Transcriber’s Notes:
Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_
in the original text.
Equal signs “=” before and after a word or phrase indicate =bold=
in the original text.
Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.
Old or antiquated spellings have been preserved.
Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.
THE
PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK;
ACCENT AND QUANTITY.
A PHILOLOGICAL INQUIRY.
BY
JOHN STUART BLACKIE,
PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.
EDINBURGH: SUTHERLAND AND KNOX.
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO.
MDCCCLII.
EDINBURGH: T. CONSTABLE,
PRINTER TO HER MAJESTY.
“_Sit omnibus rebus suum senium, sua juventus; et
ut verba verbis, sic etiam sonis sonos succedere
permittamus._”—BISHOP GARDINER.
“_This new pronunciation hath since prevailed,
whereby we Englishmen speak Greek, and are able
to understand one another, which nobody else
can._”—THOMAS FULLER.
“_Maxime cupio ut in omnibus Academiis nostris
hodierna Græcorum pronuntiatio recipiatur._”
—BOISSONADE.
“_Neque dubitamus quin_ ERASMUS, _si in tantam
Græcæ pronuntiationis discrepantiam incidisset,
vulgarem usum intactum et salvum reliquisset_.”
—SEYFFARTH.
“_Ich gebe der neugriechischen Aus-sprache im
Ganzen bei weitem den Vorzug._”—THIERSCH.
“_Neque enim de cœlo dilapsa ad nos pervenit Græcorum
lingua, sed e patria sua una cum omnibus quæ habemus
subsidiis, suo vestita cultu prodiit, quem tollere
aut immutare velle esset imperium in linguam liberam
exercere._”—WETSTEN.
“_Die sogenannte Erasmische Aus-sprache, wie es
in Deutschland erscheint, ist völlig grundlos, ein
Gebilde man weiss nicht von wannen es kam, ein
Gemische welches jeder sich zustutzt nach eigner
Lust und Willkühr._”—LISCOV.
THE PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK, &c.
It is purely as a practical man, and with a direct practical result in
view, that I venture to put forth a few words on the vexed question
of the PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK. He were a frigid pedant, indeed, who,
with the whole glorious literature of Hellas before him, and the rich
vein of Hellenic Archæology, scarcely yet opened in Scotland, should,
for the mere gratification of a subtle speculative restlessness, walk
direct into this region of philological thorns. So far as my personal
curiosity was concerned, Sir John Cheke, wrapt in his many folded
mantle of Ciceronian verboseness, and the Right Reverend Stephen
Gardiner’s prætorian edicts in favour of Greek sounds,[1] and the βή ϐή
of the old comedian’s Attic sheep, might have been allowed to sleep
undisturbed on the library shelves. I had settled the question long
ago in my own mind on broad grounds of common sense, rather than on
any nice results that seemed obtainable from the investigations of the
learned; but the nature of the public duties now imposed on me does not
allow me to take my own course in such matters, merely because I think
it right. I must shew to the satisfaction of my fellow-teachers and of
my students, that I am not seeking after an ephemeral notoriety by the
public galvanisation of a dead crotchet; that any innovations which I
may propose are in reality, as so often happens in the political world
also, and in the ecclesiastical, a mere recurrence to the ancient
and established practice of centuries, and that whatever opinions I
may entertain on points confessedly open to debate, I entertain not
for myself alone, but in company with some of the ripest scholars
and profoundest philologists of modern times. I have reason also for
thinking with a recent writer, that the present time is peculiarly
favourable for the reconsideration of the question;[2] for, although
Sir John Cheke might have said with some show of truth in his day,
“_Græca jam lingua nemini patria est_,”[3] none but a prophetic
partisan of universal Russian domination in the Mediterranean will
now assert, that the living Greeks are not a nation and a people who
have a right to be heard on the question, how their own language is to
be pronounced. Taking the Greek language as it appears in the works
of the learned commentator Corais, in the poetry of the Soutzos and
Rangabe, in the history of Perrhæbus, so highly spoken of by Niebuhr,
and in the publications of the daily press at Athens; and taking
the new kingdom for no greater thing than the intrigues of meddling
diplomatists, its own wretched cabals, and the guns of Admiral Parker
will allow it to be; it is plain that to disregard the witness of
such a speaking fact, standing as it does upon the unbroken tradition
and catholic philological succession of eighteen centuries, would be,
much more manifestly now than in the days of the learned WETSTEN, to
“exercise a despotism over a free language,” such as no man has a right
to claim.[4] Besides, in Scotland we have already had our orthodox
hereditary routine in this matter disturbed by the invasion of English
teachers of the Greek language; an invasion, no doubt, which our strong
national feeling may look on with jealousy, but which we brought on
ourselves by the shameful condition of prostration in which we allowed
the philological classes in our higher schools and colleges to lie
for two centuries; and it was not to be expected that these English
teachers, being placed in a position which enabled them to give the
law within a certain influential circle, should sacrifice their own
traditional pronunciation of the Greek language, however arbitrary, to
ours, in favour of which, in some points, there was little but the mere
conservatism of an equally arbitrary usage to plead. Finding matters
in this condition, I feel it impossible for me to waive the discussion
of a matter already fermenting with all the elements of uncertainty. I
have therefore taken the trouble of working my way through Havercamp’s
two volumes, and comparing the arguments used in the famous old
Cantabrigian controversy with those advanced by a well-informed modern
member of the same learned corporation. I have taken the learned
Germans, too, as in duty bound, on such a question, into my counsels;
I have devoted not a little time and attention to the language and
literature of modern Greece; and above all, I have carefully examined
those places of the ancient rhetoricians and grammarians that touch
upon the various branches of the subject. With all these precautions,
if I shall not succeed in making converts to my views, I hope, at
least with reasonable men, to escape the imputation of rashness and
superficiality.
