Consonants may be divided, in the first place, into hard and soft, or, as they are more usually termed, surd and sonant. A surd consonant consists of checked breath, a sonant consonant of checked voice. If, in the second place, either breath or voice is completely checked in its passage through the organs of speech, an explosive or momentary (also called a stopped or mute) consonant is heard at the moment the check is removed; if the check is not complete, and the organs of speech only approximate so that the breath cannot escape without friction, a fricative (spirant, “unstopped”) or continuous consonant is the result. Where a spirant or fricative is immediately preceded by an explosive, a double sound or affricative is the result (e.g. German pf, Armenian t’š); where the spirant follows the explosive we have the aspirated letters, which will be spoken of hereafter. Among the continuous consonants must be ranked the nasals, produced by dropping the uvula and so allowing some of the breath to make its way to the nostrils through the pharynx, and the trills produced by the vibration of the uvula, the lips, or more commonly the tongue. Distinct from the nasals and the trills are the central continuous consonants (h, ch, y, English r, w, wh, and the sibilants) formed by lifting the centre and point of the tongue to the centre and front of the palate, and the lateral continuous consonants (l, and, according to Bell, English th, f, v), in forming which the breath is allowed to escape along the edges of the tongue. A further cross division will be into liquids, gutturals, dentals, palatals, labio-dentals, and labials, to which may be added the linguals or cacuminals (cerebrals) of Sanskrit.

The Liquids.—Among the liquids should properly be reckoned only those kinds of r and l which stand to the spirant r and l in the same relation that the vowel i stands to the spirant y. In forming the vowels, as we have seen, the tongue assumes a dorsal position, that is, some part of its back is raised towards the palate; in forming the liquids, on the other hand, the tongue has either an oral (central) or a lateral position, the liquid r requiring the articulation of the centre and tip, the liquid l that of the sides. But there are several kinds of r, which may be classed as cacuminal, spirant, alveolar or dental, uvular or guttural, and laryngeal. The cacuminal r is the purest liquid r that we hear, inasmuch as it is wholly untrilled, and is especially common in cultivated English. In order to produce it, the front surface of the tongue is hollowed out into a spoon-like shape and raised towards the hard palate behind the alveolar teeth-roots of the upper jaw, while the edge of the tongue is stiffened and kept free from any sort of vibration. It will be clear from this how closely allied this cacuminal r is to the vowels, and we can easily understand the readiness with which it combines with a vowel-sound when we remember that it may be formed in almost any part of the hard palate, while the lips have free play during its creation. Corresponding to the cacuminal r is the spirant (or “buzzed”) r, which also occurs plentifully in English as in such words as try or dry. The mouth is completely closed by the tongue when sounding t or d, and if in passing to the position needed for r the tongue is not removed from the palate quickly enough, or the exspiration is not sufficiently strong, a slight fricative sound like that of sh is produced which results in the spirant r. As for the dental or alveolar r, all that is requisite to produce it is to raise the front part of the tongue, at the same time slightly arching its extreme edges, and so obtaining a constricted or “squeezed” chamber of resonance between the side of the tongue and the alveolars. This r may be untrilled, but in German it is more frequently a trilled one. The trill is caused by the force of the exspiration which strikes the thin hollowed edge of the tongue in an outward direction, the tongue the moment after returning to its former position like a piece of india-rubber. If the two edges of the front part of the tongue be pressed against the teeth, the tip of the tongue between them being alone allowed free play, and accordingly vibrating in a very small and narrow space, a sound is heard approaching that of s or sh. The stronger the uprush of breath and the vibration it occasions, the plainer will be the sibilated sound; indeed, a genuine sibilant can even attach itself to the liquid, as in the Polish rz. The uvular or guttural r is supposed by Sievers to be a modern substitution for the trilled alveolar r. At any rate it is produced by lifting the back of the tongue to the soft palate and forming a deep groove along the middle of it, in which the uvula can vibrate freely. The groove, however, is frequently left wholly or nearly unformed, the consequence being a very grating character acquired by the r, which then passes over into the sonant guttural spirant heard in sounding the modern Greek γ. The laryngeal r was first observed and described by Brücke, who makes it arise from sinking the voice so that the vocal chords cease to vibrate audibly, and merely produce intermittent and explosive sounds.

Each kind of l is formed in the same way, by raising the tip of the tongue and so closing the orifice of the mouth, at the same time allowing the breath to pass along the two sides of the tongue in successive oscillations produced by the vibrations of the elastic edges of the tongue. We may distinguish the cacuminal l in which the tip of the tongue is bent backwards as in the cacuminal r; the alveolar l with the edge of the tongue laid against the alveolars; the dental or interdental l in which the flattened surface of the tongue fills up the space between the two sides of the mouth; and the dorsal l (as in the Spanish llano) in which the tip of the tongue presses against the lower incisors, while the centre of the tongue is raised towards the alveolars of the upper teeth. The best-known variety of the cacuminal l is that of the Welsh ll formed by pressing the flattened tip of the tongue against the gums of the upper teeth and allowing the breath to escape on its right side. The same sound is heard in the Icelandic hl and l before a t, and also in Cheroki,[159] though in Icelandic the tongue is pressed against both sides of the mouth. A half-sonant, spirant l may be heard when the exspiration is strong; a surd l often occurs at the end of a word or after surd consonants (particularly t and s). The sound of the l may be made clearer or obscurer by raising or depressing the front part of the tongue, and so narrowing or enlarging the space between its edges and the teeth, and since the vowels may be pronounced with the tip of the tongue on the palate, they may readily pass into l by simply broadening the surface of the tongue.

We have already seen that the tongue is not the only organ of speech which may be “trilled.” In the Arabic grhain (غ), the Northumberland burr and the French Provençal r, grasseyé, the uvula which lies along the back of the tongue towards the teeth is very distinctly made to vibrate. “If,” Mr. A. J. Ellis says, “the tongue is more raised and the vibration indistinct or very slight, the result is the English r in more, poor, while a still greater elevation of the tongue produces the r heard after palatal vowels, as hear, mere, fire. These trills are so vocal that they form distinct syllables, as surf, serf, fur, fir, virtue, honour, and are with difficulty separable from the vowels.” The lips, too, may be trilled, the result being brh, a sound constantly heard from children.

