Part 4

The first five are perfect digraphs, a phonic union of parts is effected, and a new sound produced; thus, neither “hat,” with the sound of c before it, nor “cat,” with its vowel aspirated, will give the sound heard in “_ch_at” ∴ C + H is not = CH.

=CH= has three sounds:—_k_, (_ch_aos); _sh_, (ben_ch_); and a third, compound, tsh (_ch_ur_ch_).

=GH= is a digraph to perpetuate the memory of English orthographical anomalies.[11] It is used in writing seventy-five words, and in sixty-three of them its presence is ignored entirely; in nine it is equivalent to _ff_, and in three it represents a _g_. It signifies nothing in “hi_gh_,” “Hu_gh_,” &c.; and in “flight,” “night,” &c., it retains the same signification. In Old Saxon, and in Anglo-Saxon, “high” was written _hea_, _heag_, _hig_, _heah_, _heh_, _hih_, &c. A spirit of impartial justice instigated later writers to take in both the _g_ and the _h_. Professor Meiklejohn (St. Andrews) mentions the opinion held by some, that the Normans would not pronounce gutturals, and disregarded the Saxon terminal _h_’s, wherefore the scribes attempted coercion by strengthening their Aspirates with a _g_. The result must have been a failure, since both the _h_’s and their g-prefixes became lost to the pronunciation of most words. The English words in which GH is an initial digraph are _ghastly_, _ghost_, and _gherkin_; in the two former the H is altogether adventitious. There exists a proneness to transpose the _h_ and the _t_ of height, (Saxon, _heath_, _hihth_, &c.), in consequence of which, and with a superfluous _d_, it becomes “heidth.” This mispronunciation is recorded by Jones as early as 1701. The practice will arise from a natural tendency of the mind to bring into conformity the sounds of words that are associated in their meanings—leng_th_, dep_th_, bread_th_, wid_th_ _ergo_: “heidth”!

=PH= has the sound of _f_ (s_ph_ere). In Ste_ph_en and ne_ph_ew it stands for _v_.

=SH= is the French _j_ (_j_oli), unvocalised. The Anglo-Saxons had not this digraph, but it appeared some centuries after the conquest, which suggests the possibility of its having been introduced by Norman influences. Some curious philologist may perhaps undertake to substantiate or demolish the theory that the Anglo-Saxons learnt to pronounce SH by attempting to utter the French _j_. Certain it is that the words _Je me jette à genoux_ would become changed into “Sheh me shett ah sheenoo” by the average German of to-day. The substitution of SH for _ss_ in the word _assume_ produces an odd-sounding archaism, yet one that is occasionally met with in otherwise good speakers. According to Jones, “a_sh_ume” was correct speech in the seventeenth century.

=TH= of _thin_ and =TH= of _then_ are elementary sounds represented now-a-days by two letters each. The former is produced by passing unvocalized breath through a narrow aperture left between the fore-part of the tongue and the edge of the upper teeth (the central incisors); the second by the same position of the speech-organs, but with breath that is vocalized.[12] Common errors are, to confound the TH of _bath_, _path_, _wreath_, &c., with that of _bathe_, _paths_, _wreathe_, &c. The former are unvocalized, as in _thin_.

Of the digraphs of the second row little need be said. With one exception they are rarely used. =BH=, =DH=, =KH=, and =ZH= are English renderings of the aspirated consonants of Asiatic languages. =LH= is a legacy from the Anglo-Saxon. =NH= is Portuguese. In =RH= the H is excessively useless; it is disregarded, and the R remains unchanged. That man deserved to have his name recorded who first invented the _h_ of “rhyme.” He will have traced a technical connection between _rime_ and “rhythm;” and will have followed the latter to its Greek source (ῥυθμος). His next act, the insertion of _rime’s_ apparently lost _h_, will have seemed to him one only of mere reparative justice. His excellent motives and his perspicacity might have met the admiration of posterity, had not his etymology been so egregiously faulty, and the word _rime_, a direct descendant of the Saxon _rim_, and as independent of a Greek as of a Cherokee origin. But the _h_ he inserted is there still, and cannot be cast off by any daring iconoclast without an outcry being raised in its behalf by alarmed traditionists: for our orthographical creed is derived from our forefathers, impressed with the accumulated evidences of their quaint blunders, their venerable ignorance, and admirable errors of judgment, all to be assiduously copied by each of us their descendants, as an alternative to being scouted for bad spellers. Thus it is that things originating in a weakness or perverse use of the reasoning faculties of an ancestor, may grow to be regarded as a virtue in a descendant.