[1] _Ego sonorum causam tueor ex edicto possessorio, et ut prætor,
interdixi de possessione._
[2] An Essay on the Pronunciation of the Greek Language. By G. T.
PENNINGTON, M.A., late Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. London:
Murray. 1844. This is the work that I recommend to the English student
who wishes to understand the subject in detail, without wading through
the confounding mass of pertinent and impertinent matter that the
learned eloquence of more than three centuries has heaped up.
[3] _Sylloge scriptorum qui de linguæ Græcæ vera et recta
pronuntiatione Commentarios reliquerunt; edidit_ HAVERCAMPUS. _Ludg.
Bat._, 1740. Vol. ii. p. 220
[4] JOH. RUDOLFI WETSTENII: _pro Græca et genuina linguæ Græcæ
pronuntiatione Orationes Apologeticæ_. Basil; 1686, p. 27. The whole
passage is quoted in the prefixed mottoes.
The exact history of our present pronunciation of Greek, both in
England and Scotland, I have not learning enough curiously to trace;
but one thing seems to me plain, that all the great scholars in this
country, and on the continent generally, in the fifteenth, and the
early part of the sixteenth century, could have known nothing of our
present arbitrary method of pronouncing;[5] for they could pronounce
Greek no other way than as they received it from Chrysoloras, Gaza,
Lascaris, Musurus, and the other native Greeks who were their masters.
Erasmus was, if not absolutely the first,[6] certainly the first
scholar of extensive European influence and popularity who ventured to
disturb the tradition of the Byzantine elders in this matter; but his
famous dialogue, _De recta Latini Græcique sermonis pronuntiatione_,
did not appear till the year 1528, by which time so strong a
prescription had already run in favour of the received method, that it
seems strange how even his learning and wit should have prevailed to
overturn it. But there are periods in the history of the world when the
minds of men are naturally disposed to receive all sorts of novelties;
and the era of the Reformation was one of them. Erasmus, though a
conservative in religion, (as many persons are who are conservative
in nothing else,) pleased his free speculative whim with all sorts of
imaginations; and among other things fell—though, if what Wetsten
tells be true, in a very strange way[7]—on the notion of purging
the pronunciation of the classical languages of all those defects
which belonged to it, whether by degenerate tradition or perverse
provincialism, and erecting in its stead an ideal pronunciation, made
up of erudite conjecture and philosophical argumentation. Nothing was
more easy than to prove that in the course of two thousand years the
orthoepy of the language of the Greeks had declined considerably from
the perfection in which its musical fulness had rolled like a river of
gold from the mouth of Plato, or had been dashed like a thunderbolt
of Jove from the indignant lips of Demosthenes; yet more easy was it,
and admirable game for such a fine spirit as Erasmus, to evoke the
shades of Cicero and Quinctilian, and make mirth to them out of a
Latin oration delivered before the Emperor Maximilian, by a twittering
French courtier and a splay-mouthed Westphalian baron.[8] It is certain
also that there are in that dialogue many admirable observations on
the blundering practices of the schoolmasters, and even the learned
professors, his contemporaries, which very many of them in that day,
and the great majority even now have wanted either sense or courage to
attend to; observations which, I doubt not, will yet bear fruit in the
present age, if education is to be advanced in the only way possible,
viz., by those whose profession it is to teach others, learning in
the first place to teach themselves. But in one great point of his
rich and various discourse, the learned Dutchman was more witty than
wise, and achieved a success where he was altogether wrong, or only
half-right, that has been denied to him where he is altogether right.
