help of a Greek Lexicon or a good English Dictionary. It is interesting to observe that words like these — the concoctions, for the most part, or at least the borrowings, of the learned, very often become perfectly popular words which every child knows and uses. There are other words, which are ultimately of Greek origin, which have filtered into English through the medium of other languages, chiefly French, which are much older, and often less easy to distinguish. Such are blame, currant, dropsy, fancy, surgeon. The last appeared already in M.E., from the shortened Old French form surgien; the longer form chirurgeon, also from a later French source, was used in English in the eighteenth century, and chirurgien is the only form now used in French. The Modern French loans are easily distinguished from the older strata by their pronunciation. They retain as far as possible the French sounds. Con- trast the pronunciation of ch in chandelier, machine, papier-macM, chatelaine, cachet, etc., with that of the M.E. loans chivalry, chandler, chine, chief, etc. Com- pare, again, the initial and final consonants of the old word judge (Old Fr. juge) with those in genre, rouge, etc. Again, note the pronunciation of suave, cache, vase, ennui (Norman annoy), migraine, soiree, Bon Marche, etc. 172 THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY We have now enumerated the principal sources from which our vocabulary has been enriched. Those who wish to make a more detailed study of this aspect of the language should consult Professor Jespersen's Growth and Structure of the English Lan- guage, and Professor Skeat's Principles of English Etymology. CHAPTER XII ENGLISH INFLEXIONS It will be unnecessary for our present purpose to do more than attempt to throw some light upon those few inflexions which remain in Mod. Eng. by tracing them to their earlier forms. The Articles. (a) Definite Article. — The (note its three pronun- ciations in Mod. Eng., p. 72 (7) ante) appears as an uninflected form as early as the twelfth century. In O.E. the definite article, which was really a demon- strative pronoun, was fully declined in all three genders, and in both numbers. The Nominative Masculine Singular was se, the Feminine seo, the Neuter T^t^t. Se in Transition English becomes fe through the influence of the other cases, which all had an initial ]» (th). The eighteenth century spelHng ye for the, and the contraction y* for that, are reminis- cences of the old symbol p. Y here was, of course, always pronounced as th. A trace of the old Accusative Masculine survives in the expression for the nonce ; earlier for then ones. The n of the Accusative has become attached to the following word, just as in Mod. Eng. the pronuncia- tion a negg for an egg is often heard. 173 174 ENGLISH INFLEXIONS The old Neuter ]icet survives in the now obsolete or vulgar t'other, earlier the t'other, from fet oper. (b) Indefinite Article. — In Mod. Eng. an before vowels, a before consonants. This word was originally the numeral an, ' one.' Being unstressed when used as an article, it was shortened before the change of O.E. a to o (cf. p. 134 above). Historically speaking, we must say that the n of an was retained before vowels, but not before consonants. Several words have acquired an initial n from a ' wrong ' analysis of the original form in combination with an. Newt stands for an ewt (O.E. efeta) ; the form eft and the provincial ewt represent the earlier form. On the other hand, other words have lost an initial w by a similar syllable division. Thus, an apron is from earlier a naperon {cf. Scotch napery) ; an umpire is a numpire (French nanpair) ; an adder stands for a nadder (O.E. n^ddre). Declension of Nouns. This has been reduced to the simplest form, since only the possessive case singular and the plural number are expressed in speech. The written language puts an apostrophe before the s of the possessive — man's, dog's, etc. — because it was formerly believed that -s was a ' corruption ' of his — the man his hat, etc. As a matter of fact, this suffix represents an old -es {cf. pp. 37, 38 above, for the various forms of this suffix, and that of the plural in s, in the spoken language). Chaucer still retains a Feminine suffix in -e for the possessive {cf. In hope to stonden in Ms Ladye grace). There are four main types of Plurals in Mod. THE PLURAL OF SUBSTANTIVES 175 Eng. : (i) Those which take the suffix -s, etc., which include nearly all the words in the language; (2) those which take -en — ox-en ; (3) those which change the vowel — mouse, mice, etc. ; (4) those which make no change — deer, sheep. Although the written language distinguishes the Possessive Plural from the Singular by writing the apostrophe after the -s — dogs', cats', etc. — there is, of course, no real difference between the Possessive Plural and that of the Singular in Class (i). Class (i) was represented in O.E. by words which added -as to the Nominative and Accusative Plural ; in M.E. this became -es, and in Mod. Eng. the vowel has been lost in pronunciation, except after s or sh — kisses, fishes, etc. Words of this class were all Masculine in O.E., but in M.E. the class was largely extended. Side by side with this type of