The Nasals.—The characteristic of a nasal is, as the name declares, the participation of the nose in producing the sound. The breath passes through the nose rather than through the mouth. Sometimes, however, all that happens is the removal of the membrane which separates the nasal orifice from the pharynx; this alone is indispensable to the formation of a nasal letter. Hence its resemblance to a vowel, the buccal tube being alike silent in both cases. If we try to converse when walking uphill we shall find that the nasals are longest heard. These nasals must be classified as labial, dental, palatal, and guttural, according to the part of the speaking apparatus in which the current of air is checked in its exit, and it will be best to treat them along with the other sounds formed in the same part. It should be noted, however, that the so-called surd nasal which we hear in hm! has really, as Sievers remarks, not the slightest similarity to a nasal, but approximates to the aspirates or breathings.

The traditional division of the consonants into labial, dental, palatal, cerebral (cacuminal) and guttural, though not scientifically precise, is yet too familiar to be disregarded, and we shall therefore follow it so far as is possible. We must, however, remember at starting the primary distinction between the two classes of letters, called variously hard and soft, tenues and mediæ, surds and sonants, as well as between those called momentary (explosive) and continuous or checks and fricatives. What this distinction consists in has already been explained.

The Labials.—The labials may be subdivided into pure labials, with the formation of which the lips only have to do, and the labio-dentals, in the formation of which the teeth also participate. In pronouncing the surd p, the sonant b, the nasalized m, or the middle German w, the lips are either wholly or (as in wh) almost wholly closed. B only differs from p in being pronounced with voice instead of breath, the voice partly preceding, partly following the check occasioned by the closure of the lips. As in all sonant letters, the exspiration is less forcible than in the case of surd letters. The labio-dentals f and v are merely modifications of the rough and soft aspirates by pressing the lower lip against the upper teeth. When the lips are brought together without any interference of the teeth the spiritus lenis becomes the German w as heard in a word like Quelle. Our wh, or rather hw, and w are continuous sounds, the lips being slightly opened, the back of the tongue raised, and the breath passing over its central part.

The Dentals.—The articulation needed for the dentals is partly oral, partly alveolar, partly dorsal. The common principle, however, involved in the formation of them all is the same; the tongue must be brought against the teeth. The so-called cerebral or cacuminal dentals of Sanskrit and the Dravidian tongues (ṭ, ḍ, ṭh, ḍh) are due to oral articulation, the tongue being made convex and the lower surface raised towards the palate. The English t and d are also said to be cerebral, though the tip of the tongue is not bent very sharply backwards in forming them. Alveolar articulation is needed for the dentals when they have to be pronounced with the edge of the flattened tongue pressed against the alveolars of the upper teeth, while in dorsal articulation the point of the tongue is simply turned back against the lower teeth, its convex being at the same time lifted to the palate. It is in this way that the Bohemian dorsal t is formed. The dorsal dentals may be varied by raising the back of the tongue nearer to the mouth or the throat, the tip either resting behind the lower teeth or being raised to the upper alveolars. Besides the surd dental t and sonant dental d, we have also a series of dental spirants which bear the same relation to t and d that f and v bear to p and b. By slightly opening the teeth and stopping the aperture with the extended edges of the tongue we produce the interdental sounds heard in breath or think and breathe or then. The first th (or thorn þ) differs from the second (ð)[160] in being pronounced with the rough breathing instead of the soft breathing. They stand midway between an oral and a dorsal articulation. How readily they may pass into the labio-dentals f and v is clear at a glance; we have only to raise the lower lip a little and curl back the tongue, and our th becomes an f. Equally readily, as we shall see, is the passage from them to a sibilant. We seldom meet with an interdental consonant; Sievers, however, states that they exist in Servian and Armenian, where they regularly represent the whole class of dentals.

The Palatals.—The palatals come next. They stand between the dentals and gutturals, and are formed by throwing the middle of the tongue, raised as it were into a hump, against that part of the roof of the mouth where the hard palate begins. The sound (ch) heard in the English church or the Italian cielo is now held to be, not a palatal, but a dental (t followed by sh), and we must go to the Sanskrit (ch) as still pronounced to find a type of the whole palatal series. It “is formed most easily,” says Professor Max Müller, “if we place the tongue and teeth in the position for the formation of sh in sharp, and then stop the breath by complete contact between the tongue and the back of the teeth.” It will be seen from this that the true ch is not a double letter, a compound of t and sh or s, but a single consonant which ought to be denoted by a single character. The Sanskrit palatal ch may have had the same pronunciation as the Armenian t‘ sh,[161] as Sievers thinks, or it may have been equivalent to ky. However this may be, it is plain from the great extent of the “chamber of resonance” in which the palatals are formed—the whole of the hard palate being available for the purpose—that a large number of palatal sounds is possible. They may range, in fact, from ky to tsh. The guttural k passes easily enough into the palatalized ky, as may be seen from the pronunciation of kind and cow as kyind and kyow, not unfrequently heard in English; indeed, all that is requisite for the transition is for the front part of the tongue to assume the position needed for y, while the back part is in that needed for k. In the northern dialects of Jutland j is heard after k and g when followed by œ, e, o, and ö. The German “soft” guttural aspirate or palatal spirant in words like ich, licht, is the result of the spiritus asper passing the middle of the tongue when raised against the hard palate, y in you or yet being due to a softening of the breath, the organs of speech remaining unchanged. The palatal sibilants will have to be considered separately.

