Page images
PDF
EPUB

many sources, and we have kept the spelling which they had in the languages from which we took them but have given the words an English pronunciation. Thus we spell city with a c, not with an s, because it comes from civitas; philosophy with a ph and not with an ƒ, chemistry with a ch and not with a k, because of their Greek origin; victuals has a c because of the Latin victus, from vivo; doubt has a b because of the Latin dubito: syntax from the Greek would be obscured in the guise of sintaks, and phlegm would be changed from its original beyond recognition if we wrote it flem.

61. Where did our English alphabet come from, and how did we get it?

Our alphabet came from the Latin alphabet, the Latin from the Greek, and the Greek from the Phoenician. During the Roman occupation of Britain, the Britons picked up the Latin alphabet, and the English learnt it from the Britons. Before their migration to this country the English had an alphabet which was in use among the Teutonic tribes, called Runic. Inscriptions containing these runes still exist on stones and crosses in Norway and Sweden, in the north of England and in parts of Scotland. When the English settlers adopted the Roman alphabet they preserved two of their own runes, the letters called wen and thorn. Wen or w was written p; thorn or th and dh was written þ and afterwards ð. The letters w and th took their place after the Norman Conquest. The word the would in Old English characters be written pe. Hence has arisen the notion that in Old English it was written y or ye and so pronounced. People who devise programmes for fancy fairs, in what they conceive to be the Early English style, have the idea that the frequent use of ye for the and the addition of an e at the end of every word which ends in a consonant will convert 19th century Eng

lish into 9th century English. But this is a mistake. Our forefathers said the as we say it, though they wrote it with a single sign for the th, and correctly so, for the sound is a simple one.

The letter j was originally used merely as a different form of i, an i with a tail to it. The sounds which we now represent by i and j were not distinguished by symbol till the 17th century. Rather earlier than this, a distinction was made in the use of the letters u and v so that they represented respectively vowel and consonant.

The word alphabet comes from the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha, beta.

62. This seems to be a suitable point at which to give an answer to the question,-When are Capital letters to be used?

I. At the beginning of every sentence.

2. At the beginning of every line in poetry.

3. At the beginning of quoted passages: e.g. He said, "Let us go and see."

4. For Proper names.

5. For the various names of God.

6. For titles of office and officials:-Secretaryship of the Treasury, Lord Chancellor: but capitals are often dispensed with in these cases.

7. Sometimes at the beginning of nouns and adjectives, to call attention to their importance.

I.

8. For the pronoun I and for the interjection O.

QUESTIONS.

What is meant by Orthography? Point out any orthographical irregularities in the spelling of scent; island; proceed, precede; sovereign. [Through ignorance of the derivation (French sentir) the c was introduced into scent, and the s was inserted in iland owing to confusion with isle or insula. Both proceed and precede contain the Latin

cedo. Why should this be differently represented in the two words? Sovereign has been spelt thus owing to a mistaken idea that it comes from reign. It should be sovran. Therefore should be therefor.]

2. Give examples of the different pronunciation of these letters:— i, u, ie, ti, ch.

3. In what other ways do we represent the sounds of au in haul, o in fond, g in ginger, x in Xenophon, sc in science?

4. Mention words in which the following letters are written but not sounded:- p, b, gh, t, l.

5. Give illustrations from the English language (1) of the softening of the final guttural, (2) of the substitution of d for th, (3) of the loss of letters, (4) of the insertion of the letters 6 and d.

6. Show that the orthography and the pronunciation of several English words are at variance. Can you account for the discrepancy? [Refer to $$ 59 and 60. Doubt, receipt, hymn, chronicle, hour, psalm, viscount, know, would be suitable examples for annotation.] 7. Give examples in English spelling of—

(1) single letters representing double sounds:

(2) two or more letters representing an indivisible sound: (3) different letters representing the same sound:

(4) the same letter representing different sounds:

(5) redundant and silent letters.

8. It is said that the introduction of a system of purely phonetic spelling would obliterate traces of the history of many of our words. Show the force of this remark in the case of the following:-chronometer, phantom, vitiate, honour, rheumatism.

9. Explain the presence of the italicised letters in the following words:-debt, wetter, pair, favour, number, rhyme, blackamoor.

10. Describe some of the anomalies of our modern spelling, and mention words which are not spelt uniformly by standard writers.

[A few typical examples of uncertain orthography are subjoined: add to the list. Judg(e)ment, recal(l)s, mov(e)able, benefit(t)ed, monied, dul(l)ness, civilize, favo(u)r, gallop(p)ed.]

II. In what other ways are the following words spelt in current literature?-programme, rhyme, inflexion, medieval. Can you say anything for or against them?

[Programme was borrowed from the French, not compounded (like telegram) from the Greek. Rhyme is thus spelt from a wrongly-supposed connexion with rhythm. Inflexion is the correct form, as the supinestem of the Latin flecto is flex-, not flect-.]

12. Mention some of the most important facts in the history of our Alphabet.

CHAPTER VII.

ETYMOLOGY.

63. A language is a collection of articulate and significant sounds. If we listen to a baby, we find that his utterances consist of such sounds as ul-ul-ul, ga-ga, um-um, sounds which are merely noises, like the barking of a dog or the crowing of a cock. Significance, or meaning, they may indeed have, and the observant mother or nurse may understand that one noise is made when the baby wants his bottle and that another expresses his happiness when he has got it. But to persons outside the family circle these cries convey no more meaning than the cries of the farmyard. Articulate they certainly are not. When the baby says 'pa,' 'ma,' we remark with truth that he is beginning to talk quite nicely. Talk, speech, words, these terms point to sounds which are significant and articulate, and such sounds in English form the subject-matter with which we have to deal in English grammar. In our daily lives we commonly use words in connexion with other words to form sentences, but we can consider them by themselves, though we do not use them by themselves. The part of grammar which treats of words taken separately is called Etymology: the part which treats of words as forming portions of a sentence is called Syntax. In dealing with Etymology we shall often find it useful to cross the confines of Syntax.

64. Etymology deals with the classification of words, their derivation, and inflexion.

There are various ways of classifying words. In the dictionary we arrange them in alphabetical order; in the spelling-book we arrange them according to their number of syllables. Now as language is employed by us for the expression of our thoughts, and our thoughts are usually expressed in sentences, for the purposes of grammar we shall group the words of the language in classes according to their different functions in the sentences which we form with them to express our meaning. By 'different functions' we mean the special work accomplished by different kinds of words. The function of a pump is to raise water; of a balance to weigh things; of a noun to serve as a name of things; of a verb to make assertions about things. Small differences of function may be neglected in the classification of words, (just as we classify a machine as a pump, whether it is a force-pump or a common-pump), but we cannot usefully reduce the number of classes of words in grammar below eight, and these eight different classes we call the Parts of Speech.

65. The Parts of Speech are the classes into which the words of a language fall, when they are arranged according to their separate functions in a sentence..

The following sentence contains eight words, and the part played by every one of the eight is different:

"Oh! and was he in good health yesterday?"

Oh is an interjection, a sound expressing sudden feeling. We could omit it from the sentence without disturbing the construction: as the derivation of the name implies, it is something 'thrown in.'

And is a conjunction: it joins on the words which follow it to the previous sentence.

Was is a verb.

« PreviousContinue »