We must be on our guard against thinking that the sounds represented by the same letter of the alphabet in different languages are really identical. We have seen of what numberless variations each sound that we utter is capable, and it does not follow that because the Sanskrit cha and the English church are written with the same palatal ch, that therefore they are to be pronounced alike. And what is true of the consonants is still more true of the vowels. There is much to show that the European scale of three short vowels—ă, ĕ, ŏ—is more primitive than the Indic single vowel ă, in which three distinct vowel-sounds of the parent-speech have coalesced, but we cannot infer from this that the three vowel-sounds of the parent-speech were actually ă, ĕ, and ŏ. Indeed, when we remember that the Greek ἕκατον (for ἕν-καντον) corresponds to the Latin centum, while ferentis is represented by φέροντος, it is quite clear that the Latin ĕ must have developed out of one or more sounds which were distinct from it. In dealing with the hypothetical Parent-Aryan it is best, with Brugman, to symbolize these three primitive vowels as a¹, a², and a³.[193] It is possible that some at least of the earlier sounds out of which more than one articulate sound have afterwards developed, were of a vague indeterminate character, not properly-formed vowel utterances. Professor Max Müller[194] quotes authorities to prove that in the Sandwich Islands k and t are undistinguished, and that “it takes months of patient labour to teach a Hawaian youth the difference between k and t, g and d, l and r.”[195] The confusion between k and t, however, has already been explained by the similar fact observed in Samoan where the sound has actually changed within the last fifteen years, a distinctly-articulated k becoming an equally distinctly-articulated t. But even in English we find people saying a cleast instead of at least, while at Paris and elsewhere the lower classes say amikié for amitié, charkier for charretier, crapu for trapu.[196] So in the old Paris argot j’équions stood for j’étais, and in Canada the uneducated part of the population says mékier for métier, moikié for moitié. Bleek, again, writes of the Setshuana dialects: “One is justified to consider r in these dialects as a sort of floating letter, and rather intermediate between l and r, than a decided r sound.”[197] To these instances of confusion between two consonants which Professor Max Müller believes to be “a characteristic of the lower stages of human speech,” may be added the fluctuation between two forms of the same sound in the North German dialects, where no distinction is made between surd and sonant mediæ, as well as in many of the Armenian dialects.[198] But we must bear in mind that this childlike inability to distinguish between sounds may be due to two very different causes. It may be a result either of the sound being formed at the neutral point, as it were, intermediate between two distinct sounds, or of the ear being unable to discriminate between different articulations. The latter cause is analogous to colour-blindness, and has most to do with the imperfections of childish utterance or the substitution of r for l so often heard; the other cause is of a purely phonetic character, and takes us back to the time when man was gradually fashioning the elements of articulate speech. This infantile state of language had probably been long left behind by the cultivated speakers of the Parent-Aryan; indeed, the very existence of the three vowels marked a₁, a₂, and a₃, would imply that such was the fact. If there was any confusion in the pronunciation of their words it would have to be ascribed rather to sound-blindness than to imperfection of utterance.

The regular action of Grimm’s law may be interfered with by the influence of other laws, just as in physical science the regular action of the law of attraction may be interfered with from time to time. Foremost among these disturbing agencies is the accent. K. Verner has shown[199] that the position of the accent has occasioned that apparent disregard of Grimm’s law in the Teutonic languages which has produced mutter and vater (O. H. G. muotar and fatar) by the side of bruder (O. H. G. brôpar), sieben (Goth. sibun) by the side of fünf (Anglo-Saxon fîf), schwieger (O. H. G. swigar = ἑκυρὰ, so-cru-s) by the side of heil (Greek καλός), or such a curious change in the conjugation of the same verb as the Anglo-Saxon lîðe,“I sail,” but liden, “sailed.” The same cause has brought about the varying representation of an original ſ now by s, and now by z or r. In the Veda, bhrâtar is accented on the first syllable, like the Greek φράτηρ, mâtár and pitár on the last, again like the Greek μητήρ and πατήρ. Sieben answers to the Vedic saptán, the Greek ἑπτά, whereas fünf is the Vedic pánchan and Greek πέντε. Schwieger similarly goes back to the Vedic ´swa´srû´, Greek ἑκυρά, just as the O. H. G. snura from snuza goes back to the Vedic snushâ´, Greek νυός, in contradistinction to nase, nose, the Vedic nâ´sa, the Lithuanian nósis. If we turn to the verb, we find that in Anglo-Saxon, whereas the present lîðe, “(I) sail,” corresponds with a Vedic bhédâmi, and the singular of the past tense lâð with a Vedic bibhéda, the plural of the preterite lidon corresponds with a Vedic bibhidús.[200]