The Gutturals.—Putting aside the cerebrals, which have been treated under the head of the dentals, we now come to the gutturals, usually an important class of sounds in savage idioms. First of all we have the tenuis k, produced by bringing the root of the tongue against the soft palate, together with the deeper k heard in the Semitic koph or Georgian q. Next is the media g, to create which breath has to be changed into voice. Then will come the guttural nasal ng (as in sing), and the continuous ch and g heard in the German nach and Tage. The sound heard in nach or the Scotch loch is formed by raising the tongue against the soft palate or uvula, and so checking the uprush of breath, its sonant representative being the g of Tage. The result of only slightly checking the uprush of breath in the latter case is the passage of the guttural into a semi-vowel. This sonant g is the γ of modern Greek; it sometimes takes the place of the uvular r, though this office more properly belongs to the sonant g of Armenian pronounced further back in the mouth. The surd ch may be similarly modified by a posterior pronunciation, and so become the Armenian xe, the Russian x, the Polish ch, and the deep ch of the Swiss.

The Sibilants.—The main division of sibilated sounds is into the surd s and sh, and the sonant z and j. When the centre and tip of the tongue are raised to the centre and front of the palate, the breath or spiritus asper is modified into s (as in sin), the voice or spiritus lenis into z (as in zeal or rise). When the tongue is turned back with its lower surface against the alveolars of the upper teeth, less of the palate being covered than is required for s and z, breath becomes sh (as in sharp), voice j (as in azure, pleasure, French jamais). The ordinary German s is a dorsal one, the current of air being allowed to pass between the upper alveolars and the lower surface of the uplifted tongue; in North German dialects, however, we frequently meet with an alveolar s, formed in much the same way as the alveolar r. The same s also occurs in English, as well as a cacuminal s distinguished by a more pronounced retraction of the tip of the tongue and narrower space between it and the palate. The palatal ś, found in Russian, for instance, before the weak vowels (e, i, &c.), only differs from the dorsal s in the more retracted position of the tongue. Sh (j) can be modified in three ways. The channel formed in the tongue when pronouncing s may be so diminished as to allow the breath to strike against the lips, or the lips may form with it an approximately rectangular aperture, or, thirdly, the left (or more rarely the right) side of the tongue may be pressed against the palate, causing the breath to strike against the lips, which are generally raised a little on the side. Sievers declares that he has sometimes heard this unilateral sh in England. However this may be, all three modifications of sh may combine with the dorsal, alveolar, cacuminal, and palatal positions of the tongue to produce the cacuminal sh of English (identical, probably, with the Sanskrit ś), the palatal mouillé ś and ć of Polish and Russian, the alveolar sh of the North German dialects, and the dorsal sh of the Middle and Southern German dialects. It is one of the many evils of our defective and misleading mode of spelling that the surd sh, though a single sound, is represented by two letters, and so cannot be distinguished from the aspirated sh (as in gas-hole), which is really a double sound.

These aspirated sounds consist, as we have seen, of an explosive followed by a spirant, and they occupied an important place in the older languages of our Aryan family of speech. A large number of roots contain them, and the Brahmans still pronounce each part of the compound sound distinctly, ph and th, for instance, being pronounced as in our up-hill and ant-hill. The compound nature of the sound caused sometimes the one element in it, sometimes the other, to fall away. Thus, to a Sanskrit tubhy(am) corresponds a Latin tibi, and the Latin mihi and Sanskrit mahyam presuppose an earlier mabhyam, mabhi. The Athenian tendency to false aspiration which has produced the initial aspirate of ὑδώρ (Latin unda, udus) or ἵππος (Latin equus) has also occasionally affected the labial tenuis. φῦσα and its kindred, for instance, answer to the Latin pustula, the Lithuanian pústi, “to blow;” ἄφνος is the Sanskrit apnas, the Latin ops, and κεφαλὴ is the Sanskrit kapâla, the Latin caput. A curious metathesis of the aspiration may take place in both Sanskrit and Greek. In Sanskrit a final aspirated media before a following tenuis loses its aspirate, which is transferred to the initial of the root, provided that be g, d, or b (as bhut-karoti, “he who knows acts,” for budh-karoti); and in Greek we find θρίξ becoming τριχὸς, τρέχω becoming θρέξω.

But it must be remembered that it is only the surd explosives (or tenues) that properly can thus be combined with the rough breathing (h). A difficulty occurs in the case of the sonant explosives (or mediæ); and it is a grave question whether we ought to transcribe gha, dha, and bha by the side of kha, tha, and pha. In Greek, at any rate, we have only aspirated tenues, and while τ’ followed by an aspirate is written θ, this is never the case with δ’. At the same time, the existence of aspirated mediæ was recognized by the Prâtiśâkhyas by the side of the aspirated tenues, and the accuracy of the Prâtiśâkhyas is confirmed by the requirements of etymology.

Closely connected with the sibilants are the palatal and guttural sounds, already noticed, heard in the German ich, tage, and acht. The palatal ch, written χ by Sievers, jh by Sweet; is of two kinds. What Sievers calls χ,[162] heard in the German ich, Icelandic hjarta, and sometimes in such words as our hue, is formed on the hard palate near the soft palate by the front part of the tongue. On the other hand, χ,[163] as in the Dutch g before e and i, is formed in the hollow of the arch. The guttural sonant heard in the North German tage, or the modern Greek γ, is formed between the back of the tongue and the middle of the soft palate, the tongue being lifted up towards the front of the mouth. As already remarked, it sometimes represents the uvular r; thus, Mr. Sweet says, “when the passage (of the voice) is widened so as to remove all buzzing, the sound of (gh)[162] no longer suggests (kh)[163] or (g), but rather a weak (r) sound.” Further back in the mouth is formed the Armenian sonant g, corresponding to χ.[163] The ch of acht, again, may be divided into two varieties. Ch,[162] formed, as stated above, between the back of the tongue and the middle of the soft palate, is the guttural spirant usual in German after a, o, and u, and heard in Scotch loch. Further back is formed ch,[163] common in Swiss and other South German dialects. We have also ch,[163] noted by Mr. Sweet in Scotch after e and i, formed between the back of the tongue and the place where the hard palate begins. It thus comes very near χ.[164]