WH.

Our attention may now advert to the perfect digraph =WH=.

Alexander Gill, a contemporary of Shakespeare, and Head Master of St Paul’s Schools, wrote, “_W, aspiratum, consona est, quam scribunt per_ wh, _et tamen aspiratio præcedit_.” (W, aspirated, is a consonant which is written _wh_, and yet the Aspirate precedes it.) Dr Lowth (1710–1787), Bishop of London, is quoted by Mr Walker as having directed that WH should be pronounced “HW,” this having been the relative positions of the letters during the Anglo-Saxon period. The erudite theory of the great Hebrew and Saxon scholar had a fascination for the theoretical orthoepist of whom Mr Cull, F.S.A., the learned editor of Ogilvie’s Dictionary, writes:—

Mr Walker did not profess to record the current pronunciation of his day, but he sought to establish principles and even rules to govern the pronunciation; and would change the pronunciation of words to bring them within his rules.

It is probable that Dr Lowth, who, practically, is the responsible author of this theory of inversion, was led to his conclusions as much by his belief that W was a vowel as by the historical considerations alluded to above. As regards W being always a vowel, Dr Lowth’s argument was successfully refuted by Walker himself, whose statements in this respect, Posterity has endorsed. W is a vowel only when forming the latter half of a diphthong. And, moreover, even if the W were a vowel, Dr Lowth could have shewn no good reason for inverting the order of letters in pronouncing the digraph WH. The retrospective influence of a post-aspirate has no power to produce a breathing _on_ a vowel, or _on_ a consonant; but generally to cause a vowel to _terminate_ in a jerked breath (_h‘_) or a consonant to become unvocalised. And again; that Anglo-Saxon writers had been wont to twist H round to the fore, was an irrelevant fact, and one that ought to have had no weight with the worthy bishop or with Mr John Walker when engaged in dictating laws of pronunciation to the English lieges of King George III. When Walker wrote the following sentence concerning Dr Johnson, he was in truth constructing a formula for his own epitaph:—

His Dictionary has been deemed lawful plunder for every subsequent lexicographer; and so servilely has he been copied, that his mistakes re-appear in several other dictionaries.

And so it is that Mr Walker’s second-hand rule with regard to WH has retained the implicit allegiance of all his successors who have had pronouncing dictionaries to compile. In the presence of such massive authority, to speak is to be silenced, and to differ is to be crushed. But still, as is seen in many things, the most imposing and august array of venerable doctrine cannot always stifle the “still small voice” of a contrary conviction. Who shall say that Dr Primrose had not been looking over a collection of pronouncing dictionaries, when he remarked that, as ten millions of circles can never make a square, so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to the untrue.

A purpose of this treatise is to respectfully solicit of modern authorities a reconsideration of the doctrine of transposition or dictum relative to the WH; and at the same time to lay certain data before the general reader.

Clear notions concerning the ordinary W are necessary to a proper appreciation of that variety occurring in WH.

The =vowel-W= is simply _oo_; thus, in _pew_, “_ew_” is a diphthong and equal in sound to _ēoo_.

The =consonant-W= is a buzzed _oo_ plus a rapid transition into the sound that succeeds it. Let [Illustration: buzzed oo] represent the buzzed _oo_, and ❨ the rapid transition:

W = ([Illustration: buzzed oo]❨).

If, while pronouncing _oo_, we narrow the labial aperture by approximating the edges of the upper and lower lips, the sound [Illustration: buzzed oo] is produced. If, while producing the sound [Illustration: buzzed oo], we enlarge the labial aperture with sudden rapidity (❨), a perfect consonant-W results. Thus:

“we” = [Illustration: buzzed oo]❨ē; and, “woo” = [Illustration: buzzed oo]❨oo.