While his admirable observations on accent and quantity, and many of
his precepts on the practical art of teaching languages, have been
totally lost sight of by the great mass of our classical teachers, his
strictures on the pronunciation of the Greek vowels and diphthongs have
been received more or less by pedagogic men in all parts of Europe;
or at least prevailed so far as to shake the faith of scholars in the
pronunciation of the native Greek, and lead them to invent a new and
arbitrary Hellenic utterance for each country, an altogether barbarous
conglomerate, made up of modern national peculiarities and scraps of
Erasmian philology. This is a sorry state of matters; but as European
scholarship then stood, innovators could look for no more satisfactory
result. Neither Erasmus nor the scholars who followed his “divisive
courses” in England and other countries, were in possession of
philological materials sufficiently comprehensive for settling so nice
a point. Much less could they use the materials in their hands with
that spirit of calm philosophic survey, and that touch of fine critical
sagacity which the ripe scholars of Germany now exhibit. It was one
thing to quarrel learnedly with the pronunciation of Chrysoloras, and
to chuckle with academic pride over the tautophonic tenuity of σὺ
δ’ εἶπέ μοι μὴ μῆκος, and other such ingeniously gathered scraps of
Atticism in the mouth of a modern Turkish serf; another, and a far more
serious thing, to draw out a complete table of elocutionary sounds,
such as they existed at any given period in Greek literature; say at
the successive epochs of Homer, Æschylus, Plato, Callimachus, Strabo,
Chrysostom. Bishop Gardiner, therefore, was right to press this point
hard against the Erasmians,—“_Quod vero difficillimum dicebam neque
statuis neque potes, ut tanquam ad punctum constituas sonorum modum. Ab
usu præsente manifeste recedis: sed an ad veterum sonorum formam omnino
accedas, nihil expeditum est._” Here, as in more serious matters, the
good Bishop saw that it was easier to destroy than to build up; and
therefore he interposed his interdict despotically in the Roman style,
_ne quid detrimenti respublica capiat_. But these maxims of old Roman
aristocracy do not apply to the democracy of letters. So the Bishop’s
philological thunderbolt started more heretics than it laid. The love
of liberty was now conjoined with the love of originality; to speak
Greek with Erasmus became now the sign of academic patriotism and the
watchword of philological progress. FORCE being the chief apparent
power on the one side, it was naturally felt by those against whom it
was exercised, that REASON was altogether on their side. The matter was
therefore practically settled on the side of persecuted innovation;
the subtlety of a few academic doctors triumphed proudly over the long
tradition of Byzantine centuries, and the living protest of millions of
men, with Greek blood in their veins and Greek words in their mouths;
and they who were once the few despised Nazarenes of the scholastic
world, are now a sort of philological Scribes and Pharisees, sitting in
the seat of Aristarchus, whose dictum it is dangerous to dispute.
[5] See the opinions of SCALIGER, SALMASIUS, and some others, quoted by
WETSTEN.
[6] WETSTEN refers to a work by ALDUS MANUTIUS _de potestate
literarum_, which I have not seen.
[7] “_Audici M. Rutgerum Reschium professorem Linguæ Græcæ in collegio
Baslidiano apud Lovanienses, meum piæ memoriæ præceptorem, narrantem,
se habitasse in Liliensi pædagogeo una cum Erasmo, eo superius, se
inferius cubiculum obtinente. Henricum autum Glareanum Parisiis
Lovanium venisse, atque ab Erasmo in collegium vocatum fuisse ad
prandium: quo cum venisset, quid novi adferret interrogatum dixisse
(quod in itinere commentus erat, quod sciret Erasmum plus satis
rerum novarum studiosum ac mire credulum) quosdam in Græcia natos
Lutetiam venisse, viros ad miraculum doctos; qui longe aliam Græci
sermonis pronunciationem usurparent, quam quæ vulgo in hisce partibus
recepta esset: Eos nempe sonare pro_ Vita Beta, _pro_ II ita Eta,
_pro_ AI, ai, _pro_ OI, oi, _et sic in cæteris. Quo audito Erasmum
paulo post conscripsisse dialogum de recta Latini Græcique sermonis
pronunciatione, ut videretur hujus rei ipse incentor, et obtulisse
Petro Alostensi Typographo imprimendum: Qui cum forte aliis occupatus
renueret, aut certe se tam cito excudere quam volebat non posse
diceret, misisse libellum Basileam ad Frobenium, a quo max impressus in
lucem prodiit. Verum Erasmum cognita fraude, nunquam ea pronunciandi
ratione postea usum, nec amicis, quibuscum familiariter vivebat, ut eam
observarent, præcepisse. In ejus rei fidem exhibuit Rutgerus ipsius
Erasmi manu scriptam in gratiam Damiani a Gœs Hispani pronunciationis
formulam, in nullo diversam ab ea, qua passim docti et indocti in hac
lingua utuntur._” The voucher for the story is VOSSIUS, from whose
_Aristarchus_, lib. 1, c. 28, Wetsten quotes it.
[8] Havercamp, vol. ii. p 174.
Nevertheless, Erasmus, Wetsten distinctly asserts, (pp. 15, 115,)
did not himself adopt in his practice the perfect theory of Hellenic
vocalization which he sketched out. So much the less cause is there
for our having any hesitation in considering the whole question as now
open, and treating it exactly as if Professor John Cheke, and Professor
Thomas Smith of Cambridge University, and Adolphus Mekerchus, knight
and perpetual senator of Bruges, and the other Havercampian hoplites
had never existed. Let us inquire, therefore, in the first place,
whether any certain data exist on which such a matter can be settled
scientifically. We shall give only the grand outlines of the question,
referring the special student to the English work of PENNINGTON already
quoted, the German work of LISKOV, and the Latin of SEYFFARTH.[9]
[9] _Ueber die Aus-sprache des Griechischen._ Leipzig, 1825. _De Sonis
literarum Græcarum_; _auctore_ GUSTAVO SEYFFARTHIO. Lipsiæ, 1824.