Distinct from the exspiratory sounds, whether vowels or consonants, which have now been passed in review, are sounds formed either by inspiration or simply by the air in the mouth itself. Winteler[165] describes certain Swiss dialects which make use of inspiratory sounds to disguise the voice, and the clicks characteristic of the South African languages are examples of sounds produced without either taking in or emitting breath. The Kafirs have borrowed the three easiest clicks (the dental, the cerebral, and the lateral) from their Hottentot neighbours,[166] and there are reasons for thinking that the Hottentots themselves borrowed in turn from the more primitive Bushmen. At all events, the labial and compound dental clicks are wanting in Hottentot, and the Bushman fables put what Dr. Bleck calls “a most unpronounceable click,” which does not occur otherwise in any of the dialects, into the mouth of the hare, the anteater, and the moon.[167] These inarticulate clicks, thus adapted to the purposes of articulate speech, bridge over the gulf between the latter and the cries of animals, and we may see in them a survival of those primæval utterances out of which language was born. Traces of what may thus be termed the germs of language on its phonetic side are met with here and there all over the globe. Thus Haldeman describes at least three clicks heard in Texan, Chinook, and other North American languages, t in the Anadahhas of Texas, for instance, being followed by “an effect as loud as spitting.”[168] According to Klaproth, clicks occur in Circassian; and Bleek states that two clicks are distinguished in the ǀikhe language of Guatemala—one somewhat resembling the Hottentot dental click, and the other the Hottentot palatal combined with some guttural. Mr. Whitmee has heard a click in certain dialects spoken by the Negritos of Melanesia. Clicks are also known among the Gallas; and Miss Lloyd has found a little boy from Lake Ngami using clicks resembling those of Nama Hottentot. Clicks are formed by placing the tongue or lips in the position required by an explosive, and then sucking out the air between the organs thus brought into play, the result being the “cluck” or “smack” with which grooms are accustomed to encourage a horse, but in combination with the explosive for which the organs of speech were set. According to Mr. Sweet, the labial click is an ordinary kiss; the dental click, “the interjection of impatience ordinarily written ‘tut.’”[169] In Káfir the clicks are not pure, as in Bushman—that is to say, they are always accompanied by an exspiratory consonant, which is formed at the same moment as the click. This affords an additional reason for thinking that the Káfir clicks are not survivals from the original condition of speech, but loans from another people, which have been attached by way of ornament to the existing exspiratory sounds of the language. Of the same nature as the clicks are the implosives peculiar to Saxon German, where no distinction is made between d and t, or b and p. Similar sounds are heard in Georgian and the Armenian of Tiflis, and they must have characterized ancient Accadian, since no distinction is made in writing between final d and t, g and k, or b and p. These implosives are due to compression of the air between the closed glottis and the organs of speech when in position for an explosive, by forcing the glottis upwards. No sound is emitted until the sound is fully formed, when the final or transition sound is curiously modified.

We have hitherto dealt with the individual sounds in the same fashion as the lexicographer deals with individual words. But just as a word is really but one of the elements of a sentence, and to be thoroughly understood must be treated as such, individual sounds are but the elements of which syllables are composed. Whatever may be the nature of a sound when regarded apart and by itself, it is necessarily much modified when combined in actual speech with other sounds. The syllable, and not the single sound, is the starting-point of phonetic utterance.

A syllable must contain either a vowel or a semi-vowel, by which are meant such inspiratory utterances as that heard in the interjection ’m, or the vocalic r and l of Slavonic and other tongues. One of the first achievements of the phonograph has been to show that an open syllable like ga can be pronounced either backwards or forwards indifferently when once the organs of speech are in position; and not only so, but that when the waves of air set in motion by the pronunciation of a word are reversed, the word will be reproduced backwards—əsoshiéshun (association), for instance, becoming nushéshiosə.

Mr. Sweet has pointed out that syllables are divided by the stress. Speech has to be carried on by a succession of exspirations or puffs of breath, and naturally the force with which the breath is emitted gradually diminishes during the continuance of the exspiration. Only in special cases—the interjections, for example—the force increases instead of diminishing. When the exspiration is spent, and a new breath is taken, a new syllable begins. Wherever, therefore, the stress is laid we must place the beginning of a new syllable. In “a name” the stress is on the nasal, where accordingly the syllable begins; in “an aim” it is, on the contrary, on the diphthong.

The passage from one sound to another, as has already been noticed, consists of a series of infinitesimal intermediate sounds, corresponding with the series of positions assumed by the vocal organs in passing from one position to another. These intermediate sounds have been conveniently termed “glides” by Mr. Ellis, and they play an important part in the formation of syllables. Glides are of two kinds, as the organs of speech may either be moved from one position to another in the shortest possible time, or be shifted, on the way, towards another position needed for the production of a third sound. Thus, in the syllable ki we have the immediate glide required for the transition from k to i; in the syllable qui, the indirect glide from k to i through the position needed for u. A glide may, of course, be described as either initial or final; in ki, the glide of k is being final, that of i initial. Some of the so-called consonants and vowels are really glides. The neutral vowel (ə) is termed the “voice-glide” by Mr. Sweet, as “produced by emitting voice during the passage to or from a consonant.” It may begin a word, as in “against,” and in English is very frequently replaced by a liquid, as in the words “little,” “possible.” It is also found plentifully in the Semitic languages, the Hebrew sh’wa, for instance, being simply the neutral vowel or voice-glide. In words like “follow,” when pronounced rapidly, we may hear it labialized. A diphthong, again, is a combination of a full vowel with a glide-vowel either before or after it, though the glide-vowels may be prolonged into full vowels without destroying the diphthong, by equalizing the stress upon the two elements of which it is made up. These glide-vowels (like the consonantal glides) are produced by putting the vocal organs into position for pronouncing a particular vowel, but not letting voice sound until this position is being shifted to that required by the full vowel which forms the second part of the compound, and reversing the process when the full vowel forms the first part. Consonantal glides (y, w, r, l, m, n) are illustrated by the sound of y in you, and of r in here, and in a common South-country pronunciation of words like red.[170] According to Mr. Sweet, the aspirate h is a consonant in the glottis, but “a voiceless glide-vowel in the mouth.”[171]

At all events it is often difficult to distinguish the rough breathing from the glide which easily develops into it by the help of a little additional stress. This glide may be detected after mediæ, tenues, and s, whether initial or final, as in our cold (when pronounced emphatically), pack, and big. The Irish and Danish aspirated consonants are formed by laying a separate stress on the glide apart from the stress laid upon the preceding consonant. The aspirated letters of Greek and Sanskrit, described above, are of course different, as here we have a combination of two independent sounds, though the latter of these (h) is in Mr. Sweet’s eyes a mere glide-vowel in the mouth.