declension, there existed also in O.E. the so-called Weak Declension, which formed the Nominative and Accusative Plural by the addition of the suffix -an, in M.E. -en. This was a large class in O.E. In M.E. the Northern and Midland dialects reduced it, while the Saxon dialects increased it. In Modern Standard English the Midland habit has prevailed, with the result that we have only ox-en, brethr-en, childr-en. The r in the last word is itself the remains of an old Plural suffix — O.E. cild-ru. Class (3), or the Mutation-plurals, was considerably larger in O.E. The change of vowel is due to the process described above (pp. 129-131). Goat, shroud, cow, book, are among the words which in O.E. had a mutated vowel in the Plural, and also in the Dative Singular. In the wotds which retain the mutation 176 ENGLISH INFLEXIONS in Mod. Eng. this only appears in the Plural, the whole singular being the unmutated type. It should be noted that all the survivals of this declension in Mod. Eng. are common, familiar words, as only such could resist the tendency to level all declension under one type. The form kye, Plural of cow, in Northern Dialects is the old mutated form ; the poetical hine is a double plural with both muta- tion and the -n suffix of the Weak Declension. Class (4) represents old Neuter words, which in O.K. remained unchanged in Nominative and Accusative Plural. The whole of these, with the exception of the two mentioned above, have been levelled under the general type which takes -s, etc., in the Plural. Wife, house, calf, and many others, originally belonged to this class. Traces of an old Dative Plural in -um survive in whilom, O.E. hwilum, ' at times,' and in seldom. The former was a noun, the latter an adjective meaning ' rare.' The Dative Singular and Plural were often used adverbially. Comparison of Adjectives. The old declension of adjectives has been com- pletely lost, and concord is no longer possible ; only comparison remains to be mentioned. The comparative suffix -er, and the superlative -est, represent old formative elements which are used in M.E. and O.E. At the present time only elder and eldest, derived from old, show mutated forms, but in O.E. young, long, strong, and several others, also had a change of vowel in comparative and superlative. This was again the result of i'-mutation, for originally there APPARENT ANOMALIES IN COMPARISON 177 were two types: -or- in comparative and -ost- in superlative, which wrought no change in the pre- ceding vowel; and -ir-, -ist-, which produced the modification. Elder, eldest, are survivals of this latter type, and are now used with a different sense from older, oldest. These are, of course, new formations from the positive old, and not the descendants of the old comparative and superlative. There are some adjectives which, from the earliest period, use in the other degrees, forms from an altogether different root from that from which gave rise to the positive. Such are good, better, best ; bad, worse, worst. The form worse appears strange as a comparative, and, in fact, a very natural feeling for analogy has produced a form worser. As a matter of fact, the old comparative suffix lurks in the s of worse. The ordinary O.E. suffix is -ira- or -ora-, but this stands for an earlier -jra-, -oza- (still found in Gothic), and the z is produced from a still earlier -s-, which, under certain conditions of the accent, at a very primitive period was voiced — i.e., became ~. In worse these conditions were apparently not present, %vith the result that the -s- remains. The O.E. form was wyrsa, from cin older wursisa{n). Pronouns. The foUowdng forms of the personal pronouns are normally developed from the corresponding earlier forms, and call for no remark : /, thou, thee, he, we, us. The objective case of the ist person, me, now does duty both for Accusative and Dative; originally it was an Accusative form. Him is also an old Dative ; the original Accusative, 12 178 ENGLISH INFLEXIONS O.E. hint, having been lost, except inasmuch as it survives in provincial dialects as ' un.' The Feminine Nominative she is rather difficult to explain. In O.E. it was hed, which in M.E. became in some dialects he, and was thus indistinguishable from the Masculine. In O.E. the Feminine demonstrative pronoun, or definite article, seo was often used simply as a personal pronoun. It has been suggested that she is a mixture of both forms, but this offers difficulties. At any rate, a form spelt sc^ occurs in the Peterborough Chronicle, and this is apparently the ancestor of our form, though how it arose we do not exactly know. You is an old Accusative and Dative Plural, although now used as a Nominative both in the Singular and Plural. The obsolete ye is the repre- sentative of the old Nominative Plural. Ye is used already in the seventeenth century, indifferently as a Nominative or an oblique case, as may be seen from the Authorized Version of the Bible. They and them are of Scandinavian origin, and have replaced the English forms hi, hem, the latter of which Chaucer still uses. The obsolete or very colloquial 'em is not a con- traction of them, but is the old hem, with the initial aspirate lost through want of stress. In the same way it, from an