Now, there are five ways by which the method of pronunciation used by
any gone generation of “articulate-speaking men” may be ascertained,
if not with a curious exactness in every point, at least with such
an amount of approximation as will be esteemed satisfactory by a
reasonable inquirer. FIRST, we have the imitation in articulate letters
of natural sounds and of the cries of animals. There is nothing more
certain in the philosophy of language than that whole classes of
words expressive of sound were formed on the principle of a direct
dramatic imitation of the sound signified. Thus the words DASH,
HASH, SMASH, in our most significant Saxon tongue, evidently express
an action producing sound, in which the strong vowel sound of A is
combined with a sharp sound to which the aspirated S was considered
the nearest approximation by the original framer of the word. So,
in the names expressive of flowing water, the liquids L and R are
observed to preponderate in all languages, these being the sounds
which are actually given forth by the natural objects so signified:
thus _river_, ῤέω, _strom_, _flumen_, _purl_, the Hebrew _nahar_ and
_nahal_, &c. And in the same manner, if the bird which we call CUCKOO
was called by the Latins _cuculus_, by the Greeks κόκκυξ, and by the
Germans _kukuk_, no person can doubt that the vowel sounds at least, in
these words, were intended to be a more or less exact echo of the cry
of the bird so designated. In arguing, however, from such words, care
must be taken not to press the argument too closely; for two things
are manifest—that the original framer of the words might have given,
and in all likelihood did give only a loose, and not a curiously exact
imitation of the sound or cry he meant to express; and then that in
the course of centuries the word may have deviated so far from its
original pronunciation, as to be no longer a very striking likeness
of the natural sound it is intended to imitate. These considerations
explain the fact how the very simple and obvious cry made by sheep,
which no child will mistake, is expressed by three very different
vowels, in three of the most notable European languages,—our own
_bleat_, the Latin _balare_, and the Greek βληχή, pronounced like A
in _mate_, according to the practice of the Greeks in the classical
age. From such words, therefore, no safe conclusion can be drawn as
to the pronunciation of any particular word at any particular period
of a highly advanced civilization. It is different, however, with
words not forming any part of the spoken system of articulate speech,
but invented expressly for the occasion, in order to represent by way
of echo certain natural sounds. In this way, should we find in an
old Athenian spelling-book this sentence, “_the sheep cries_ Βή,” we
should be most justly entitled to conclude, if not that the Greek _B_
was pronounced exactly like the corresponding letter in our alphabet,
(for the consonants are less easily fixed down in such imitations
of inarticulate cries,) certainly that _H_ had the sound of our AI;
and this conclusion would be irresistible if other arguments were at
hand, such as will presently be mentioned, leading plainly to the same
conclusion. Here, however, also, care must be taken not to generalize
too largely; for, strictly speaking, the inference from such a fact
as the one supposed, is only that at the particular time and place
where the said book was composed, a particular vowel sounded to the
ear of the writer in a particular way; the proof remaining perfectly
open that at some other place during the same period, or at the same
place fifty years later, the same vowel may have been pronounced in a
perfectly different way.[10]. Those who are at all acquainted with the
style of reasoning on such points, exemplified in almost every page of
Havercamp’s Collection, will see the necessity of applying at every
step of their progress the rein of a strictly logical restraint.
[10] “If we find a word pronounced in a given manner in the time of
Athenæus, we are warranted, in the absence of proof, in supposing it
to have been pronounced in the same way in the time of Homer; and what
prevailed in Homer’s time may be presumed to have continued till the
age of Athenæus.”—PENNINGTON, p. 7. This is too strong. Considering
the immense interval of time and progress of culture between HOMER and
ATHENÆUS, and considering the tendency to change inherent in human
nature, I can see no presumption that the pronunciation of the language
should have remained through so many centuries unchanged.
Another and a most scientific way by which we may recover the traces of
a lost orthoepy, is from the physiological description of the action
of the organs of speech in producing the sounds belonging to certain
letters, as preserved in the works of grammatical or rhetorical
writers. This method of proof, taken by itself, may, no doubt, fail of
giving complete satisfaction in delicate cases; for it is extremely
difficult to give such an exact description of the action of the organs
of speech as will enable a student of an unknown language to reproduce
the sound, without the assistance of the living voice. But, taken
along with other circumstances, the proof from this source may be so
strong as absolutely to force conviction; or at all events imperatively
to exclude certain suppositions, which, without the existence of
such a description, would have been admissible. Now, it happens most
fortunately for our present inquiry, that a very satisfactory scale
of the Greek vowel-sounds is extant in the works of the well-known
historian and critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who lived in the time
of Augustus Cæsar. This we shall quote at length immediately; and as
the author was a professional rhetorician, no higher authority on such
a point, for the epoch to which he belongs, can be wished for.[11]
[11] “I cannot help thinking that if this treatise of Dionysius had
been in early times made a text-book in schools, no controversy would
ever have arisen upon the pronunciation of the Greek letters,” (except
the diphthongs,) “or upon the nature of quantity.”—PENNINGTON.
Again, a very large and various field of proof lies in those instances
of the direct transference of the sounds of one language into those
of another, which literary composition sometimes requires, and which
are sure to occur very frequently in an extensive literature like the
Greek. Examples of this are most common in the case of proper names,
and occur especially in translations, as in the ancient translations of
the Hebrew Bible and of the New Testament, which have been admirably
used for the illustration of Greek orthoepy in the work of Seyffarth.
