ONOMATOPŒIA.[103]
“The sound must seem an echo to the sense.”--POPE.
Since the human voice is at once a _sound_ and a _sign_, it was
of course natural to take the sound of the voice as a sign of the
sounds of nature.[104] In short, to recall a sound by its echo
in the voice is as obviously natural a proceeding as to recall
an object to the memory by drawing the picture of its form. In
both cases we act upon the senses by means of imitation; and if
the human race had not been endued with the organs of hearing
doubtless a language for the eye would have been invented, just as
Philomela, when deprived of her tongue, made known, by embroidery,
her miserable tale. A word formed on the principle of imitation,
is said to be formed by onomatopœia, and although the traces of
such an origin are rapidly lost, yet amid the almost infinite
modifications of which a few roots are capable, it is astonishing
how vast a number of words may be ultimately deduced from a single
onomatopœic sound.
How universal and instinctive the procedure is, may be observed
among infants and savages.
In the nursery the onomatopœan sounds moo, baa, bow-wow, &c., are
the steps by which the child passes gradually to the conception
of cow, lamb, and dog. So in Swiss[105] bààgen is to bleat, and
báágeli (in nursery language), a sheep. The very name _cow_, Germ.
_kuh_, Sansks. _gao_, has a similar origin, as βοῦς, bos, ox,
Sansks. _uxan_, probably has also. There is little doubt that the
word, cat (Germ. _katze_), is an imitation of the sound made by a
cat spitting, which is one of the most peculiar characteristics of
the feline race. It must, however, be admitted that there is no
sibilant in “kater.” We have all heard the story of the Englishman
in China, who, wishing to know the contents of a dish which was
lying before him, said inquiringly, “Quack, quack?” and received in
answer, the word, “bow-wow!” These two imitations served all the
purposes of a more lengthened conversation. It was probably, by a
strictly analogous process, that an immense multitude of such roots
was primitively formed.
Again, it is impossible to look over any list of words collected
from the language of a savage community without recognising the
extensive use of the same method.[106] The repetition of syllables
is an almost certain sign of its working. Thus, Ai-ai is an
imitation of the cry of the sloth, and tuco-tuco is the name of a
small rodent in Buenos Ayres. Mr. Longfellow has supplied us with
many such words from the languages of North America, in his poem of
“Hiawatha,”--as Kahgahgee, the raven; Minnehaha laughing-water, &c.
“In uncivilised languages,[106] the consciousness of the imitative
character of certain words is sometimes demonstrated by their
composition with verbs,[107] like say or do, to signify making
a noise like that represented by the word in question. Thus, in
Galla, from _djeda_, to say, or _goda_, to make or do, are formed
_cacak-djeda_, to crack; _trrr-djeda_, to chirp; _dadada-djeda_, to
beat; _djamdjam-goda_, to champ.”
We do not think that the extent to which onomatopœia may be proved
to be an instrument of language has been sufficiently admitted.
It was the most natural starting-point for the intelligence on
its path towards expression. A nascent language enriches itself
by ceaseless imitations of elementary sounds, animal cries, and
the noises produced by mechanical contrivances, and we shall trace
hereafter the innumerable applications in which such terms can be
at once employed. Some writers even go so far as to assert that
this is the _only_ original principle of language, and that we
even learned our first consonant from the bleating of the sheep,
for which reason, according to Pierius Valerianus, a lamb was the
hieroglyphical emblem of the verb! We have already rejected this
extension of the theory; but, at the same time, we can readily
believe the assertion, that the _peculiarities_ of articulation in
certain countries may be not only modified, but even originated by
the existence of remarkable natural sounds in the countries where
these peculiarities occur. It has been said, for instance, “that
in some of the American languages, there are strident consonants
evidently formed from the hiss of certain serpents unknown in our
temperate regions, and that the click of the Hottentot dialects
recalls a species of cry peculiar to the tigers which _ranque_.”