Glides may be absent where two consonants formed in the same part of the vocal organs are united together (e.g. and, its), or even where they are formed in different parts. This is especially the case with English. Wherever homorganic sounds are produced, the vocal organs pass at once from the position required for the first to that required for the second, without first falling back into the “position of indifference.” Where an explosive is followed by a nasal, a sudden opening of the velum pendulum is substituted for the usual “explosion,” as first pointed out by Kudelka.

Syllables may differ one from the other in respect of pitch or tone, of stress, and of quantity. Pitch or tone is but little noticed by Englishmen, since with us it serves merely a logical or emotional purpose, such as the expression of surprise or the asking of a question, but in some languages, Chinese or Swedish or Lithuanian, for example, every word has its own separate tone, which helps to distinguish it from other words. This, too, was the case in Vedic Sanskrit, and in ancient Greek and Latin, what we call the Greek accents being really the marks of the pitch at which words were pronounced. Pitch or tone depends on the rapidity of the vibrations of sound, and may be either rising, level, or falling. The rising tone is that indicated by the acute accent. Tone may also be compound, marked in Greek by the circumflex. The compound or circumflex is heard when the tone of a vowel is again raised after it has already passed the moment of its greatest intensity, and it may therefore be described as composed of the acute and the grave, or of the rising and the falling. It may be noticed in Lithuanian as well as in several German dialects, such as the Thuringian, which have a singing character, and when it falls upon a diphthong the second element of the diphthong is distinctly raised in pitch. Naturally it is usually found with diphthongs and long vowels, but short vowels combined with a liquid may also carry the circumflex. In Greek it commonly implies a contraction, the circumflex resulting from the coalescence of a vowel which has the acute accent with one which has the grave.[172]

The Vedic system of accentuation best exhibits the fundamental character of accent of pitch. The udâtta or acute denotes the highest pitch reached by the voice in a group of syllables or words. In the syllable immediately preceding the voice naturally sinks to its lowest, thus producing the anudâtta, or grave tone. After the udâtta, however, the voice falls gradually; consequently the syllable which follows has the swarita or circumflex accent, and it is only the next syllable to that which is again anudâtta.

But the tone is regulated by three different conditions, which sometimes act antagonistically. It may be either a syllable-tone, determined by the relative force with which the syllables of a word can be uttered, dependent on the nature of the sounds of which they are composed; or a word-tone, determined in great measure by the meaning, and serving to distinguish words from one another; or a sentence-tone, mostly determined by logic or the feelings. The Greek accents, like the Vedic ones, were used to denote all three varieties of tone; while the acute and the circumflex sometimes represent the syllable-accent (as in θῖνα, ἔτυπον), sometimes the word-accent (as in νυμφή, νύμφα, ποδῶν), the grave, as Sievers remarks, “is a concession to the requirements of the sentence-tone.” Similarly in Vedic Sanskrit, the udâtta which ordinarily indicates the word-accent, falling as it does upon the syllable (commonly the flection) to which the signification caused the attention to be chiefly directed, seems also to have indicated the sentence-tone, since the verb of the principal clause has no accent whatever attached to it. Previously, however, both in Greek and Sanskrit the accents denoted the word-tone, and the remarkable agreement between the accentuation of the two languages enables us to restore in great measure the accentuation of the undivided parent-speech. It cannot be an accident, for instance, which makes the numeral seven (saptán, ἑπτά) oxyton in both languages, and the numeral five (pánchan, πέντε) paroxyton, or places the acute accent on the last syllable of adjectives in -us; the accentuation in each instance must have been that of the Parent-Aryan. Where the accentuation of the two languages differs, it can generally be explained by the disturbing influence of analogy. Thus while there is so remarkable an agreement between the accentuation of Vedic and Greek nouns, there is next to none between that of the verbs. But an explanation of this is forthcoming. The verb of the principal clause in the Veda loses its accent, as has just been remarked, unless it stand at the beginning of the sentence; in fact, it is regarded as an enclitic, and throws its tone back upon the preceding word however many syllables it may contain. Now in Greek a rule gradually grew up forbidding the accent to be placed further back than the antepenultimate; the accent, accordingly, which in the case of verbal forms of more than two syllables would have been on the last syllable of the preceding word in the Veda fell on the penultima of the corresponding verbal form itself in Greek. The accentuation which thus fixed itself in the verb of the principal clause was extended by analogy to the verb of the subordinate clause, and eventually to verbal forms of less than three syllables; φημι, εἰμι, and ἐστι, however, remained unaccented to bear witness to the process whereby the Greek language had changed the original accentuation of the Aryan verb.[173] This, like the accentuation of the noun, was mostly (and probably at the outset altogether) on the flection-suffix to which it called attention, and thus marked out the symbols that expressed the grammatical relations of the sentence. In the Semitic languages, on the contrary, the primitive accentuation was on the penultima, though there may possibly have been an earlier time when it was upon the ultima.[174] The tendency to throw back the accent set in early in Aryan speech; in Latin, as in the Æolic dialect of Greece, it was uniformly as near the beginning of a word as possible, and the preservation of the original pitch-accent in Lithuanian is one of the most curious marks of archaism in that most conservative of West-Aryan tongues.

In Aryan the word-tone, we have seen, was primarily used in the service of grammar. In Chinese, Siamese, and other Taic languages, however, its use is lexical rather than grammatical; here it serves to distinguish the senses of words which would otherwise be pronounced in the same way. Dr. Edkins has shown that modern Mandarin Chinese is an exceedingly decayed speech; its initial consonants have been worn away; and all its final consonants reduced to the same monotonous nasal. To prevent the confusion that would thus have been occasioned in a monosyllabic language, where the possible number of different syllables denoting words was limited even before the corroding action of phonetic decay, tones were adapted to the expression of meaning, and as old letters disappeared new tones came into existence. To create a new tone, says Dr. Edkins, requires about 1,200 years.