When Strabo, for instance, (p. 213,) in the case given by Pennington,
(p. 73,) says of the inhabitants of the newly colonized town of Como in
Upper Italy,—Νεο κωμῖται ἐκλήθησαν ἅπαντες· τοῦτο δὲ μεθερμηνευθὲν Νο
ϐουμκώμουμ λέγεται, we learn that the diphthong ου was considered by
an intelligent scientific man in the time of Augustus, as being either
the exact equipollent of the Latin U, or the nearest approximation
to it within the compass of Hellenic vocalization; and when we are
told further that the modern Greeks and the modern Italians pronounce
the same vowels the same way even now, we cannot for a moment doubt
that the method of pronouncing that Greek diphthong now practised in
Scotland (as in _boom_) is the correct one. From the same passage we
may legitimately draw the inference, with regard to the second letter
in the Greek alphabet, that it was in all probability pronounced
softly like our V; for our B is no representative whatever of the Latin
V, whether we suppose that letter to have been pronounced like the
corresponding letter with us, or like our W. The modern Germans, in
the same way, who have not our sound of W, substitute for it in their
language the sound of V regularly, as in WASSER, which they pronounce
VASSER, and many such words. If, therefore, an ancient Greek wished
to express the letter V, and does so by his own _B_, the inference is
irresistible, either that his _B_ was pronounced like our V, and was
viewed as the exact expression of the Latin letter so pronounced, or
as an approximation to it, if pronounced like our W; or, on the other
hand, that the Greek organ being utterly incapable of pronouncing the
soft sound of the Latin V, and having no letter or combination of
letters capable of expressing it, gave up the attempt in despair, and
wrote the soft Latin V with a hard Greek _B_. But this supposition is
improbable, for three reasons: FIRST, because the general character
of the Greek language, as contrasted with the Roman, was not that of
blunt hardness but of liquid softness, (see QUINCTILIAN and CICERO,
_passim_;) SECONDLY, the ancient Greeks, in fact, had a combination of
letters by which they could express in an approximate way the Latin
V, namely, ου, and by which they actually did so express it on many
occasions; THIRDLY, the modern Greeks likewise do pronounce the second
letter of the alphabet like the Latin V; and the burden of proof lies
on those who assert that the ancients pronounced it otherwise.
A fourth method of proof lies in the remarks made on the identical or
cognate sounds of syllables, either incidentally by general writers,
or specially by grammarians in treating orthography and orthoepy; and
in the accidental interchange of letters in inscriptions and coins.
Of the strictly grammatical kind of evidence a very valuable fragment
has been preserved in the Ἐπιμερισμοί of Herodian, the Priscian of the
Greek grammarians, published by Boissonnade in 1817. In this work are
alphabetically arranged large classes of words, which, while they are
pronounced with the same vowel to the ear, are differently spelt to
the eye; as if I should say in English that the vowel-sounds in the
words FAIR, FARE, HEIR, THERE, have the same or a similar orthoepy,
but a very different orthography. Of the other, or incidental kind,
may be mentioned those plays of sound with which epigrammatic writers
sometimes amuse themselves, and of which the echo-poems found in some
of the collections of modern Latin, are the most notable example. Thus,
Erasmus, in ridicule of the Ciceronians, wrote two lines, of which
the first, a hexameter, ends with _Cicerone_, the ablative case of
the great orator’s Latin name, while the second line, a pentameter,
striking the ear as a sort of echo of the first, ends with the Greek
word ὄνε, _O you ass!_ from which significant jingle the inference is
ready enough, that the penultimate syllable of both these words, in the
classical pronunciation of Erasmus, was accented, and that the sound of
the vowel in both was the same. The proof, of course, in such a case
would have been equally complete if the word in the second line had
been spelt with a different vowel instead of with the same.
_Fifthly_, In determining the pronunciation of any language at any
past period of its history, its presently existing pronunciation,
though furnishing no absolute proof, is entitled to be taken into
account along with other circumstances, and in the absence of any
distinct evidence to the contrary, must be taken as conclusive. Erasmus
appealed with great success to the vanity of academic men, when he
said, with reference to the common Greek pronunciation in his day,
“_Pronuntiationem, quam nunc habent eruditi, non aliunde petunt quam
a vulgo, scis quali magistro_;” but to this a learned advocate of the
existing Itacism very wisely replies, that even supposing it were
true that the vulgar pronunciation of Greek comes to us only from the
VULGAR, the common people, as is well known, are generally far more
tenacious of hereditary national accent than the upper classes of
society;[12] of which we have a familiar English example in the case
of the stout Yorkshiremen, who have preserved for two thousand years
the deep hollow sound of _u_, (saying _Ool_, for _Hull_, &c.,) which is
the normal sound of that vowel in all the European languages. In this
view it is passing strange to note, that the slender sound of the first
syllable of ἡμέρα, as if written _heeméra_, which is the rule with the
modern Greeks, is the precise sound, that in a passage of Plato is
noted as the ancient sound, compared with the fuller sound, _haiméra_,
fashionable in his day;[13] while Aristophanes[14] in one of his plays,
introduces a conservative old Spartan lady saying ἵκει, instead of
ἥκει; a distinct proof both that η was not considered identical with ι
in his day, and that it was then sounded as it is now, by one of the
most ancient people in the Pelasgic peninsula.