Let WH be represented by ʍ. The difference between W and ʍ is that W is produced by vocalised breath and certain lip-movements as described above; whereas ʍ is produced by the _same lip-movements, but with unvocalised breath_. Hence, in lieu of the buzzing sound, we find in ʍ a whispered or “whistled breath.” It is this breath-sound of ʍ which has been so persistently mistaken for the Aspirate H. The sole office of the H in this digraph is to prescribe the unvocalization of the W. The nature of the subject renders it difficult to parade proofs of these facts on the pages of a book, in order to convince persons who, having a veneration for Mr Walker’s hoo hoo theory, might wish to uphold in theory that which they probably depart from in practice. By careful attention to most thoroughly good speakers it will be noticed that an unvocalised W (ʍ) is the phonic rendering of the digraph WH; although the “whistled breath” may be mistaken for an Aspirate by a careless observer, or by one resolute in error.

It is not easy to understand why these facts are not more widely recognised and insisted upon by modern orthoepists and writers on phonological science; and it is very difficult to attribute a cause to the longevity of the erroneous notions that Mr Walker was an early means of disseminating. When we see in our pronouncing dictionaries that _whip_ is to be pronounced “hwip,” the only belief open to us is that their writers intend two vowel-sounds to be heard in a word containing only one vowel; for they can scarcely mean that the h shall aspirate a consonantal _w_, nor that a jerked _h‘_ shall precede the word (thus _h‘_ + _wip_), nor can they desire that the h shall aspirate a whistle—Hʍip. To say the least, the rendering of any of these would require a vocal gymnast to make it effective. But if two vowels _are_ to be employed, the first must needs be aspirated and the second not; so that a phonetic spelling of _whip_ and _why_ would be “hoo ip” and “hoo i”! And, according to Mr Walker and his disciples, this is the correct pronunciation. But the fact remains that even those gentlemen, who in their dictionaries have scrupulously reproduced Mr Walker’s rule, have seldom been known to violate the principles of a correct pronunciation by adhering to it when speaking. The sore straits to which the rule occasionally reduces them might elicit pity. “Hw” is found to be unmanageable before _o_; and therefore we find that since the days of Mr Walker, a perfect unanimity has prevailed among orthoepists with regard to the extrusion of W from the pronunciation of every word in which the digraph WH precedes an o; whence it comes that in all dictionaries in common use, _whole_, _whom_, _who_, &c., are phonetically expressed “hole,” “hoom,” “hoo,” &c.; for, according to their method, to retain the W were to give these words the sound of hoo ole, hoo oom, and hoo oo! If, on the other hand, one remembers that WH is an unvocalized W, no more hesitation will be experienced in giving it its due before an _o_ than before any other vowel. ʍole, ʍoom, and ʍoo, are quite as easy to pronounce as ʍist ʍip, or ʍale. _Who_ is, however, very frequently made an exception by the best speakers of English, and pronounced “_hoo_.” The word lost its ʍ in the seventeenth century, and does not seem in a fair way to recover it.

Mr Ellis, so far as the writer is aware, is the only authority who has entered a protest against the modern conception of WH; and he gives it as his opinion that, from the earliest times, WH—whether mistaken for Hw or Hoo—has always been and still is, if rightly pronounced, WH.

This digraph is peculiar to the English language. English-speaking people differ in their manner of using it. In the south of England, it is seldom more than W; and _which_ and _what_ are pronounced “wich” and “wot.” The educated classes must, by courtesy, be supposed without the pale of this accusation. In the northern parts of England WH is decidedly more correctly used; in Scotland the pronunciation of it is perfect. In few cases would it be other than absurd to seek, out of England, for a criterion of English pronunciation; but this is one of the exceptions wherein the norm is best found north of the Tweed. Scotch H’s are harsh and grating, or like the H of HU (see page 37), or akin to the results of those guttural spasms that attend the primiparous aspirate-labours of a reformed H-dropper; and the Scotch are known to wrongfully accuse Englishmen of dropping H’s, that in reality have been properly aspirated; but the Scotch neither exaggerate nor neglect the proper rendering of WH, and even their farm-labourers are worthy to be taken as models.[13] _Whale_, _whelp_, _when_, _where_, _whole_, are, in Scotland, distinctly and properly, ʍale, ʍelp, ʍen, ʍere, and ʍole. Notwithstanding this indisputable fact, the four varieties of Ogilvie’s excellent dictionary (the northern Scotchman’s lexical fetish) give “hwale,” “hwen,” &c., as being the received pronunciation. In so doing they agree with all contemporary productions of their kind. The _rationale_ of the inversion is a mystery; but a clue to the cause of this and other errors-upon-precedent, would very probably be found to have Mr John Walker at one end of it and the conservative spirit of subsequent orthoepists at the other.