There are other influences besides that of the accent which may change and mar the face of words. Although every change takes place in strict accordance with phonetic laws, and is consequently capable of explanation, the occurrence of the changes is more or less sporadic and arbitrary. That is to say, they may act upon one word and not upon its neighbour. In should or would, for instance, l has been assimilated to d, but in fold and cold it still maintains its existence. Such changes may be either independent or dependent on the action of surrounding sounds. The diversification of the Teutonic a into e and o, or the transition of the Latin ĭ and ŭ into Romanic e and o are instances of independent change. So, too, the modern English pronunciation of the vowels with passive lips, and the consequent loss of the intermediate vowels ü and ö, is another example of the same facts. Wherever, indeed, these intermediate vowel-sounds exist, we may feel sure that the lips take an active part in articulation. In all these cases the change happens in the formation of the sound, uninfluenced by the neighbourhood of other sounds. The extension of a simple vowel into a diphthong may also be brought under this head, though the presence of the circumflex accent seems to have much to do with it. On the other hand, changes in the dentals, the passage of z into r and r into l, or the transition from a guttural to a palatal and a dental, are all examples of purely independent change. When we find an Aryan kw (k²) and gw becoming ch and j in Sanskrit or τ in Greek, we merely see the gradual forward movement of the tongue, which is moved with less exertion towards its tip than towards its root. The change of Aryan kw and gw into p and b in Greek (as in πίσυρες and βίος[201]) is held by Sievers to be due to a sudden “leap” in the articulation, k and g partially assimilating the second part of each compound into p and b, and then falling away altogether.

Most of the changes recorded in Grimm’s law may be brought under the head of independent change. No doubt the transition of g, d, b, into k, t, and p in German is partially dependent upon the accent, but the growth of an aspirate out of a tenuis, as exemplified in the Irish pronunciation of English, is probably due to nothing but an increase in the energy and duration with which our breath is expired. The want of the stress accent brings about the shortening and loss of final vowels, the tonic accent, on the other hand, tending to lengthen them.

The changes caused by the action of one sound upon another may be divided into those which are due to assimilation, and those that are not. In either case the time occupied in pronouncing the changed sound remains the same as it was before; it is only in cases of independent change that it may differ. Assimilation is effected in one of two ways. The relative positions of the vocal organs needed for the pronunciation of two sounds may be made to approximate, as in the reduction of ai (a + i) to e, or the time that elapses between the pronunciation of two sounds may be reduced or destroyed altogether, as when supmus becomes summus. Where the change is not due to assimilation, it will be found to depend on an alteration in the time needed for the formation of two or more sounds.

Assimilation may be regressive, progressive, or reciprocal. Regressive assimilation is where a sound is assimilated to that which follows it, as in ἕννυμι for ϝεσ-νυμι, from the root vas, or ποσσί, for ποδ-σι (ποδ-σϝ-ι), and γράμμα for γράφ-μα(τ). Progressive assimilation is the converse of this, as in στέλλω for στελ-yω, μᾶλλον for μαλ-ιον, mellis for melv-is, or the Æolic ἔστελλα for ἔστελ-σα. Regressive assimilation largely preponderates in our Aryan languages, progressive assimilation in the Ural-Altaic ones; and it is very possible that Sievers is right[202] in tracing this contrast to the difference of the accentuation, which in Ural-Altaic falls upon the first syllable of the word, while in the parent-Aryan it fell for the most part on the final syllable. Böhtlingk[203] says, very appositely: “An Indo-Germanic word is a real whole of such a kind that the speaker has uttered the whole word, as it were, in spirit, as soon as he has pronounced the first syllable. Only in this way can it be explained how a syllable (or sound) is modified in order to assist the pronunciation of the syllable (or sound) that follows it. A member of the Ural-Altaic race forces out the first syllable of a word—that part of it, namely, which has the accent—little caring for the fortune of the rest; on this he next strings in more or less rude fashion a few more significant syllables, only thinking of a remedy at the moment when he first feels the want of one.” As for reciprocal assimilation, an example of it may be found in the reduction of ai to e quoted above, where both sounds influence one another.

Assimilation may be either complete or partial. There are sounds which can never be thoroughly assimilated to each other, bn, for instance, can never at once become nn, only mn. Partial regressive assimilation meets us very frequently in the classical languages; e.g., λεκ-τός from the root λεγε, ἤνυσμαι from ἀνυτ-, δόγμα from δοκ-; partial progressive assimilation is rarer; e.g., πάσχω for πάσκω from παθ-σκω.

