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on a rock was called ZōR, as it is always called in the Old Testament; but this word sounded in Greek ears from Phoenician mouths so as to cause them to write it Túpos, Tyrus, whence we have the name of Tyre. The same word (probably) passing with an early migration westward is found in the Dartmoor Tors. It is to this sort of play upon the gamut or scale of consonants, a play which is kept up between kindred dialects, that Grimm, when he had reduced it to a sort of law, gave the name of Lautverschiebung; sound-shunting of consonantal equivalents; reciprocity of

consonants.

As, on the one side, we find this reciprocity where we find cognate dialects; so on the other hand, if we can establish the fact that there is or has been such a consonantal reciprocity between two languages, we have obtained the strongest proof of their relationship. There are traces of this kind between the English on the one hand and the Classical languages on the other.

We suppose the reader is familiar with the twofold division of the mute consonants into lip, tooth, and throat consonants in the one direction; and into thin, middle, and aspirate consonants in the other direction. If not, he should learn this little table by heart, before he proceeds a step further. Learn it by rote, both ways, both horizontally and vertically.

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By means of these classifications of consonants we are able to shew traces of a law of transition having existed

between English and the Classical languages. We find instances of words, for example, which begin with a thin consonant in Greek or Latin or both, and the same word is found in English or its cognate dialects beginning with an aspirate. Thus if the Latin or Greek word begins with P the English word begins with F. Examples: Tuρ and fire: прó, прŵτоя, primus, compared with the Saxon words fruma, frem; with the modern preposition from, which is of the same root and original sense with for, fore, forth, &c. : Tôλos, pullus and foal, filly: múg, pugnus and fist: Tarp, pater and father: névte and five, German fünf : πoús, pes and foot : pecus and feoh: pasco and feed: piscis and fish.

If the classical word begins with an aspirate, the English word begins with a middle: for example, the Greek or Latin F is found responsive to the English B. Thus, φηγος, fagus and beech: qvw, fui and be: Oparpia, frater and brother : pepo, fero and bear. The Greek → by the same rule responds to the English D; as in Ovyarŋp and daughter. Where the Classical word has a middle, the English should have a thin. Thus the Greek B and Latin в should answer to our English P. In proof of this we may perhaps cite Búbos and pit, properly pyt: but here we must pass into another group of consonants to find suitable illustrations, as our early language was remarkably poor in words beginning with P. Leaving then the labials or lip-consonants which have afforded us all the instances so far quoted, let us try the toothconsonants or dentals. If the Greek or Latin has the medial, the English should have the thin: that is to say, a Classic ▲ or D should correspond to our English T. And so it does in δάκρυ and tear : δύο, duo and two : δέκα, decem and ten: déμw, domus and timbran, the Saxon verb for building: dévopov, Spûs and tree: dingua, archaic Latin for lingua, and tongue. These, and all such illustrations,

may be summarised for convenience sake in the following mnemonic formula:

Τ A M
A M

where the Roman letters of the Latin word tam placed over the Gothic letters of the German word Amt are intended to bracket together the initial letters of Thins, Medials, and Aspirates, so as to represent the order of transition.

These examples will suffice if they satisfy the reader that here we have traces of a regular law. We only desire to establish the fact that our language is of one and the same strain with the Greek and Latin, that is to say, it is one of the Indo-European family.

It will be easy to discover a great number of examples which lie outside the above analogy. But this will not injure the proof resulting from those examples, unless it can be supposed that those are mere accidental resemblances arbitrarily collected. Against such an idea is to be placed the consideration that they are chiefly taken from words of the first necessity. These have a tendency to be very permanent in languages, so that the similarities which they now bear, they have most probably borne for an extended length of time. And if so, it is reasonable to suppose that such analogies have once been more numerous than they now are. Casualties happen to words as to all mortal products: and in the course of time their forms get defaced. The German language offers many examples of this. If I want to understand the consonantal analogies which existed between English and German, I should prefer as a general rule to go to the oldest form of German, because a conventional orthography, among other causes, has in German led to a disfigurement of many of the forms. The

tendency of words to get disguised, is, therefore, one reason why these analogies do not hold more completely than they do. Another reason is, that in progress of time new principles of word-forming are slowly admitted, new words and new forms overlay and supersede the old; and therefore we must not complain if any one set of rules does not account for all the phenomena of the comparison.

The Modern or

But if such a relation as that which is condensed in the above mnemonic is clearly established as existing between the Classical languages on the one hand, and the Gothic on the other; much more distinctly and largely may it be shewn that a like relation exists internally between the two main subdivisions of the Gothic family. These two parts are the High Dutch and the Low Dutch. New High Dutch is what we now call German,' the great literary language of Central Europe, inaugurated by Luther in his translation of the Bible. Behind this great modern speech we have two receding stages of its earlier forms, the Middle High Dutch or the language of the Epic of the Nibelungen, and the Old High Dutch or the language of the Scripture paraphrasts Otfrid and Notker. The AltHoch-Deutsch goes back to the tenth century; the MittelHoch-Deutsch goes back to the thirteenth; and the NeuHoch-Deutsch dates from the Reformation of the sixteenth century. This is the High Dutch division of the Gothic languages.

Round about these in a broken curve are found the representatives of the Low Dutch family. Their earliest literary traces go back to the fourth century, and appear in the villages of Dacia, in lands which slope to the Danube; where the country is now called Wallachia. It is from this region that we have the Moso-Gothic Gospels and other relics of the planting of Christianity.

But their greatest body is to the north and west. Along the German shores of the Baltic, and far inland, where High Dutch is established in the educated ranks, the mass of the folk speak Low Dutch, which locally passes by the name of Platt-Deutsch. The kingdom of the Netherlands, where it is a truly national speech, the speech of all ranks of the community- the kingdom of Belgium, where, under the name of Flemish, it is striving for recognition, and has gained a place in literature through the pen of Hendrik Consciencethe old district of the Hanseatic cities, the Lower Elbe, Hamburgh, Lübeck, Bremen,-all this is Nieder-Deutsch, Low Dutch.

To this family belongs the English language in respect of that which is the oldest and most material part of it. It has received so many additions from other sources, and has worked them up with so much individuality of effect, as to have in fact produced a new language, and a language which, from external circumstances, seems likely to become the parent of a new strain of languages. But all the outgrowth and exuberance of English clusters round a Low Dutch centre.

It would be a departure from the general way of philologers to include under the term of Low Dutch the languages of Scandinavia. The latter have very strong individualising features of their own, such as the post-positive article, and a form for the passive verb. The post-positive article is highly curious. In Modern Danish or Swedish the indefinite article a or an is represented by en for masculine and feminine, and et for neuter. Thus en skov signifies a wood (shaw) and et træ signifies a tree. But if you want to say the wood, the tree, you suffix the selfsame articles to the nouns, and then they have the effect of the definite article: skoven, the wood; træet, the tree.

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