The latter word is an onomatopœian, probably borrowed by Buffon
from the Philomela of Albus Ovidius Juventinus, in which occurs the
line:--
“Tigrides indomitæ _rancant_[108] rugiuntque leones.”
What this peculiar sound may be, we do not know, but can hardly
reconcile this suggestion of Nodier with the statement, that the
name,[109] Hott-en-tot is itself onomatopœian, having been given
by the first Dutch settlers, because this click would sound to a
stranger like a perpetual repetition of the syllables _hot_ and
_tot_. It is a curious fact that Palamedes is said to have learnt,
from the noise of cranes, the four letters which he added to
the Greek alphabet; and it is certainly a confirmation of these
remarks, that although no language possesses in its alphabet a
power of expressing every possible articulation, yet no nation’s
language is quite deficient in the power of expressing, by
imitation, the cries of its indigenous animals.
It is wonderful that the knowledge and observation of facts like
these did not lead the philologists of antiquity to a solution
of their disputes about the natural or conventional origin of
languages. The age of Psammetichus evinced its interest in the
question, and if it had been content to observe its own experiment,
instead of making it the prop to a “foregone conclusion,”
philosophers might have agreed, long ago, in believing, that man
was assisted by nature in the development of his implanted powers,
and that, like every infant of his race, he framed into living
speech the sounds by which his senses were first impressed.[110]
When the first man gave names to the animals, which, as we have
already seen, he was enabled to do by the reasonable use of his
own faculties, and not at the dictation of a voice from heaven, he
could not have been guided by _any_ principle so obvious, so easy,
or so appropriate as an artistic reproduction of the sounds which
they uttered.
But how, it may be asked, is the voice capable of rendering even
the feeblest echo of all the myriad utterances of the earth and
air, the voices of the desert and mountain,--
“The echoes of illimitable forests,
The murmur of unfathomable seas”?
We answer that the imitation is not, and does not profess
to be a dull, dead, passive echo of the _sound_, but of the
impression produced by it upon the sentient being; it is not a
_mere_ spontaneous repercussion of the perception received; but
a repercussion modified _organically_ by the configurations of
the mouth, and _ideally_ by the nature of the analogy perceived
between the sound and the object it expressed. “The organs of
that wonderful musical instrument, the mouth, are the throat, the
palate, the tongue, the teeth, the lips.[111] This then is the
subjective organon of language, the physiological vehicle for that
proto-plastic art, speech, which combines architecture and music,
the plastic and the picturesque. Johannes Müller has developed this
physiologically, Sir John Herschell acoustically.” The mere power
of imitation would not have helped mankind a single step towards
language any more than it has helped the parrot or the jay,[112]
had it not been for the infinitely nobler faculty which enabled
us to perceive the meaning of the sounds we uttered, and to use
them as the signs of our inward conceptions,--a faculty which has
implanted in language its principle of development, and which
constitutes the distinction between the chatterings of a jackdaw
and the eloquence of a man.
This alone is a clear proof, if proof were wanted, that language is
the result of intelligence, as well as of instinct; and that the
human reason was not a gradual acquisition of a once brutish race.
But though the power of imitation by the voice of the sounds of
the unintelligent creation be small in comparison with those other
powers which constitute our pre-eminence, yet how perfect is that
gift in itself,--how wondrous the organism by which it is effected!