The changes dependent on the presence of a second sound, which are not due to assimilation, are necessarily produced by varying the time needed for pronunciation. Of these the most striking is metathesis. Metathesis must be referred rather to a mental than to a phonetic origin. Our thought and will outstrip our pronunciation, the result being that the sound which ought to follow is made to precede, or else the vocal organs are shaped prematurely for the formation of a sound which ought to be heard later, the consequence being that the sound which should come first has to come last. Metathesis, in fact, is similar to the rapidity, or rather relaxation, of thought which leads us sometimes to write or speak a word which belongs to a subsequent part of the sentence; and it may be of two kinds: either the place of two sounds may be simply inverted, or the second sound may be made to precede the first by two or three syllables. How easily the first case can happen is shown by the phonograph, where each syllable that has been uttered can be reproduced backward by merely turning the handle of the machine the wrong way. R and l are the most subject to metathesis, then the nasals; the other consonants vary according to their relationship to the vowels. More regular than metathesis are the insertion and omission of consonants, as in ἀν-δ-ρὸς, ἄ-μ-β-ροτος, τέτυφθε for τέτυφσθε, rêmus for resmus. Somewhat different are the insertion and omission of vowels, the first of which goes under the technical name of Swarabhakti. This name was imported from the Hindu grammarians by Johannes Schmidt,[204] to mark the growth of a short or reduced vowel from a liquid or nasal, when accompanied by another consonant. Thus ănman, “name,” became ănă-man, and then, by the loss of the first vowel and the compensatory lengthening of the second, nômen and nâmâ. Swarabhakti is, however, incompatible with the acute accent. We may find examples of it in the slow pronunciation which in English turns umbrella into umbĕrella, and Henry into Henĕry.[205] Prosthesis, or prothesis, the insertion of a short vowel at the beginning of a word before two consonants, is another illustration of Swarabhakti. There are many nations which find a difficulty in pronouncing two consonants at the beginning of a word. Thus the Bengali calls the English school yschool, the Arab says Iflatún for Platon, and the Ossete uses a for the same purpose. In other cases, one of the consonants is dropped altogether, as so frequently by children and systematically by the natives of Polynesia. In Latin inscriptions and MSS. later than the fourth century we find forms like istatuam, ispirito, just as in the Romanic tongues we have estar and espée (épée) for stare and spada, or in Welsh ysgol from schola, yspryd from spiritus. According to Wentrup,[206] a is often used as a prothetic vowel in Sicilian; Lithuanian has forms like iszkadà, German “schade,” and Basque and Hungarian prefix a similar aid to the pronunciation. No trace of a prothetic vowel can be found in Latin; in Greek, however, such vowels are very plentiful. Thus we have ἄσταχυς by the side of στάχυς, ἐχθές by the side of χθές, ἰγνύη by the side of γόνυ, Ὀβριαρευς by the side of Βριαρεύς. In Greek, too, as in other languages where prothesis occurs, the complementary vowel may be inserted before a liquid, more especially r, as well as before a strictly double consonant, e.g., ἀμύνω by the side of μύνη, ἐρυθρός by the side of ruber, ὀρέγω by the side of rego. Even the digamma may perhaps take the prefix as in the Homeric ἔεδνον. But it is probable that no other single consonant does so, the apparent exceptions being really explained by the loss of a consonant which once existed along with the one that is left. Ὀκέλλω, for instance, presupposes ὀ-κϝέλλω (Latin pellere), Ἀπόλλων presupposes Α-κϝολιων, “the son of the revolving one” (Sanskrit char, Greek πέλομαι). In other cases we are dealing not with a prothetic vowel, but with a part of the primitive root: ὄνομα, for example, is shown by the Irish aimn and Old Prussian emnes to be more original than the Sanskrit nâmâ or the Latin nomen, and to stand for an earlier an-man; and ὄνυξ, the Latin unguis, the Irish inga, is earlier in form than the Sanskrit nakha and the English nail (nagel)[207]. We may discover a tendency in Greek to adapt the prothetic vowel to that of the root, though it is hardly so regular as in Zend roots beginning with r, where we find i-rith for rith, but u-rud for rud. Sanskrit, like Latin, shows an inclination rather to drop initial vowels than to add them, but even in Sanskrit, Curtius has pointed out[208] the Vedic i-raj-yâmi from raj (rego) and i-radh, “to seek to obtain,” from râdh. As for the loss of a vowel, it is too familiar to every one to need any illustration.

More akin to metathesis is epenthesis, which closely resembles the Teutonic umlaut. Epenthesis is especially plentiful in Greek, where κτέν-yω becomes κτείνω, χερ-ιων χείρων, λόγοσι λόγοις, ἐλαν-ϝω ἐλαύνω, νερϝον νεῦρον. Probably λέγει for λεγειτ is to be explained as resulting from the epenthesis of ι (λεγειτ for λεγετι), just as λέγεις stands for an earlier λεγεσι. Epenthesis thus presupposes a mouillation or labialization in which the articulation of the consonant is absorbed, as it were, by that of the i and u. The greater the participation of the lips and tongue in the formation of these vowels, the greater will be the tendency towards epenthesis.