The sentence-tone is inseparable from speech even of the most lifeless character. Each sentence has its own key, and the several parts of it their own pitch. The tone rises when we ask a question, it falls when we answer it, it reaches the “level” point of neutrality when we speak in monotone. But there are dialects and languages in which monotone is either acute or grave. “Thus in Scotch the rising tone is often employed monotonously, not only in questions but also in answers and statements of facts. In Glasgow Scotch the falling tone predominates.”[175] In French, too, the rising tone is often used in making statements of fact.

Quite distinct from accent of pitch is accent of stress, though the close connection between the two may be gathered from the fact that in modern Greek the stress accent regularly answers to the acute and circumflex of the ancient language. Much of this regularity, however, may be due to the same pedantic revival which has resuscitated the dialect of Plato and Thucydides and substituted it for the “modern Greek” spoken half a century ago. Stress is the force with which the different syllables of words are uttered, and increased force is naturally accompanied by increased pitch. Stress, in fact, corresponds to syllable-tone and word-tone, emphasis—the stress of a sentence—corresponding to sentence-tone. Like pitch, it may be regarded as either rising, level, or falling. Stress, however, differs from pitch in its variability; there is no gradual fall, but a tendency “to sway to and fro,” as Mr. Sweet expresses it. Rising stress may consequently be of varying degrees of force and falling stress of weakness, level stress, even in French, being practically unknown. Stress and pitch together give to speech its rhythmic character, and make it the lyric utterance in which man expresses his thoughts and his emotions. Where the rhythm is regular we have poetry and song, where it is irregular the language of ordinary prose. Stress is the great conservator of language; the chief counterpoise to the action of phonetic decay. The accented syllable will be preserved though all the other syllables by which it is surrounded may disappear in pronunciation, just as the idea upon which emphasis is laid will hold out successfully against the attacks of age and forgetfulness. Winteler[176] has laid down the law that in accented syllables, liquids, nasals, and spirants are always long after a short vowel if followed by a consonant (e.g. man̄ly, Germ. al̄t.)

The loss of the accent of pitch in modern English and the consequent extension of the accent of stress have made us less observant of quantity than the grammarians of India or the poets of ancient Greece. All syllables, however, may be classed as long, half-long, or short, due to the duration of the force with which they are uttered. According to Brücke, the duration needed for the production of a long vowel is to that needed for the production of short vowels in the proportion of five to three, but Sievers remarks that this only applies to the oratorical pronunciation of modern literary German. In any case, the length of the same vowel may vary according to circumstances; it is long, for instance, in the English sīz (seize), short in sĭs (cease). Several of the Scotch dialects possess no long vowels at all, while in French most vowels are half-long, distinctly short accented vowels being final, as in oui.[177] Like vowels, consonants, too, may be long or short. In our own language final consonants are long after short vowels (as hill), short after long vowels (as heel), and l and the nasals are lengthened before sonants (as build), shortened before surds (as built). Short final consonants after short vowels make the pronunciation appear clipped, as in German words like mann.

Accent has considerable influence upon quantity. On the one side short vowels may be lengthened and pure vowels converted into diphthongs by the accent falling upon them. This is partly the origin of the Sanskrit guṇa and vṛiddhi, according to which a simple ă is raised to â, an ĭ to ê (ai) and ai (âi), and an u to o (au) and au (âu).[178] The lengthening of short vowels in Hebrew in a “pause,” that is at the end of a sentence, is another example. In the German dialects monosyllables which end in a consonant frequently have their vowel changed into a diphthong by the accent, the original vowel appearing again as soon as an additional syllable is added. In our own English the short vowel of a monosyllable which ends in a sonant frequently becomes half-long when accented (compare fog with fóggy, god with góddess). On the other side, the absence of the accent may bring with it a diminution of quantity. Thus a diphthong may be shortened by being pronounced in the same period of time as is required for the pronunciation of a short vowel, or may even be reduced to the short vowel which lies midway between the two elements of which the diphthong consists. A short vowel, again, may be reduced to a vocalic consonant like the Slavonic r. Since much movement of the lips in speaking implies an energetic enunciation, shortened syllables are naturally pronounced with passive lips. To this fact we must ascribe the numerous short syllables of modern cultivated English.

There is but little difference between a long or “strong” consonant and a doubled one. In the first case, the position of the vocal organs for pronouncing the consonant is retained with gradually decreasing force, until it is suddenly shifted to the position needed for the following vowel; in the second case it is shifted back again, when the force required to produce it is half spent. Strictly speaking, therefore, the consonant cannot be said to be doubled; there is simply a break or pause in the utterance of it, the force necessary to produce it being renewed before it has been fully exhausted. In English, French, German, or Slavonic the double consonants have become long ones; to find them still pronounced we must turn to Italian, Swedish, Finnic, or Magyàr. Analogous to a double consonant is the combination of a sonant with a surd, when assimilation does not take place, as in has to do or has seen. In Sanskrit and Greek aspirated letters could not be doubled, Sanskrit permitting only kkh, tth, and pph, and Greek only κχ, τθ, and πφ; hence it seems plain that there was either no glide or a glide practically inaudible.