The mouth is admirably framed for intelligent and harmonious
utterance; it is at once an organ, and a flute,--a trumpet and a
harp. Its sublime construction will make it the eternal despair of
mechanicians, and the songs which it can modulate, are superior
to all the melodies of artificial music. The intelligence of man
enables him alone to use this glorious instrument, as God intended
it to be used. “Il avait,” says M. Nodier, “dans ses poumons un
soufflet intelligent et sensible, dans ses lèvres un limbe épanoui,
mobile, extensible, rétractile, qui jette le son, qui le modifie,
qui le renforce, qui l’assouplit, qui le contraint, qui le voile,
qui l’éteint; dans sa langue un marteau souple, flexible, onduleux,
qui se replit, qui s’accourcit, qui s’étend; qui se meut, et qui
s’enterpose entre ses valves, selon qu’il convient retenir ou
d’épancher la voix, qui attache ses touches avec âpreté ou qui les
effleure avec mollesse; dans ses dents un clavier ferme, aigu,
strident; à son palais un tympan grave et sonore: luxe inutile
pourtant, s’il n’avait pas eu la pensée; et celui qui a fait ce
qui est n’a jamais rien fait d’inutile.--L’homme parla parce qu’il
pensait.”
The plain elementary sounds of which the human voice is capable are
about twenty; and yet it has been calculated by the mathematician
Tacquet, that one thousand million writers, in one thousand million
years, could not write out all the combinations of the twenty-four
letters of the alphabet, if each of them were daily to write out
forty pages of them, of which each page should contain different
orders of the twenty-four letters. Of course, a very small number
only of these permutations are at all required for every purpose of
life. “And thus it is,” says the ingenious author of[113]Hermes,
“that to principles apparently so trivial as about twenty plain
elementary sounds, we owe that variety of articulate voices, which
have been sufficient to explain the sentiments of so innumerable a
multitude, as all the present and past generations of men.”
But it may be objected that if we admit such latitude to the use
of onomatopœia in the formation of language, we should find among
all languages a much greater identity than actually exists in the
terms expressive of physical facts. This by no means follows. We
have already seen that words express the _relations_ of things, and
the relations of things are almost infinite, and especially must
they have been so to the delicate senses of the youthful world.
Let us take the instance of the thunder: the impression produced
by it is by no means single and distinct. To one man it may appear
like a dull rumble, to another like a sudden crackling explosion,
and to a third as a breaking forth of flashing light. Hence come
a multitude of names. Adelung professed to have collected 353
imitative appellations from the European languages alone; and it
is not difficult to see that a similar[114] principle was at work
in the Chinese _ley_ (pronounced _r_ey), the Greenland _kallak_,
and the Mexican _tlatlatnitzel_. Similarly, “the explosion of a
gun which an English boy imitates by the exclamation _Bang-fire_,
is represented in French by _Pouf_! The neighing of a horse is
expressed by the French _hennir_; Italian, _nitrire_; Spanish,
_rinchar_, _relinchar_; German, _wiehern_; Swedish, _wrena_,
_wrenska_; Dutch, _runniken_, _ginniken_, _brieschen_, words in
which it is difficult to see a glimpse of resemblance, although we
can hardly doubt that they all take their rise in the attempt at
direct[115] representation of the same sound.” In the same way, no
one will deny that “ding-dong,” and the word “bilbil,” to ring, in
the Galla language, are onomatopœians to represent the sound of a
bell, and yet the two have hardly an element in common.
It has been noticed that birds are often named on this principle;
as night-jar, whip-poor-will, cock, cuckoo, crow, crane, crake,
quail, curlew, jay, chough, owl, turtle, &c.; and where the bird
has one very marked cry we find a great similarity in the names
by which it is known. Take for instance the _peetwit_,[116]
Scandinavian _pee-weip_, _tee-whoap_; French, _dishuit_; Dutch,
_kiewit_; German, _kiebitz_; Swedish, _kowipa_. But we should not
expect this to be the case when a bird has a great variety of
different sounds. The nightingale, according to Bechstein, has
twenty distinct articulations, and it is therefore not surprising
that even in the European languages it is known under widely
different names. And besides names which are derived from its song
(_e.g._ bulbul), it might be called from some other attribute
entirely distinct from this, as perhaps in the Latin name
_luscinia_; although, if this be the case, it is interesting to
see how imitation asserts its prerogative in the modern names[117]
_usignuolo_ (Italian), _ruyseñol_ (Spanish), _rossignol_ (French),
_rousinol_ (Portuguese), which are probably corruptions of the
diminutive _lusciniola_, used by Plautus.