earlier hit (still re- tained in Scotch), has lost its h. As a matter of fact, in rapid speech all the pro- nouns which begin with h — he, him, his, her — lose the aspirate when unstressed, and are thus on all fours with 'em, it, and the provincial ' un,' from hine, which has been already mentioned. TllK PRONOUNS 179 Pimcssivc Pronoiiiis. The forms my, mine, thy, thine, his, hey, your, our, !ui" the old t lenitives of the personal pronouns. In O.E, they were used as simple Genitives iifl or certain verbs ; for instance, as God nri< hflpf, ' God help us,' were also used as possessive adjectives, most of them in that case being fully inflected — mlnra (Genitive IHural), etc. Tlie O.E. forms mm, \>ln, were retained in M.E. in their full forms, but later cm lost // before words beginning with a consonant. My, thy, are thus from M.IC. ml, \'i : mine, thine, from the forms before vowels. His has no distinguishing alisolute form, but to the analogy of this unvarying form with s arc doubtless duo the forms hers, ours, yours. On the other hand, the n in thine, mine, gives rise to the vulgar hisn, hern,yourn, ourn. His was the Genitive not only of the Masculine Pronoun, hut also of the Neuter ////, aiul was so used down to the sixteentli century, wlien we find both his and simply it, where we should use its. The latter was first used in the seventeenth century, and was a new formation, on the analogy of his. Their is Scandinavian, and lias replaced the English form hit, which Chaucer still uses. Demons! rdtive Pronouns, This is the old Neuter form of the pronoun with the same meaning. The Plural these appears to he derived from the Feminine Singular of the same word. Thiit is the old Neuter Singular of the definite article and demonsti^tive pronoun — Masculine s« i8o ENGLISH INFLEXIONS (whence the indeclinable the; cf. p. 173 above), Feminine seo, Neuter ^at. Those is from O.E. pas, the Plural of fes (Masculine), feds (Feminine, whence these), ])ts (Neuter). Relatives and Interrogatives. The Mod. Eng. relatives which, who, were originally only interrogatives. In O.E. hwa, ' who ' (of persons), and the Neuter hwcet, ' what,' were used as substantives ; hwelc, hwilc, 'which,' was used both as a "Substantive and as an adjective. The definite article or demon- strative se, seo, \(Bt, was used relatively, either alone or with the relative particle f e ; and that is still so used in Modern English. Verbs. The two main classes of verbs in English are the Weak, which form their past tense and past participle by the addition of -ed, -d, or -t to the stem ; and the Strong, which do not add these suffixes, but undergo a change in the root vowel. The Present Indicative. The inflexions of this tense are the same in all regular verbs, whether strong or weak. I love ] we 1 thou lovest [you love, he loves, loveth ) they The now obsolete forms lov-est, lov-eth, represent the M.E. Southern types ; the latter is also Midland. The usual love-s is characteristic of Northern in M.E. The Plural in M.E. was -es in the North, and this VERBAL INFLEXION i8i still survives in the Modern Northern dialects and in Scotch. In the South the Plural suffix was -eth, now completely lost, but still used by Chaucer, along with other forms, and by Wycliff. The Midland suffix of the Plural present in M.E. was -en, which is the usual form in Chaucer, and from which our present flexionless form is derived. The weakening, and even the occasional dropping, of the final -n is found in Chaucer, and by the beginning of the six- teenth century these also had disappeared from pro- nunciation. " Present Participle. The Mod. Eng. suffix -ing is QQtja^n old participial ending. The Present Participle in O.E. was -fijti, and in M.E. this is still retsdned as -ind{e) in the South, •end{e) in the Midlands, -and{e) in the North. This suffix was replaced during the M.E. period by the ending -ing, which was originally used in substan- tives derived from verbs, such as O.E. leornung or homing, 'learning.' This is the ancestor of our present form, used in the participle of all verbs. In ' Bydand," the motto of the Gordons, the old form still survives. The Preterite and Past Participle. A. Weak Verbs— (i) Regular Forms.— The O.E. suffixes were -ode or -ede, -od or -ed, respectively. This distinction is lost in M.E., which levels all unstressed vowels under -e, and, in fact, in O.E. itself the two types were often confused through Analogy. In Mod. Eng. the final -e is, of course, lost, and the i82 ENGLISH INFLEXIONS suffix is further shortened by the loss of the vowel before the -d- in the majority of verbs — lov'd, etc. — in pronunciation. After -d- or 4-, however, the e is retained in pronunciation — e.g., rott-ed, want-'ed, load-ed, etc. After voiceless consonants other than t the -d- is unvoiced, and this fact is sometimes ex- pressed in the spelling, though not at all conse- quently. The unvoicing takes place in washed = ' washt,' fetched = ' fetcht,' kissed =' kist,' etc. The Past Participle appears more often written with t in the conventional spelling than the Preterite whipt, especially when used adjectivally ; ' a whipt cur,' and learnt are received as proper, while to write he learnt his lesson, he past away, and still