It is obvious that the combination of a consonant and a vowel admits of an almost infinite series of variations according as the formation of the one or other sound is made prominent in pronunciation. The consonant may, as it were, swallow up the vowel; on the other hand, the vocal organs may be shifted to form the vowel while they are still in the act of forming the consonant. Hence arise mouillé and labialized letters. If the front part of the tongue be raised and the lips opened while a consonant is being uttered, a palatalized or mouillé letter is the result, of which the Italian gl and gn, the Spanish ll and ñ, or the Portuguese lh and nh, may be regarded as examples. Still better examples, according to Sievers, are combinations of consonants with an original i in many Slavonic languages (e.g. Russian nikto). Certain consonants are incapable of being mouillé; gutturals, for instance, in whose formation the back part of the tongue plays so prominent a part can only be so by becoming palatals. Labialized sounds are those in which the lips are rounded while the pronunciation of a consonant is in process. Labials and gutturals show the same fondness for this labialization or “rounding,” that the palatals and dentals do for mouillation; and a comparison of the derived languages proves that the primitive Aryan speech must have possessed a row of labialized or “velar” gutturals—kw, gw, ghw—of which the Latin qu and our own cw, qu are descendants. There is nothing to show that these velar gutturals were ever developed out of the simple gutturals; so far back as we can go in the history of Indo-European speech the two classes of guttural exist side by side, and the groups of words containing them remain unallied and unmixed. Γυνή and queen (quean) must be separated from γένος, genitrix, kinder, and other derivations of the root which we have in the Sanskrit janâmi, the Greek γίγνομαι, γείνομαι, and the Latin gigno; and the labialized quies can have nothing to do with the Greek κεῖμαι and κώμη (κύμη), our own home and ham-let.[179] Both rounding and mouillation may be combined, as in the Danish kyst, pynte, and when occurring at the end of a word may frequently be explained from the analogy of cases in which the word is followed by a syllable beginning with u and i. Such an explanation, however, is more likely to be true of mouillation than of rounding; indeed, an i or y sound is very apt to develop itself after consonants in affected pronunciation, as in the English kyind, duke (for dook), or the Greek ζορκάς (δyορκας) for δορκάς and the Magyàr ágy, “bed.” Conversely a palatal i or y may develop a dental sonant before it: thus the Italian diacere comes from the Latin jacere, the Low Latin madius from majus,[180] and the Greek ζειά (δyειά) and ζυγόν (δyυγόν) from yava and jugum (Sansk. yugam). In these instances we may trace the influence of emphasis; the parasitic letter is due to the attempt to speak with greater distinctness and solemnity.

But whether it be emphasis or the other two causes of change described in an earlier chapter, the pronunciation of sounds, like the meaning they convey, is in a constant state of flux. Nowhere is the dogma of Herakleitus, πάντα ῥεῖ, truer than in the history of speech. No two people pronounce exactly alike, nor does the same person always pronounce the same word or group of words in exactly the same way. Apart from the changes undergone by the pronunciation of words according to the sounds of the other words with which they may be associated, it is difficult to pronounce the same word when uttered singly twice in precisely the same way. The very effort to do so produces modification of the sound. Such shades of difference in utterance, however, are imperceptible to any but an unusually sensitive ear; it is only when the difference becomes considerable that it attracts notice. It then constitutes what we may term a variety, and such varieties we may hear sometimes from the lips of a single individual, sometimes from the members of a family, sometimes from those who live in daily contact and under the same conditions of life. The faculty of imitation is strong within us, and a particular pronunciation once started soon spreads, as it were instinctively, amongst those who are much together. It has often been observed how like the members of a family are to each other, not only in general appearance and manner, but still more in the use of similar expressions and idioms and the pronunciation of sounds. It is the same with schools, and to a less degree with universities to which the students come with their habits of phonetic utterance more or less formed: it has been said that the handwriting betrays the school at which the man has been educated; it may be said with equal justice that the mode of speaking does so too. In a savage state of existence, where tribe-life and village-life are on the one hand strict and intense, and the husband on the other hand sees but little of his wife and children, the conditions favourable to the growth of varieties in pronunciation are more numerous than among civilized men. The language of the nursery becomes in time the language of the tribe.

This phonetic variety may be broadly stated as mainly due to differences in the structure of the vocal organs. Putting aside imitation and analogy, putting aside, too, all wilful and conscious changes of pronunciation such as those enumerated on page 205, a particular sound or a particular way of pronouncing a sound may be easier to one speaker than to another. Very slight differences in the physical formation of the organs of speech may produce the most important consequences. And when a habit of pronunciation has once been fixed, it is difficult to alter it. The child who is learning to speak will as readily learn Chinese as English, the Japanese r as the Northumberland burr; it is quite another matter when the attempt to catch the sounds of a new language has to be made in adult years.

Climate and food have, doubtless, an important effect in producing changes in the formation of the vocal organs; but at present we have no means of knowing the nature and extent of their influence. Professor March remarks of the change of i to g in Anglo-Saxon,[181] that “the movement (of consonants to vowels) is sometimes reversed, as when a nation moves northward, or northern peoples mix with a vowel-speaking race.” The Rev. W. Webster has drawn attention to the nasal twang which distinguishes not only American English, but American Spanish, Portuguese, and French as well; and which seems to be due to the dryness and the extremes of the American climate, while he further suggests climatic influences for the origin of the loss of the aspirate in Spanish words like hijo, pronounced ijo, the Latin filius, which in the fourteenth century still had f, and for the intensification of the aspirate in the corresponding Gascon words. We are all well acquainted with the hoarseness and roughness that exposure to the atmosphere lends to the voice, and the exercise and strength that a mountainous region gives to the lungs produce their effect in the vigour with which sounds are uttered. In cold countries the respiration is accelerated, while the air being denser contains a larger volume of oxygen.[182] The prognathism of the lower and older races of men, again, must have considerably modified their powers of utterance. “The lower jaw,” says Dr. Rolleston, “which in every well-marked variety of the human species contributes very importantly towards the making up of its distinctive character, was in the brachycephalous Briton usually a very different bone from the lower jaw of his Silurian predecessor.”[183] The strange fashions, too, which lead the savage to mutilate and deform his person, have frequently a very direct bearing upon phonology. Thus the loss and confusion of the labials and the excessive nasalization in the languages of the natives of the Pacific coast of America must be traced to the rings that are worn through the nostrils and lips of the people.[184] The Otyi-herero of South Africa is lisping in consequence of the custom of knocking out the four lower teeth, and partly filing off the upper front ones, to which also Professor Max Müller suggests the occurrence of the English, th and dh in the language may be due, and the Dinkas, who, like all the negroes of the White River, extract the front teeth of the lower jaw, have no sibilants.[185]

Whatever may be the causes which bring about varieties in pronunciation, certain it is that they are as continually making their appearance as varieties in the realm of natural history. Where they are unrestrained by the conservative tendencies of literature and education, they soon spread from the individual and the household and become species or dialects. The dialect itself may in course of time assume so marked a character of its own, and be so widely spoken as to be accounted a separate language; and will stand to the varieties and species destined to grow out of it in the relation of a genus to its species. But with this further development phonology has little to do.