Such appear to me to be the methods of proof that lie open to an
inquirer into the orthoepy of any language, living or dead, at any
given period of its history. With these, of course, the student must
combine such general rules on the philosophy of language, and on the
habits of human speech, as a little experience of practical philology
will readily supply. I now proceed to state the results to which I have
arrived, by a thorough study of the existing evidences. After that we
shall make our practical inference, and answer a few natural objections.
[12] “_Vulgus antiquæ pronuntiationis tenacissimus est._”—WETSTEN.
Compare the observations of Professor L. Ross, below, on the antique
element in modern Greek.
[13] Pluto Cratylus, sec. 74, Bekker.
[14] Aristophanes, Lysist. 86.
In the shape of results, therefore, all that my present purely
practical purpose requires me to lay down, with regard to ancient Greek
vocalization, may be combined in the following two propositions—
PROPOSITION I.—It is demonstrably certain that the
method of pronouncing the vowels and diphthongs
generally practised in England and Scotland,
especially in England, since the days of Sir John
Cheke,—that is from about the middle of the sixteenth
century—is doubtful in many points, and in not a few
most important points directly opposed to the whole
stream of ancient authority and tradition. It is in
fact in a great measure conjectural, arbitrary, and
capricious.
PROPOSITION II.—It is equally certain that the modern
Greeks have declined in several most important points
from the purity of Hellenic orthoepy, as practised
in the most classic times; but many of the striking
peculiarities of the modern pronunciation can be
traced back, with more or less uniformity, to a
period not far removed from the most flourishing
period of Greek literature, a period certainly when
pure Greek was both a spoken and a written language,
and preserving such a living organic power, as
entitled it by a spontaneous impulse from within to
modify the laws of its own orthoepy.
Both these propositions, so far as the vowels are concerned, are proved
by a single glance at the passage of Dionysius (περὶ συντάξεως) already
referred to, and which I shall now translate:—
“There are seven vowels; two long, η and ω, and two short, ε and ο;
three both long and short, α, ι, υ. All these are pronounced by the
wind-pipe acting on the breath, while the mouth remains in its simple
natural state, and the tongue remaining at rest takes no part in the
utterance. Now, the long vowels, and those which may be either long or
short, when they are used as long, are pronounced with the stream of
breath, extended and continuous; but the short vowels, and those used
as short, are uttered by a stroke of the mouth cut off immediately
on emission, the wind-pipe exerting its power only for the shortest
time. Of all these, the most agreeable sounds are produced by the
long vowels, and those which are used as long, because their sound
continues for a considerable time, and they do not suddenly break off
the energy of the breath. Of an inferior value are the short vowels,
and those used as short, because the volume of sound in them is small
and broken. Of the long again, the most sonorous is the α, when it is
used as long, for it is pronounced by opening the mouth to the fullest,
while the breath strikes the palate. The next is η, because in its
formation, while the mouth is moderately open, the sound is driven out
from below at the mouth of the tongue, and keeping in that quarter does
not strike upwards. Next comes the ω, for in it the mouth is rounded,
and contracts the lips, and the stroke of the mouth is sent against the
extreme end of the mouth, (ἀκροστόμιον, the lips, I presume.) Inferior
to this is the υ, for in this vowel an observable contraction takes
place in the extreme region of the lips, so that the sonorous breath
comes out attenuated and compressed. Last of all comes ι, for here the
stroke of the breath takes place about the teeth, while the opening of
the mouth is small, and the lips contribute nothing towards giving the
sound more dignity as it passes through. Of the short vowels, neither
is sonorous; but o is the least agreeable, for it parts the mouth more
than the other, and receives the stroke nearer the wind-pipe.”
Now, while every point of this physiological description may not be
curiously accurate,[15] there is enough of obvious certainty in it to
settle some of the most important points of Greek orthoepy, so far as
the rhetorician of Halicarnassus is concerned; and his authority in
this matter is that of a man of the highest skill, which, as the daily
practice of our law courts shows, is worth that of a thousand persons
taken at random. That the ITACISM of the modern Greeks did not exist,
or was not allowed by good speakers[16] in the time of this writer, so
far as the single vowels are concerned, is abundantly manifest; for
not only do η, ι, υ, which the modern Greeks identify, mean different
sounds, but the sound of the η in particular is removed as far from the
ι as it could well be in any scale of vocalization, which sets out with
the supremacy of the broad A. And if these sounds were distinguished
by polished ears in the days of Augustus Cæsar, it is contrary to
all analogy of language to suppose that in the days of Alexander
the Great, Plato, or Pericles, they should have been confounded.