more he smasht his arm, would be considered licentious. (2) Weak Preterites with Change of Vowel and Con- sonantal Change. — The verbs seek — sought, huy — bought, teach — taught, think — thought, require a few words of explanation. The change of vowel is the result of the i-mutation process, already discussed (pp. 129-131 above); the consonantal changes are mostly, in origin, due to tendencies of change which occurred in the Continental period. As regards the fact that the f-mutation is absent in the Preterite, but occurs in the Present and the Infinitive, this circumstance is due to the absence of the necessary conditions in the Preterite to bring about the change of vowel. Thus we must suppose that the old Infi;iitives were sok-jan, bug-jan ; t&k-jan, ]>unk-jan, respectively; and the Presents sok-ja (ist person), bug-ja, etc., in all of which forms the muta- tion would be normal. The Preterites, however, must have been sohta, bohta, tdhta, Tpohta, O.E. has ' CAUGHT' FORMED ON AN ENGLISH MODEL 183 two forms for the Preterite of ' teach ' — namely, tahte (whence our taught) and t^hte, which has been lost. The vowel in the latter form is a mutated form of O.E. a, and it can only be due here to the analogy of the Present and Infinitive. The fact that O.E. has sohte, etc., in the Preterite is to be explained from a very early change, whereby the combination -kt- became -ht- ; that is, a back-stop became a back-open-consonant. Sohte (ancestor of sought) is from an earlier sokta, and this from still earlier sok-da, the d being unvoiced by the preceding voiceless consonant. O.E. ^ohte goes back to earlier \ank-ta, which becomes first panhta, and then loses the nasal con- sonant («) before h, which is a universal habit in the early Germanic languages. But before disappearing, the n imparted its nasal quality to the preceding a, producing a sound like that in French sang, etc. This nasal vowel was rounded to in Primitive O.E., and later on the n,asalization was lost, being replaced by lengthening of the vowel. As a result of all these processes, which are perfectly regular in Germanic and O.E., we get the O.E. form ^ohte. In connexion with this class of verbs, we must also consider the case of catch — caught. This is a word of Picard-French origin, and appears in M.E. as cacchen, vnth the usual English verbal suffixes. There are two forms of Preterite in M.E. cacchede, which gives the now obsolete English catched and caughte, whence the form we employ. The inter- change of consonants in cacche — caughte would be normal if the word had been a genuine English word, but could not possibly take place by ordinary i84 ENGLISH INFLEXIONS phonetic change in a word not introduced into the language till the M.E. period. But the change is very common in English verbs in O.E., and, in fact, there is actually an O.E. word meaning ' to catch ' which shows this change : labean — lahte, which in M.E. was lacchen — laughte. What, then, more natural than that on the model of this old verb a new Preterite caughte should be formed for cacchen ? The two words were sometimes used in the same sentence, and the old naturally influences the new. Thus, the phrase ' he laughte and caughte ' (he seized and caught) actually occurs. (3) Weak Verbs which have a Shortened Vowel in the Preterite. — The short vowels in such Preterites as fed from feed, hid from hide, are the result of a M.E. shortening before a double consonant, which has been already referred to (c/. p. 133 (2) above). The O.E. had IrAmtive fedan. Preterite /ei-«fe. Infinitive hydan. Preterite hyd-de, whence in M.E. hidde, fedde. The Infinitives of these words preserved the long vowels, which developed in the normal way. The verb slide was in O.E. slldan, a strong verb, with Preterite slad, but has been assimilated to the group we are discussing. Weep — wept, from O.E. wepan — wep-te (originally a strong verb), shows the usual M.E. shortening of a long vowel before a combination of consonants (c/. p. 133 (2) above). The unvoicing of the d in the suffix of the Preterite sent took place already in M.E. B. Strong Verbs. — Such verbs as sit — sat — sat ; sing — sang — sung ; write — wrote — written ; see — saw — seen, owe the interchange of vowels to changes ANOMALOUS VERBS 185 which took place far back in the past, before the in- dependent existence of English, or even of Germanic. These changes were due purely to phonetic causes, and had originally nothing to do with differences of meaning (see p. 197 below). There was far more variety in O.E. than at the present day, as in many cases the vowels of the Singular and Plural Preterite were different, as in — Inf. Pret. Sing. Pret. PI. Past. Panic. ffiefan, 'give.' geaf. geafon. giefen. sitten, 'sit.' scet. saton. seten. sebn, ' see.' seah. sawoii. s^en. In M.E., however, this variety was simplified, and the Singular and Plural were levelled under the same vowel. The Past Participle always had the suffix -en in O.E., which in Mod. Eng. is retained in a few forms — ridden, written, borne, taken — but is more often dropped. Many verbs originally Strong are now included among Weak verbs — e.g., climb, help, melt. On the other hand, stick, wear, swear, which are now Strong, were formerly