It is otherwise with the changes which result in the rise of a new dialect. Comparative philology is based on the recognition that the same word will be represented by different combinations of sounds in a group of allied dialects or languages, and that each combination will be governed by a fixed phonetic law. An English h, for example, will answer to a Greek and Latin k, an English t to a German z and a Sanskrit d. When once a sound is given in a language, we may know the sounds which must correspond to it in the cognate languages. Now and then, of course, subordinate laws will interfere with the working of the general law; but unless such an interference can be proved, we must never disregard the general law for the sake of an etymological comparison, however tempting. To compare the Greek θεός with the Latin deus and the Sanskrit devas, rests upon almost as unstable a foundation as the old derivation of whole from ὅλος, and call from καλέω.[186] We must never forget that the laws of phonology are as undeviating in their action as the laws of physical science, and where the spelling does not mislead us will display themselves in every word of genuine growth. Even the vowels cannot be changed and shifted arbitrarily; they, too, follow definite laws of development, and though it is not yet possible to state their equivalence in the several languages of a single family with the same precision as in the case of the consonants, we may feel quite sure that this is the fault of our ignorance and not of the facts themselves.

It was the great Grimm who, following in the wake of Rask, first formulated the empiric law of that regular Lautverschiebung, or shifting of sounds, in our Indo-European family of speech which has since gone under his name. Since his time the law has been the subject of much discussion and examination;[187] his statements have been amended and amplified, and an endeavour made to apply the same law to the vowels that has been applied to the consonants. The following table[188] exhibits the equivalence of sounds in the Aryan family of speech:—

Some of the changes of sound recorded in the above table are as old as the undivided Aryan speech itself. They go back to the dialects that existed in the earliest period of which our materials allow us to know. Instead of clinging, with Fick, to a genealogical tree, and deriving the Aryan languages of Europe and Asia from two parent-stems, Western and Eastern Aryan, and these again from a single Ursprache or primitive speech, it is better to follow J. Schmidt in tracing the later languages to co-existent dialects, which by the loss or absorption of intermediate dialects and the migration of the speakers became more and more distinct and divergent one from the other. It is, of course, quite possible that the speakers of the most western of these dialects moved across the Ural range into Europe in a compact body, and there settled for a while in a district westward of a line drawn from Königsberg to the Crimea, where the beech grew, and that it was from this second home of the Aryan race that the waves of European emigrants successively broke off. Certainly Professor Fick seems to have shown the common possession of certain phonetic peculiarities, such as the vowel e, by the Western as distinguished from the Eastern Aryans, and the Eastern or Indic branch of the family clearly once formed a single whole which subsequently divided into Iranian and Hindu. Unfortunately the position of Armenian and the allied dialects is still a matter of doubt; and there are scholars who would regard them as a link between the European and the Asiatic sections of the Aryan group. But Fick labours hard, and apparently with success, to prove that the Aryan dialects of Asia Minor, such as we know them from glosses and inscriptions, belonged to the European, not the Asiatic section, while Armenian, on the other side, is an Iranian tongue. Fick’s conclusion is confirmed by the evidence of the cuneiform inscriptions. Up to the eighth century B.C. Armenia was still inhabited by tribes who spoke non-Aryan languages, and it was only a century previously that the Medes had first forced their way into the country regarded by the agglutinative Accadians as the cradle of their race, but which was afterwards to be the seat of the Aryan Medes. Eastward of the Halys there was nothing Aryan until long after the occupation of Armenia by the new-comers.

We have certain proof that the series of changes which resulted in the formation of High German took place subsequently to the overthrow of the Roman Empire. Latin words for instance like (via) strata or campus, adopted by the Teutons during the era of their wars with Rome, are found in both Low and High German in the very forms which the application of Grimm’s law would require them to have were they native words. Thus strata, Low German strata, our street, becomes straza in Old High German, campus, our camp, similarly becomes kamph, kampf. The Hessians were called Catti in Roman times, and though now High Germans, had the same ancestors as the Batavi, from whom the modern Dutch draw their descent, while the Malbergian glosses show the language of the Franks to have been Low German, although the Franconians of to-day, who are descended from the same stock as the Suabians and Ripuarians, speak High German. Here, at any rate, we have an instance of a series of varieties finally resulting in a new language in historical times.

It must not be supposed that all the changes of pronunciation that serve to distinguish one branch of the Aryan stock from another took place simultaneously. On the contrary, they were slow and gradual; first one and then another new fashion in sounding words sprang up and became general: when once the new pronunciation had, from any cause, taken a firm hold of the community, analogy caused every word to be submitted to its influence, unless special reasons, such as accent, stood in the way, until in course of time the process of shifting the sounds was completed. An instructive illustration of this shifting of sounds has lately been going on almost under our eyes. In the Samoan Islands of the Pacific only fifteen years ago k was an unknown sound except in one small island of the group, where it replaced t. Since then it has practically disappeared from all of them, and t has taken its place. What makes the rapidity of the change the more extraordinary is that the speakers of the language live on separate islands, and that intercourse between them is less intimate now, according to Mr. Whitmee, than it was in the days of heathenism. And yet in spite of books and schools, in spite of education and every effort to check it, the change has come about. The natives will ridicule the foreigner who pronounces in the new fashion, they will themselves take pains to sound the k when reading aloud or making a set speech, but in conversation it has ceased to be heard. The tendency to put k for t seems to be irresistible; it is in the air, like an epidemic, and the spelling, so recently introduced, no longer represents the common pronunciation of the people.[192]