Provincialisms, indeed, and certain itacizing peculiarities, such as
that noticed by Plato, (page 24 above), there might have been; but
that any language should confound its vowel-sounds in its best days,
and distinguish them in its days of commencing feebleness, is contrary
to all that succession of things which we daily witness. Different
letters were originally invented to express different sounds, and did
so naturally for a long time, till fashion and freak combined with
habit, either overran the phonetic rule of speech by a rank growth of
exceptive oddities, (as has happened in English,) or fixed upon the
organs of articulation some strong tendency towards the predominance
of a particular sound, which in process of time became a marked
idiosyncrasy, from which centuries of supervening usage could not
shake the language free. This is what has taken place in Greece with
regard to certain vowel-sounds. But before pursuing these observations
further, let us see distinctly what the special points are, that this
remarkable passage of the Halicarnassian distinctly brings out. The
ascertained points are these,—
[15] What he says about the tongue performing no part in the formation
of the vowels is manifestly false, as any one may convince himself by
pronouncing the three sounds, _au_, _ai_, _ee_, successively, with open
mouth before a mirror. He will thus observe a gradual elevation and
advance of the tongue, as the sound to be emitted becomes more slender.
[16] This limitation must be carefully borne in mind; for after Athens
ceased to be a capital, being overwhelmed by Alexandria, it still
remained a sort of literary metropolis, giving, or affecting to give,
the law in matters of taste, long after its authority had ceased
practically to bind large masses of those whose usage fashioned the
existing language.
1. The long or slender sound of the English A, (as
in _lane_,) is not acknowledged by Dionysius, nor
is its existence possible under his description. It
is altogether an anomaly and a monstrosity—like so
many things in this island—and should never have been
tolerated for a moment in the pronunciation of Latin
or Greek.[17]
2. The slender sound of η used by the English and
the modern Greeks, is an attenuation the farthest
possible removed from the conception of Dionysius.
About ε there is no dispute anywhere.
3. The sound of υ described is manifestly the French
_u_, or German _ü_ heard in _Brüder_, _Bühne_: a very
delicate and elegant sound bordering closely on the
slender sound of _i_, (_ee_, English,) into which
it is sometimes attenuated by the Germans, and with
which, by a poetical license, it is allowed to rhyme,
(as _Brüder_—_nieder_,) but having no connection with
the English sound of _oo_, (as in _boom_,) with
which, in Scotland, it is confounded. This with us
is the more unpardonable, as our Doric dialect in
the south possesses a similar sound in such words as
_guid_, _bluid_, attenuated by the Northerns into the
slender sound of _gueed_, and _bleed_. The English
sound of long _u_ is, as Walker has pointed out,
a compound sound, of which one element is a sort
of consonant—Y. It is, besides, altogether a piece
of English idiosyncrasy, that we have no reason to
suppose ever existed anywhere, either amongst Greeks
or Romans.[18]
4. The English sound of I is another of John Bull’s
phonetic crotchets, and must be utterly discarded.
It is, in fact, a compound sound, of which the deep
vowel α is the predominant element—an element which,
we have seen, stands at the very opposite end of the
Halicarnassian’s scale!
[17] In some English schools a small concession has been made to common
sense, and to sound principles of teaching, by confining the long
slender sound of _a_ to the long α, while the short α is pronounced
like the short _a_ in _bat_. Now, as changes are not easily made
in England, especially among schoolmasters, who are a stiff-necked
generation everywhere, it would have been worth while when they were
moving, to kick the barbarous English A out of the scholastic world
altogether. But their conservatism was too strong for this; besides,
the ears of many were so gross that they would not have distinguished,
or would have sworn that they could not distinguish, a long _a_ from a
short one, without giving the former the sound of an entirely distinct
vowel! There is no limit to the nonsense that men will talk in defence
of an inveterate absurdity.
[18] The following passage from MITFORD (Pennington, p. 37) may stand
here as an instructive lesson, how blindly prejudice many sometimes
speak: “Strong national partiality only, and determined habit, could
lead to the imagination cherished by the French critics, that the
Greek υ was a sound so unpleasant, produced by a position of the
lips so ungraceful as the French U.”—_History_, book ii. sec. iii.,
note. SCALIGER (Opuscula: Paris, 1610, p. 131) says rightly, “Est
obscurissimus sonus in Græca vocali υ, quæ ita pronuntianda est ut
proxime accedat ad iota.”
So far as we see, therefore, the English, Scotch, and modern Greek
methods of pronouncing the five vowels all depart in some point from
the highest authority that can be produced on the subject; in fact, the
single vowel ω alone has preserved its full rounded purity uncorrupted
by any party. But with regard to the other four vowels, there is a
marked difference in the degree of deflection from the classical norm;
for, while the Scotch err only in one point, υ, the modern Greeks err
in two, η and υ, (though their error is but a very nice one in the case
of υ, and has, in both cases, long centuries of undeviating usage to
stand on,) and the English err in all the four points, α, η, ι, and
υ, and that in the most paradoxical and abnormal fashion that could
have been invented, had it been the direct purpose of our Oxonian and
Etonian doctors to put all classical propriety at defiance. In such
lawless anarchy has ended the restoration of the divine speech of
Plato, so loftily promised by Sir John Cheke; and so true in this small
matter also, is that wise parable of the New Testament, which advises
reformers to beware of putting new patches on old vestments. Instead of
the robe of genuine Melibean purple which Erasmus wished to throw round
the shoulders of the old Greek gods, our English scholars, following in
his track of conjectural innovation, have produced an English clown’s
motley jacket, which the Zeus of Olympus never saw, and even Momus
would disdain. But let us proceed to the diphthongs.