Weak. C. Anomalous Verbs — (i) Preterite Present Verbs. — The forms can, dare, shall, may, now, as in O.E., used as Presents, are, so far as their form goes, old Preterites. This is the reason that they have no -s in the 3rd Person Singular. The past tenses of these are derived from the old forms cu]ie, M.E. coude (with change of f to «?) ; scolde, mihte, respectively. The O.E. forms were new formations, to take the place of the old Preterites used as Presents. Dare is also used as an indefinite verb meaning ' to have i86 ENGLISH INFLEXIONS courage,' in which case it is inflected dares in 3rd Person Singular, Hke a regular verb. The verb must, now used both as Present and Preterite, is derived from O.E. moste, which was a new formation, used only as a Preterite. Mod. Eng. has lost the O.E. form mot of this verb, which was used as a Present, although Preterite in form. Had it survived, it must have become ' moot.' Ought is, like must, the descendant of the O.E. Preterite — dhte in this case. The O.E. form age used as the Present of this verb has become Mod. Eng. owe, with a different meaning, and with a new Past, owed. The meaning of O.E. agan (Infinitive), age, dhte, was ' possess.' This, in the Mod. Eng. forms of this verb, has developed the meaning ' to possess an obligation,' to 'owe,'' and, further, the more abstract meaning which we find in ought. Will is an old Subjunctive Preterite in form, used as a Present in O.E., which had wolde, whence our would, as a Preterite. It may be observed that all these Preterite Present verbs, as well as the auxiliary verbs have, do, need, and he, are the only verbs in English which can take the negative particle not immediately after them. (2) To he, etc. We retain in the Mod. Eng. in- flexion of this word three quite distinct roots — is and are (from same root) ; he — been ; was — were. The -m of the 1st Person Singular is the sole remaining survivor in Mod. Eng. of a class. of verbs which took this suffix, originally probably the pronoun of the ist Person and cognate with me. It is to be found also in Latin sum and inqua-m, and in Greek iifii, earlier esmi. INTERCHANGE OF '5' AND '/?' 187 The interchange of s — r in is — are, was — were, is originally an interchange between voiceless s and voiced z, and is due to the change which we noted in worse, compared with the ordinary comparative suffix with r (from earlier z). The Preterite went, used in the conjugation of go, is, of course, from a root of quite different origin from this latter. O.E. had a verb wendan, used as a reflexive verb meaning ' go,' with a Preterite wende ; from this the form went is taken. When used as an active verb in Mod. Eng., to wend takes the Preterite wended. CHAPTER XIII THE PLACE OF ENGLISH AMONG OTHER LANGUAGES— CONCLUDING REMARKS It will readily be believed that the English language does not stand alone among the languages of the earth, a solitary if splendid monument of human genius, entirely unrelated to other forms of speech. To this conclusion we are led, not only from the fact that English did not come into existence in these islands in the prehistoric past, but was introduced here, within the historical period, from the Continent of Europe, a fully formed language, bearing signs of a past history, but also from the close resemblance, in many respects, which English bears to other languages — a resemblance far too strong to be the result of chance. We have considered at some length, in an earlier chapter, the question of loan-words — words borrowed into English from Latin, Danish, French, Italian, and other languages. We have seen that many of these borrowed words preserve, pretty faithfully, the forms of the languages from which they were borrowed, allowing for the differences made in adapting them to English mouths, and considering i88 LOAN-WORDS AND COGNATES 189 the changes which time works in all words, even in those which were English from the beginning. But there are other cases of words in English, which are certainly not borrowed from Latin, which yet bear an unmistakable resemblance to Latin words. For instance, while there is no doubt that such words as fraternity, unity, essence, dentist, aural, domestic, and many others, are practically Latin pure and simple, it can hardly escape notice that the root words in Latin from which they are borrowed, or with which they are connected, are curiously like corresponding words of genuine English origin. Thus, frdter — brother; unus, un-itas — one; essentem, essent-ia — is; dent-em — tooth; auris — ear; dom-us — tame, are sufficiently close in form to give rise to reflection. If we systematically compare the commonest and most familar words in Latin and in English, such as the names for family relationships, the numerals up to ten, the verb ' to be,' the personal pronouns, we shall find the same resemblance, and if, instead of comparing the modern English words with the Latin, we compare the Old English forms, the connexion between the two languages is very much closer in most cases. Are we to assume, then, that English is derived from Latin, that it is simply a form of Latin which has developed on special lines ? Certainly not. This is just the conclusion which we must not draw. The fact