In some cases an onomatopœian root is so natural as to run through
all families of languages; _e.g._ the root lh or lk to imitate
the sound and action of licking, as Hebrew לָחַךְ; Arabic,
_lahika_; Syriac, _lah_; λείχω, _lingo_, _ligurio_, _lingua_,
_leccare_, _lechen_, _lécher_; it is the same with the roots grf
to express gripping, kr to express crying, and many others. The
practice is, however (as we have already remarked), far more
prominent in the Semitic than in the Indo-European family, and this
is the cause of the extraordinary richness of synonyms in Hebrew
and Arabic for the expression of natural objects. It is said that
in Arabic there are 500 names for the lion, 200 for the serpent,
more than eighty for honey, 400 for sorrow, and (what is quite
incredible unless every periphrasis be counted a name) no less
than 1,000 for a sword. M. de Hammer, an unimpeachable authority,
has, in a little treatise on the subject, counted also 5,744
words relating to the camel. The ancient Saxon is said to have
had fifteen words for the sea; and if we allowed merely poetical
expressions like “the blue,” we might say the same of modern
English.
Wide dialectic variety naturally results from a nomadic life; and
it is easy to see how this extraordinary exuberance of primitive
language, and the uncontrolled rapidity with which it exercised its
powers of nomenclature, would tend, while writing and literature
were as yet unknown, to make mutually unintelligible the language
of different tribes.[118] This confusion of speech would, of
course, be the most powerful impediment in the course of ambition,
and would tend to defeat the attempts to construct and perpetuate a
universal empire. It may have been the providential agent to assert
for the human race, “a nobler destiny than to become the footstool
of a few families.” This is strikingly shadowed forth in the
Scripture narrative of the builders of Babel, which many competent
authorities have considered as applicable to only a single family
of nations, and have regarded in the light rather of “a sublime
emblem, than of a material verity.”
The confusion of tongues is not represented in Scripture as a
punishment,[119] but as the providential prevention of an arrogant
attempt to establish among mankind a spurious centre of unity.
It seems to have frustrated the lawless thirst for power which
actuated the tribe of Nimrod.[120] But even if regarded as a
punishment, God’s punishments are but blessings in disguise. The
dispersion of nations has acted as a stimulant to the powers of
humanity, and has been the direct cause of a beneficial variety in
thought and action; and in the same way the diversity of languages
has proved to be (as we shall see hereafter) an indisputable
advantage, by adding fresh lustre continually to those conceptions
which by long habit become pale and dim. Yet this dispersion
and diversity is but the accident of a fallen state, and in the
renovated earth--(though it can never be while nations are in
their present condition)--all men will perhaps speak the same
perfect[121] universal speech.
There are two totally distinct points from which an imitative root
can take its origin. The first is from an artistic reproduction of
the sounds of the outer world; the second is from the expressions
of fear or anger, of disgust or joy, which the impression of any
event or spectacle may call forth in the human being. The first of
these elements is the onomatopœic; the second, the interjectional.
These two sources have not been kept sufficiently clear and
distinct, and the latter especially has been by many philologists
entirely overlooked. We will proceed to make some remarks on both.
The instances which we shall select might be almost indefinitely
extended, and even were they less numerous we might perhaps be
allowed to use the words of President de Brosses, “La preuve connue
d’un grand nombre de mots d’une espèce doit établir une précepte
générale sur les autres mots de même espèce, à l’origine desquels
on ne peut plus remonter.”