PERMUTATION.

The principles of reciprocal interchange of sounds, which are actively at work whenever new languages are coming into being, or old ones are splitting, or falling into decay, can only be adequately apprehended by obtaining a general but clear view of the entire scheme of philology. The annals of H would, however, be glaringly in default if no mention were made of its relations to foreign letters.

PHILOLOGY is a modern science. Leibnitz rescued it from the domain of pure fancy; Sir William Jones supplied it with ground to work upon; Bopp (a great authority on ancient Aspirates), Pott, and a host of others, began to build. The Greeks had been impressed with the idea that their language came from their gods; this made the study of alien tongues appear unimportant; hence, Greek philological research ended where it began. Analogous convictions shut the gates of progress on the most civilized of the Shemitic races. The Romans, again, when seeking to discover the origin of tongues, looked eastward for inspiration; but they did not look far enough. Long generations of their successors burrowed, like moles, in the Plains of Shinar. Grimm came, and there was light. The name of this great German philosopher has become so inseparably associated with the sudden strides made by modern linguistic science, as to have raised him from the ranks of philological pioneers, and placed him—in popular estimation—at the head and front of the whole enterprise. Whatever be the exact degree of his merit as a discoverer or thinker, as a successful propagator of rational views he stands a colossus and a marvel. Labeled fragile by the sceptic, and dangerous by the orthodox, his theories out-lived both grimaces and frowns, and within a few years of their birth aroused Europe to the fact that a “Babel” had been, and still was, both within and around her; and, seemingly by miracle, they even succeeded in carrying conviction and recognition of a truth that confuted tradition, to the very centres of some of the ecclesiastical circles of the day. Grimm’s discoveries, while pointing out the slow but constant changes that languages undergo, showed also that all the languages of Europe and half those of Asia had sprung from a common origin—and that, not the Hebrew one dogmatically assigned to them by the Early Fathers. Fortunately for Grimm, he published in the beginning of the nineteenth century; had he been a contemporary of poor Galileo he might have been subjected to some inconvenience and censure.

Grimm—who, by-the-bye, was a bigoted patriot—devoted himself chiefly to an investigation of the Teutonic tongues, and to a study of the German language; but the result of his labours has shown the changes that sounds undergo when a word is being distributed among different peoples. The LAW bearing his name is tabulated below:—

───────────────────────┬───────────────────────┬─────────────────────── Old Indo-European and │ Introduced into Low │ Classic. │ German tongues │ In High German. │ (English, &c.) │ ───────────────────────┼───────────────────────┼─────────────────────── Aspirate sounds │become soft │ hard Soft „ │ „ hard │ Aspirate Hard „ │ „ Aspirate │ soft ───────────────────────┴───────────────────────┴───────────────────────

These rules are not without exceptions, but, especially in the case of sounds that begin words, the exceptions are not numerous enough to nullify the rule.

The following are some examples of permutation affecting the H:—

Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin hard sounds become Aspirate sounds in English; example:—

_Sanskrit_, hrid (= _krid_) _Greek_, kardia } = _English_ _H_eart. _Latin_, cor-dis

The true English Aspirate corresponds to the Sanskrit K, and has nothing to do with the old Aryan _H_. The Latin H in _habere_ has no Aryan root, and remains unexplained. English _have_ is related to the Latin _capere_, not _habere_.

Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin Aspirates, represented by g:—

_Sanskrit_, Hansa _English_, goose. _Greek_, chen { = _German_, gans. _Latin_, (h)anser _Russian_, gus. _Breton_, gwaz.

Some of the other changes that H undergoes in Indo-European languages may be briefly summarized:—

H = _ch_, example: Lat. _humus_, Gr. _chama_. H = _chth_ „ „ _hes_, _heri_, „ _chthes_. H = _s_ „ „ _septum_, „ _hepta_. H = _w_ „ „ many Greek words discarded the digamma for the Aspirate.