is that Latin and English are cognate languages — that is, languages which are both sprung from the same original ancestor. This common ancestor is known as Primitive Aryan. It has long ceased to exist independently, and only survives in the various forms of its numerous offspring. But igo THE POSITION OF ENGLISH English, even in its oldest form, is not the direct child of Primitive Aryan. It must have struck every student of Modern German how very closely this language resembles English — the resemblance is far nearer than that which Enghsh bears to Latin. Dutch is even more like English than German is ; for instance, German wasser, Dutch water, English water ; German fiinf, Dutch vijv, English five ; German gut, Dutch goed, English good; German besser, Dutch beter, English better ; German weib, Dutch vijf, English wife, and so on. Here, again, we must not suppose that English is derived from German, or even from Dutch, but we assume that all three are developed, on more or less different lines, from the same ancestor, which we call Primitive Germanic, and which was a daughter of Primitive Aryan. In the same way Latin is merely one of several closely related dialects formerly spoken in Italy, and all of which we believe to have been developed out of a common ancestor, which we call Primitive Italic. Thus, the immediate starting-point for German, Dutch, and English, on the one hand, is Primitive Germanic; while on the other. Primitive Italic gave rise to Latin, and the other ancient dialects of Italy. These two dialects, then, Germanic and Italic, were sisters, both sprung from the common parent. Primitive Aryan. Primitive Aryan gave rise to several other dialects, each of which became in turn the mother of a group of languages; that is,- each of the dialects into which Primitive Aryan split up, also developed varieties in its turn, which in time became so distinct that their descendants were regarded as separate Ian- SPEECH FAMILIES 191 guages. The chief of these groups or Families of languages, representatives of which still survive, are : The Indian languages, (of which Sanscrit is the chief ancient form, and which has numerous modern representatives. The language of the Gipseys is an Indian dialect, much modified by the languages of the different countries through which the Gipseys have passed) ; the Hellenic or Greek dialects, Celtic (represented by Irish, Welsh [and Breton], Scotch Gaelic, and Manx), Slavonic (represented by Russian, Polish, Servian, etc.), and Germanic and Italic, as already mentioned. We can now see, approximately, the relationship of English on the one hand to its near cousins Dutch and German, and on the other to its remoter cousins, many times removed, such as Latin, Greek, Sanscrit, Russian, and Irish. The minute study of these relationships is known as Comparative Philology, which is a very difficult and complicated subject. It is not uncommon to find in quite elementary books an attempt to introduce the beginner to some of the details of this study, especially to what purports to be an account of the relationships of English with Latin, Greek, and Sanscrit. This is introduced under the title of what is known as Grimm's Law. This ' Law ' states that a certain number of consonantal sounds which existed in Primitive Aryan became such and such other different sounds in Primitive Germanic. Words from Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin, are introduced to illustrate the original Aryan sounds, and are com- pared with words from English and Gothic, to illustrate the Primitive Germanic sounds. Unfor- 192 THE POSITION OF ENGLISH tunately, each of the ancient languages just mentioned has its own pecuHar laws of sound change, whereby the original sounds are often changed quite as much as they are in Germanic, so that almost every example requires a special explanation to show how it is that a given Aryan sound has been altered into this or that quite different sound in Latin or Greek. Then, the English examples by no means always illustrate the Primitive Germanic forms as they ought, for here, too, numerous special changes have taken place, which require explanation. Since we hold that this sort of explanation should be left to a later stage of study, and since without it the illustrations from the various languages are apt to mislead, we shall not attempt here to state either Grimm's Law or the equally important Laws of Grassmann and Verner. It may be possible and profitable, however, to give some indication of what the problems of Com- parative Philology are, to give some idea of what is meant by comparing together languages so widely separated as English, Latin, Greek, etc., and also to point out the general and special connexion between such investigations and the questions with which we have tried to deal in this short study of the English Language. The first point to bear in mind is that the various families of languages which we have enumerated, sprung as they are from a common parent, have yet probably been separate for several thousand years, during which time they have developed on in- dependent and often very different lines. In some cases their original identity is fairly obvious, from THE PROBLEM OF IDENTITY 193 