As instances of the words which have arisen from the interjectional
element, _i.e._ from the sounds whereby we express natural
emotions, we may mention the large group of words that spring from
the root “ach,” ah! oh! as utterances of pain, as ἄχος, ἀχέω,
_achen_, ache; or from the sound of groaning, as _væ_, _wehe_,
woe, wail; or from an expression of disgust, as _putere_ (Fr.
puer), foul, fulsome; or from smacking the lips with pleasure,
as γλύκυς, _dulcis_, _geschmack_, &c. This latter class is very
widely extended, even in the Semitic languages, as we have already
shown in the case of the root _lk_ (see p. 84). From the expression
of disgust and fear, we get awe, ugly, ἀγάομαι, ἀγάζομαι and
their cognates; from shuddering, the roots of φρίσσω, bristle,
_hérisser_, &c.; from the first sounds of infancy, we get babe,
_bambino_, babble, and many more; from sounds of anger, “huff,”
and others; lastly, from “prut,” a sound of arrogance, we get the
word “proud,” “pride,” as in German, “_trotzig_,” haughty, from
“_trotz_,”[122] an interjection of defiance and contempt.
The other class of onomatopœias is far more extensive, and embraces
the widest possible range of inanimate sounds. They may be ranged
under the following heads; and although the examples are all taken
from the[123]English language, they might be paralleled in almost
any other.
1. Animal sounds, as quack, cackle, roar, neigh, whinny, bellow,
mew, pur, croak, caw, chatter, bark, yelp, &c.
2. Inarticulate human sounds, as laugh, cough, sob, sigh, moan,
shriek, yawn, whoop, weep, &c.
3. Collision of hard bodies, represented by p, t, k; as clap, rap,
tap, flap, slap, rat-tat, &c.
4. Collision of softer bodies, represented by b, d, g; as dab, dub,
bob, thud, dub-a-dub, &c.
5. Motion through the air, represented by z, &c.; as whizz, buzz,
sough, &c.
6. Resonance, represented by m, n, &c.; as clang, knell, ring,
twang, clang, din, &c.
7. Motion of liquids, &c., represented by sibilants, as clash,
splash, plash, dash, swash, &c.
These are but specimens of the wide extent of these words in a
language by no means the most remarkable for its adoption of
onomatopœia. There are even broad general laws by which the various
degrees of intensity in sound are expressed by the modification of
vowels. Thus, high notes are represented by i, low broad sounds by
a, and the change of a or o to i has the effect of diminution, as
we see by comparing the words clap, clip, clank, clink, pock, peck,
cat, kitten, foal, filly, tramp, trip, nob, nipple, &c. Another way
of diminishing intensity is to soften a final letter, as in tug,
tow, drag, draw, swagger, sway, stagger, stay, &c. Reduplication of
syllables is a mode of expressing continuance, as in murmur, &c.,
and this effect is also produced by the addition of r and l, as in
grab, grapple, wrest, wrestle, crack, crackle, dab, dabble, &c.
It is easy to see from the above examples that the onomatopœia and
the interjection are the points from which language has developed
itself, and from which “two separate lines of concurrent and[124]
simultaneous evolution have proceeded.” The manner in which the
various parts of speech grew out of these elements, and which of
them may be supposed to be logically or actually anterior to the
rest, is a wide and difficult subject of inquiry on which much
uncertainty must necessarily prevail, and with which we are here
unconcerned.
There is no doubt that, for some reason or other, many of our
English onomatopœians are regarded as in some degree beneath the
dignity of words, and are supposed to partake of the nature of
vulgarity.[125] Yet with great inconsistency the places in which
poets have been most successful in producing “an echo of the
sound to the sense” are generally regarded with especial favour.
The classic poets used this ornament with the most fastidious
good taste. Even the ancients had learned to admire the rhyming
termination by which Homer faintly recalls the humming of the
summer swarms, in the lines--
Ἠύτε ἔθνεα πολλὰ μελισσάων ἀδινάων
πέτρης ἐκ γλαφύρης ἀεὶ νεὸν ἐρχομενάων:
and yet they do not surpass the exquisite verses of a living poet:--
Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn;
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmur of innumerable bees.
