Our attention may now advert to the phonetic significance and
distribution of the symbols of which we have just considered the
historical aspect.
The sounds represented by the earliest alphabetical characters can only
be a subject for conjecture; the sounds of those we have had under
consideration were probably very pronounced, ranging from that of a
strongly guttural _kch_, to that of the jerked breath occurring in a
short, emphatic, English “bah!”
We have seen that the Greek character was early mutilated; but the
rough-breathing powers of the Greek Η were transferred to the sign ‛ and
we may conclude that the Greeks were at one time very partial to the
_asper_, their writers finding it necessary to prefix a special sign,
the _lene_ (’), when vowels were _not_ to be aspirated.
In Latin also the H was at first harsh; but later on indications occur
of the decline and fall of the Roman H in the fact of Quintilian
complaining of the h-dropping propensities of his contemporaries. In his
time, Latin writers already affected great freedom even in the
orthography of words containing an H; its presence or absence in such
words as _honestus_, _ahænus_, &c., being apparently viewed with
considerable indifference. Cicero strongly censures its gratuitous
introduction into words. The Romans are thus responsible for ancient (if
not venerable) precedents in eclectic H-dropping.
The Sclav and Latin languages have treated the Aspirate with spare
courtesy, having let it become the mere “shadow of a sound,” or allowed
the letter to dwindle into an altogether insignificant symbol. In
Italian, “that soft bastard Latin,” the H is practically a dead letter,
and has left no legitimate offspring. The Tuscan dialect, however, has
afforded a local habitation to all the banished H’s of Italy; and the
saying, “_Lingua toscana in bocca romana_,” may be held to be an
indirect allusion to the dislike that the Italians bear to the Aspirate.
In French, the H is never an Aspirate; it merely _hardens_ the vowels in
certain words, _e.g._, _haie_, _hameau_, _hieroglyphe_, &c., and its
office is a sinecure in others. When it hardens a vowel, it forbids a
_liaison_ with the last consonant of the preceding word. But in Spain,
letter H is treated with systematic barbarity. Not only is its presence
disregarded, but, since the days of the Almoravids (eleventh century),
or even from an earlier date, its rightful office as an Aspirate has
been usurped by letter J. Besides this, its literal identity has been
allowed to get confusedly mixed up with that of the letter F; so that
Latin words while undergoing the process of acclimatization on Spanish
soil have been observed to exchange an H for an F, _e.g._, Lat.,
_facere_ = Sp., _hacer_, which is nevertheless pronounced “acer.” A
reverse permutation occurred in the Sabine _fircus_ (a buck) and the
Latin _hircus_.
The Slavonic tongues are weak or deficient in H’s. In Russian H has the
value of N.
Turning to the Teutonic and Keltic stocks, one notices a marked contrast
in the fortunes of H. In High German it has retained an important and
prominent position; although, generally speaking, it is less conspicuous
in Low German tongues. The simple Aspirate, and the other and harsher
varieties of H, were universally received into the Keltic languages; the
Cymric branch shewing a slight preference for the former, and the Gaelic
for the more guttural variety. Prof. Geddes remarks: “The Gaelic
alphabet contains a letter to which, apart from a partial parallel in
Greek, I am not aware of an exact parallel in any tongue. It begins no
words, heads no vocabulary in the dictionary, and yet is found
everywhere diffused over a Gaelic page.” Something partly similar
appears to exist in Sanscrit, a highly aspirated language with seemingly
no purely initial H. Max Müller[3] and most other writers give
[Illustration: Sanskrit H] as being the Sanskrit H, whereas some affirm
it more properly to represent _gh_.
Arabic and other Shemitic languages abound with Aspirates; in the
former, at least, they do stalwart service. Throughout that large group
of languages which resist systematic classification, and are chiefly
known through the works of Tylor, Lubbock, and others, or still more
recently through the agency of the missionaries,—_e.g._, the languages
of North America and of Polynesia—Aspirates are copiously distributed.
The Maoris are wont to substitute an H for several of the European
speech-sounds, against which their vocal organs rebel.
In English, the omission of H’s that ought to be heard, is peculiar to
England, and especially marked in London and the Southern counties. The
Lowland Scotch are free from the defect; and the people of the Highland
districts and the North run to the opposite extreme, and give to their
H’s a strong guttural sound. The Irish and Welsh are also free from it.
Men of English parentage and American birth, New Englanders, Virginians,
&c., are correct in their use of the Aspirate (vide _Atlantic Monthly_,
No. 269). That the Americans are without this H-trait, may be accounted
a result of the predominance of North British and Irish immigrants.
His Eminence Cardinal Manning, when favouring the writer with some
valuable notes on the subject of Aspirates, gave, as his opinion, that
the dropping of H’s in England cannot be explained by foreign
influences. The Aspirate is put on and put off in certain counties—as in
Middlesex and Gloucestershire—with long local traditions; and he
believes that, like the Greek digamma, it refuses all submission to
criticism.