the fact that all, or several, of the speech families have preserved fairly closely the original features of the parent language. Thus, Latin octo, Greek oktw, Old Irish ocht, Gothic ahtau, 'eight,' have a suffi- ciently close resemblance for their identity to appear probable at the first glance. On the other hand, no one could possibly suspect the equally certain identity of Greek ^aivm, Latin venio, Gothic qimcm, O.E. cuman, 'come,' without knowing something concerning the characteristic peculiarities of develop- ment of Greek, Latin, and Germanic. Now, accord- ing to the strict methods of modern Philology, we are not justified in asserting the original identity of a group of words from different languages, unless we are able to account for every sound in each — that is, to show how, and by what process of development, for instance, a certain sound in Primitive Aryan became 13 in Greek, v in Latin, q { = kw) in Gothic, and so on. In the above group of words we should further have to explain the relationship of Greek -aiv-, Latin -en-, Gothic -im-, for the vowels are just as important, and just as regular in their development, as the consonants. To explain these things we should have to show by several examples, that under certain conditions, the same sounds always develop in Hellenic, Italic, and Germanic, in the same way as they are asserted to have done in the above words. This involves a wide survey, and a knowledge of the peculiar habits of development of each of the families mentioned. Again, we have to consider, not merely the characteristics of each of the speech families as a whole, but of each of the various dialects or languages into which these have been differentiated. 13 194 THE POSITION OF ENGLISH Thus, before comparing a modern English word, for example, with a Greek word, we have to first trace the word back to its oldest English form — and we have seen above (pp. 132-138) that a good many changes have occurred in English since the O.E. period — and thence to the Primitive Germanic type. Now, the oldest English forms, although they bear often a close resemblance to the oldest forms of the other Germanic languages, are yet often sufficiently distinct and different for it to be evident that each of these languages has changed considerably since the period of original unity in Primitive Germanic. For instance, the word tooth in O.E. is to\>, in Gothic tun\us, in Old High German zand, which shows that whatever the Primitive Germanic form may have been, it has altered on different lines in English, Gothic, and High German (that is, what we generally call ' German '). But when we have reached the Primitive Germanic form of a word, before we can profitably compare it with Latin, we have often to go through a similar process of discovering what was the Primitive Italic form from which the Latin form in question is derived. Latin sometimes preserves this approximately, but equally often the Latin form is proved to have undergone as many changes as the O.E. form. Thus, the forms which Philologists compare together are not the derived forms of individual languages such as Greek and Latin, but the ancestral forms of such types as Primitive Italic and Primitive Hellenic, and Germanic. Even when an English and a Latin word are cited side by side for comparison, it is only as types of the families to which they belong that they are DIFFICULTY OF ACCURATE STATEMENT 195 considered, and although it may not be stated, a Philologist is bound to allow for the individual characteristics of the particular languages, and mentally to carry out the process of reconstruction already referred to. The habit of merely quoting Sanscrit, Greek, and, Latin forms, to represent Primitive Aryan forms, is apt to mislead beginners into the belief that the sounds of the Parent Language are necessarily faith- fully preserved in these languages. This is far from being always the case. It sometimes happens that these languages do preserve a primitive type almost unchanged, but, on the other hand, many sounds, both consonants and vowels, are subject in each of the above three ancient tongues to a considerable number of changes, both isolative and combinative. Such a statement as ' Greek fi equals Germanic p ' is most misleading. ^ in Greek has several origins : sometimes it represents a Primitive Aryan b, in which case it corresponds to Germanic p ; but, on the other hand, it may be a special Greek (or Hellenic) development from an earlier rgw-, in which case it corresponds to a. kw ot k in Germanic, as in Paivto compared with qiman ( = kwiman). Enough has been said to show that smatterings of com- parative Philology are not only useless, but that they may be positively harmful. But without making a study of the innumerable details which go to make up the modern science of Comparative Philology, the beginner may with advantage realize, to some extent, what is their nature, and what are the difficulties involved in showing the precise relationships of a group of 13—2 196 THE POSITION OF ENGLISH cognate words. The best possible preparation for the advanced study of language is the systematic study of the Native Language ; the accurate observa- tion of its actually existing forms, as