Again, what can be more vivid than the marvellous way in which
Homer recalls the snapping of a shattered sword, in--
Τριχθί τε καὶ τετραχθὶ διατρύφεν:
which is incomparably superior to the much-admired hemistich of
Racine, “L’essieu crie et se rompt.” Both Homer and Virgil have
imitated the rapid clatter of horses’ hoofs with equal felicity:--
Πολλὰ δ’ ἄναντα, κάταντα, πάραντά τε δόχμιά τ’ ἦλθον:
Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum:
and the verse[126] in which Dubartas endeavours to recall the
manner in which the lark “shoots up and shrills in flickering
gyres,” has met with numberless admirers.
The greatest of our modern poets, Mr. Tennyson, has perhaps been
more unsparing and more successful in his use of this figure
than any of his predecessors, and a few passages will show that
onomatopœia judiciously used is capable of the noblest application.
Take, for instance, the leap of a cataract, in--
Where the river sloped
To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks
Its breadth of thunder;
or the shock of a _mélée_, in--
The storm
Of galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears
And riders front to front, until they closed
In conflict with the crash of shivering points
And thunder....
And all the plain--brand, mace, and shaft, and shield
Shock’d, like an iron-clanging anvil banged
With hammers;
or the booming of the sea, in--
Roar rock-thwarted under bellowing caves;
or, finally, what can be more perfect than the graphic power in
which the picture of a fleet of glass wrecked on a reef of gold is
called before us by the perfect adaptation of sound to sense, in
the lines--
For the fleet drew near,
_Touched_, _clinked_, and _clashed_, and vanished.
Yet in all these cases we believe that it is to the language and
not to the poet that the main credit is due. The language is
the perfect instrument, and in the poet’s hands it is used with
perfect power; but were it not for the original perfection of his
instrument he would be unable to produce such rich and varied
results; he would be unable to place the picture before the eye by
bringing into play that swift and subtle law of association whereby
a reproduction of the sounds at once recalls to the inner eye the
images or circumstances with which they are connected. In every
case the consummate art and skill of the writer consists simply
in choosing the proper words for the thought which he wishes to
express, which words are always the simplest. Appropriate[127]
language is and always must be the most effective, and when a
writer _clearly goes out of his way_ to produce an effect he
generally loses his effectiveness by abandoning simplicity. How
much onomatopœia degenerates in a less skilful and artistic hand
we might see in many instances, were not the selection of them an
invidious task.
In short, an exquisite and instinctive taste can only decide on the
extent to which this figure may be _consciously_ used. We feel that
Virgil was right in rejecting Ennius’s
At tuba terribili sonitu _taratantara_ dicit,
as the imitation of a trumpet-blast; and none but a comic poet
(like Swift) would use rub-a-dub, dub-a-dub in English to express
the beating of a drum: and yet who was ever otherwise than
delighted with the word τήνελλα, in which Archilochus imitated
the twang of a harp-string, and which the Greeks used ever
afterwards as an expression of joyous triumph? Again, none but a
comedian could have ventured on so direct an imitation of sounds
as βρεκεκεκέξ κοάξ κοάξ, and yet no one could object to the pretty
line in which Ovid tries to produce the same impression:--
Quamquam sunt _sub aquâ, sub aquâ_ maledicere tentant.
The misuse of language fails to produce the echo which its simple
and natural use would not have failed to awake. In short, it is
in many cases impossible to use language which shall be at once
specific and appropriate without being forced to adopt imitative
words. There is no style required in order to speak of the booming
of the cannon, the twang of the bowstring, the hurtling of the
arrow, the tolling or pealing of the bell, the rolling or throbbing
of the drum, the sough or whisper of the breeze, because in each
case the proper word is ready for us at once in the language which
we speak, and if we are to speak naturally we can use no other. The
harmonies of language arise mainly from this power of imitation,
and a sensuous language is always energetic, poetic, passionate.