That H = _f_, has been shown in a Sabine and a Spanish example (page 24), and the same may be seen in a few French words—_e.g._, Lat. f_oris_, Fr. h_ors_; and Lat. f_abulari_, Fr. h_abler_. But the descendants of the Gauls are not chargeable with having reduced this last word to its present stunted condition; the mutilation of _fabulari_ was another act of vandalism perpetrated at an early date in Spain, the word having (according to Brachet[14]) crossed the Pyrenees, disguised as “_hablar_” in the sixteenth century.

Disguises still more extraordinary happen in the Gothic languages. H is exchangeable with _c_. This substitution, together with the subsequent disappearance of the H, are causes of confusion, and often effectually conceal the relationship of cognate words. At first sight the English word _raw_ seems to be considerably less than kin to the Italian _crudo_; but on collating the several synonymous words—English, _raw_; (Dutch, _raauw_); Saxon, _hreaw_; Latin, _cruor_ and _crudus_; (French, _cru_), and Italian _crudo_; their family likeness and community of origin become a little more discernible.

The things of the Present are born of the Past, and are moulding the things of the Future; the deeds of to-day show events of to-morrow reflected in shadowy outline. Conjectures concerning the future of H may be built on data afforded by its history. The Aspirate has grown enfeebled in Low German tongues, and in Latin ones is almost discarded. It would bode evil to the continued existence of H, if either of these classes were to furnish the “universal language.” But, probably one of them will. The _strong breathing_ seems to be a remnant of that stage of transition which, at one time, may have formed a link between gesticulatory speech and the language of articulate sound. Then it was that every available accessory to the expression of the emotions will have been brought into use. And, _per contra_, in a highly developed state of civilization, with its accompanying highly developed speech-code, the tones and modes of expression that constituted nature’s primitive eloquence must fall gradually into disuse. The strong breathing and the guttural breathing, having been the most expressive emotional interpreters of the early savage, are repugnant to the artificial sedateness and studied reserve of the modern speaker. In the speech of the well-bred Englishman, the hale old English H has melted into a soft Aspirate, and even this is likely to be soon altogether lost. The French say, “We regard aspirated H’s with horror!”—Littré[15] declares they hurt his chest. Whatever be the language spoken by Macaulay’s New Zealander, it is highly probable that he will drop his H’s.

Another omen unfavourable to H is this. Any letter doomed to die out of a word or a language, generally attempts to depart gracefully by first acquiring the nature of an aspirate-consonant, and then turns into a perfect H; under this form it relies upon h-dropping mortals to give it quiet burial, and unobtrusively confide it to Oblivion.

APPENDIX.

[To the kindness of Professor Skeat of Cambridge I am indebted for the following compend, wherein the scientific grounds upon which a theoretical rule for the silent H might be constructed, are perspicuously exposed, while a practical view of the case is also taken. A list of words with doubtful H’s was submitted to Professor Skeat, and the comments of this foremost of British etymologists are a reply to the question: What reasons can be found for the silencing of the H’s?]

Of course the etymology has much to do with it, so has accent, so has rapidity of speech, so have individual notions.

(1.) ETYMOLOGY.

There are four principal H’s—English, French, Latin, and Greek.

As a _rule_, pronounce all but the French; and, of these, all but some words of Latin origin.

Examples. _English_—HILL, HOG, (though this is properly Welsh), HUNT. The _h_ should _never_ be omitted, being an original aspirate of great strength.

_French_—herb, hospital, hostler, &c. By rule, the _h_ should be silent; but the word _herb_, in particular, has become so completely Anglicised that to hear an _h_ in it is common. So also _habit_, _haughty_, _hearse_, _human_; _habit_ and _human_ being counted as Latin.

The H was sometimes omitted in the fourteenth century.

“As wrtis [wortis] of _erbis_ soone thei shul falle doun.” Wycliffite version of Psalm xxxvii. 2, (earlier version).

“Thei schulen falle doun soone as the wortis of _eerbis_.” Wycliffite version of Psalm xxxvii. 2, (later version).

But French words from Frankish, not Latin sources, take _h_, as _hamlet_, _halbert_, _harass_, _hatchet_; together with proper names, as _Henry_, _Hubert_. So also _harness_, a French word, but not of Latin origin.