spoken in different parts of the country, among different classes and sections of the community, among the various generations at present living. From the survey of the present, with its exuberant and various life, its multifarious tendencies, here in this direction, there in that, the student passes to a consideration of the earlier phases of the growth of English speech ; he observes in each period the rise and passing away of tendencies to change, which leave their traces upon the language of the future ; for each successive generation acquires a slightly different form from that with which their elders began, and, in their turn, transmit to those who follow them a language which is no longer precisely that with which they themselves started. The student of English who looks back through the centuries at the development of the language has to interpret the written symbols of each age, and translate them into the sounds of living speech. But even by this imperfect medium he discerns a consistent and orderly working of tendency within each dialect, so far as he is able to trace its history. In other words, he soon finds that regular development is the order of the day, and learns to distrust the doctrine of ' exceptions.' He perceives that in the same dialect of English, the same sound has always developed in the same way under the same conditions. We have, in the earlier chapters of this book. NECESSITY OF WIDE SURVEY 197 indicated briefly — (i) Changes or tendencies to change which can be observed in operation at the present day ; (2) changes which took place in the Early Modern period; (3) changes which occurred in Middle English ; (4) changes which came about in the Old Enghsh period. All the past changes have left traces upon the present-day language, and a knowledge of all those which have affected our language from the beginning of the English period throws a great deal of light upon the speech of to- day. But there are many things in English which we cannot understand from the study of this language alone, no matter how far we may go back in its history. There are facts the explanation and causes of which lie further back still, some in the Primitive Germanic period, some even more remote, in the dim past of Primitive Aryan. For instance, we have noted the far-reaching sound change known as.isijjjj|atiaj3, which we said affected certain vowels in Old English. But in most cases, although the change is plainly observable in Old English itself, the -i- which produced it has disappeared already in the oldest form of English, and we have to penetrate into the common Germanic period to discover it. Again, while English, together with all the other Germanic languages, shows the interchange of vowels which we observe in the strong verbs (pp. 84, 85), and also in other cognate words (p. 82, 2, P), these changes are older even than Primitive Germanic. Corre- sponding changes are found in all the families of Aryan speech, and we must therefore conclude that they were produced in Primitive Aryan, before this igS THE POSITION OF ENGLISH had been split up into Hellenic, Italic, Germanic, etc. It is clear, then, that the advanced study of English will soon lead us beyond the history of this language alone, into the wider fields of Germanic and Comparative Aryan Philology. The special study of English is simply the follow- ing out, in detail, of the great flood of Arvan speec h into one of its innumerable sub-branche s. The multiplication of dialects from what was once, in the remote past, a single, uniform languap je will not surprSe^tne student who has learnt that even in his own speech at the present day slightly different tendencies can be observed among different classes, and in different parts of the country. Imagine communities who, at first, differ from each other in speech as little as do the inhabitants of Yorkshire from those of Lancashire, or as little as the different social divisions of a single large city picture these communities, separated completely from each other, and dispersed in widely distant areas, among peoples who speak completely different lan- guages, and whose way of life is also different, and what will be the result ? The speech of each group thus dispersed will continue to change ; the tendencies are different at the start in each group, and therefore the direction of change will be different in each case. But in addition to the initial differences, the variousness of the subsequent development will be accentuated by the external surroundings among whjch the speakers live — differences of climate, of way of life, {| of social organization, different neighbours. Imagine FROM MR. MURRAY'S CATALOGUE OF Educational Works GREEK. Grammar and Composition. GRBSK GRAMMAR ACGXDBNCE AND STNTAX FOR SCHOOLS AND OOLLEQES. By JOHN THOMPSON, M.A., late Scholar of Christ's College, Cambridge; Senior Classical Master, High School, Dublin. Crown 8vo. 65. The Crrammar consists of two parts in one volume, Part I. containing the Accidence, and Part II. the Syntax. The forms and spelling in use in Attic Greek are given according to the latest authorities, and there are special notes on Homeric peculiarities. 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