This is a reckless assertion; it may be that among the languages
unknown to me there are some that are as much hampered with homophones
as we are. I readily grant that with all our embarrassment of riches,
we cannot compete with the Chinese nor pretend to have outbuilt their
Babel; but I doubt whether the statement can be questioned if confined
to European languages. I must rely on the evidence of my list, and
I would here apologize for its incompleteness. After I had patiently
extracted it from the dictionary a good many common words that were
missing occurred to me now and again, and though I have added these,
there must be still many omissions. Nor must it be forgotten that, had
obsolete words been included, the total would have been far higher.
That must plainly be the case if, as I contend, homophony causes
obsolescence, and reference to the list from Shakespeare in my next
section will provide examples of such words.
Otto Jespersen[12] seems to think that the inconvenience of homophones
is so great that a language will naturally evolve some phonetic habit
to guard itself against them, although it would otherwise neglect such
distinction. I wish that this admirable instinct were more evident in
English. He writes thus of the lists of words which he gives 'to show
what pairs of homonyms [homophones] would be created if distinctions
were abolished that are now maintained: they [the lists] thus
demonstrate the force of resistance opposed to some of the
sound-changes which one might imagine as happening in the future. A
language can tolerate only a certain number of ambiguities arising
from words of the same sound having different significations, and
therefore the extent to which a language has utilized some phonetic
distinction to keep words apart, has some influence in determining the
direction of its sound-changes. In French, and still more in English,
it is easy to enumerate long lists of pairs of words differing from
each other only by the presence or absence of voice in the last
sound; therefore final _b_ and _p_, _d_ and _t_, _g_ and _k_, are kept
rigidly apart; in German, on the other hand, there are very few
such pairs, and thus nothing counterbalances the natural tendency to
unvoice final consonants.'
[Footnote 12: _A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles_,
by Otto Jespersen, Heidelberg, 1909. Streitberg's _Germanische
Bibliothek_, vol. i, p. 441.]