Unhappily Dionysius, by a very unaccountable omission, has given us
no information on this head; so we are left to pursue our inquiries
over a wide field of stray inquiry, and conclude from a greater mass
of materials with much less appearance of scientific certainty. The
following results, however, to any man that will fairly weigh the
cumulative power of the evidence brought together with such laborious
conscientiousness by Liscov and Seyffarth, must appear unquestionable:—
1. It is proved by evidence reaching as far back as the time of
the first Ptolemies, that the diphthong ΑΙ was pronounced like the
same diphthong in our English word _gain_.[19] So the diphthong is
pronounced by the living Greek nation. There is, therefore, the
evidence of more than 2000 years in its favour, and against the
prevalent pronunciation, which gives it the broad sound of _ai_ in the
German word KAISER, rhyming pretty nearly with our English word WISER.
[19] “_Utut sit, id saltem nacti sumus interpretum S. sc. singularum
atque omnium auctoritate ut constet_ AI _mature atque optimis adeo
Græcorum temporibus simplici vocali_ E _respondisse_.”—SEYFFARTH, p.
101. See also the Stanza from CALLIMACHUS, where ναίχι echoes to ἔχει,
Epig. xxx. 5, (and SEXTUS EMPIRICUS _adv._ Grammat. c. 5.)
2. The diphthong EI was pronounced in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus
like the English _ee_ in _seen_, or _ea_ in _beam_.[20] This
pronunciation it retains at the present day. In this, as in the
preceding case, we have a striking proof of the tenacity with which
a great nation clings to elocutional peculiarities. What likelihood
is there that a people, so constant to itself for 2000 years under
the most adverse circumstances, should, in the 200 years previous to
that period, have known nothing of what was afterwards one of its most
marked characteristics?
[20] “_Quâ potestate literæ_ EI _fuerint eâ Græcorum ætate in quam
veteres Sc. s. interpretes incidunt ex plurimis iisque variis verbis in
singulas linguas conversis adeo clarum est ut nulla fere restet causa
de eâ dubitare._”—SEYFFARTH. The Old Testament translators, in fact,
use it as regularly for _Hirek_ and _Yod_, as they do AI for _Tzere_,
_Segol_, and _Sheva_.
3. The evidence for the pronunciation of the diphthong ΟΙ is more
scanty. Unfortunately the Septuagint translators use this diphthong
only once for expressing a Hebrew name in the whole compass of the
Old Testament. From other evidence, and by a train of deduction that
appears somewhat slippery, Seyffarth comes to the conclusion that its
original pronunciation was probably that of the German _oe_, from which
it was by degrees softened into the French _u_, and lastly into the
slender sound of _i_ (_ee_), which it now has. But as I am dealing
with certainties in this paper, and not with probabilities, it will be
enough to say that LISCOV has produced evidence to shew that it was
confounded with _i_ so early as the time of Julius Cæsar, =ΙΩΝΙΣΤΗΣ=
being found on a coin of the great dictator for οἰωνιστής. So in
the coins of Emperors of the second century, =ΟΙΚΟΣΤΟΥ= frequently
occurs for εἰκοστοῦ.[21] That λοιμός was not pronounced exactly like
λιμός in the time of Thucydides, has been concluded from a well-known
passage in his second book, (c. 54;) but the passage is of doubtful
interpretation,[22] and no man can tell at this time of day what the
exact, perhaps a very small shade of, difference, was between the two
sounds.
[21] With regard to this sort of evidence arising from wrong spelt
words, it is manifest that a single example proves nothing. When Aunt
Chloe, for instance, in the American novel, says, “I’m _clar_ on’t,”
this is no proof that the Americans pronounce the _ea_ in _clear_ like
_a_; the only conclusion is, that certain vulgar people in America
pronounce it so, and a word with a different vocalization must be
written in order to express their peculiar method of utterance. But
when mistakes of this kind occur extensively, and in quarters where
there is no reason to suspect anything particularly vulgar, they
authorize a conclusion as general as the fact, especially where no
evidence exists pointing in a different direction.
[22] THIERSCH uses the passage as a proof of the antiquity of the
modern slender sound.—_Sprachlehre_, § 16, 5.
4. In the above three examples, the Scotch and the English have equally
conspired to overthrow the living tradition of two centuries, by an act
of arbitrary academical conceit or pedagogic carelessness. In the case
of OU, we Northerns have again been happy; while the English, with
their fatal facility of blundering in such matters, have invented a
pronunciation of this diphthong which seems more natural to a growling
Saxon mastiff than to the smooth fulness of ancient Greek eloquence.
The Greek writers, with great uniformity, agree in expressing by
this diphthong the sound of the Latin _u_; while the modern Greeks,
with equal uniformity, agree in pronouncing their ου as the Italians
pronounce _u_; that is to say, like the English _oo_ in _boom_.
Seyffarth classes this diphthong with _a_ and _i_, _o_ and _e_, as a
sound about which there is no controversy.