Lastly, we have to consider the lengthening of vowels, either by way of compensation or before certain consonants. By compensation is meant the additional force with which a vowel is pronounced after the loss of a consonant which followed or preceded it. Thus in Greek the loss of the digamma in βασιλεϝ-ος produced the Ionic βασιλῆος on the one side and the Attic βασίλεως on the other, just as the loss of the yod in πολιy-ος similarly produced πολῆος and πόλεως. So, too, πάνς became πᾶς, δαιμονς δαίμων, ἐφαν-σα ἔφηνα, rĕs-mus rémus, pĕds pês, exăgmen exâmen, măgior mâjor. In certain cases the vowel was raised into a diphthong, as in φέρουσι for φεροντι, τιθείς for τιθενς, ἔστειλα for έστελσα. But a vowel may also be lengthened before liquids, nasals, and spirants when combined with another consonant. If the grave or the circumflex accent fall upon the preceding vowel, the tendency is to lengthen the vowel at the expense of the sonant or spirant following. Hence it is, that whereas in our English tint, or hilt, where the vowel has the acute, the nasal and liquid are long; in kind and mild, on the other hand, where the vowel is circumflexed, it is the vowel (or rather the diphthong) that is long. The vowel, again, may be lengthened to compensate for the loss of a double letter. Thus in Latin we find vīlicus by the side of villicus, from villa, and whereas the grammarians lay down that when ll is followed by i, single l must be written, we find millia in the famous inscription of Ancyra. So, too, the inscriptions vary between Amulius and Amullius, Polio and Pollio, and good MSS. have loquella, medella, instead of loquēla, medēla.

There is another fact to be remembered when we are looking for the application of Grimm’s law—a fact which the law itself ought to bring to our minds. Different languages have different phonetic tendencies; the same sound is not equally affected by phonetic decay in two different dialects or modified in the same way; each language has phonetic laws and phænomena peculiar to itself. Thus, in Greek, σ between two vowels is lost, in Latin it becomes r; in Greek a nasal preserves, or perhaps introduces, the vowel a, in Latin it prefers the vowel e. Because τ between vowels becomes σ in Greek, or sr in Latin is changed into br (as in cerebrum for ceresrum, κέρας, śiras), we are not justified in expecting similar changes in other tongues. In fact we have only to look at the table of sound-changes, known as Grimm’s law, to see that it is just because two languages do not follow the same course of phonetic modification that a scientific philology is possible.

To speak of Grimm’s law being “suspended,” of “exceptions to Grimm’s law,” and the like, is only to show an ignorance of the principles of comparative philology. Grimm’s law is simply the statement of certain observed phonetic facts, which happen invariably, so far as we know, unless interfered with by other facts which, under given conditions, equally happen invariably. The accidental has little place in phonology, at all events in an illiterate and uncultivated age. Literature and education are no doubt disturbing forces: a writer may borrow a word without modifying its sound according to rule; and the word may be adopted into the common speech through the agency of the schoolmaster; but such words are mere aliens and strangers, never truly naturalized in their new home, and the philologist must treat them as such. Native words, as well as words which, though borrowed from abroad, have been borrowed by the people and so given a native stamp, undergo, and must undergo, all those changes and shiftings of sound which meet us in Grimm’s law, in the phonetic laws peculiar to individual languages, or in any other of the generalizations under which we sum up the phænomena of spoken utterance. False analogy, it is true, may divert a word from the path it would naturally have taken; one word may be assimilated to another regardless of its real etymology, or words whose real origin has been forgotten may be modified so as to convey a new meaning to the speaker. But, in such cases, the worst that could happen would be the loss of the true etymology; Grimm’s law would still hold good, and the originals of the existing sounds would be those demanded by the regular Lautverschiebung. So far as the present form of a word like Shotover (for château vert) is concerned, it is to the mere phonologist, as to the ordinary speaker, a compound of shot and over, and in comparing these two words with allied words in other languages the prescribed letter-change holds good. It is only the comparative philologist, who has to deal with the psychological as well as with the phonetic side of language, that needs to know more, and to determine that Shotover is not what it professes to be, but the product of a more or less conscious imagination. In most cases of analogy we have to do with mental as opposed to phonetic assimilation, and they fall, therefore, under sematology, the science of meanings, rather than under phonology, the science of sounds. No doubt we find instances of analogy, like the Greek accusative βεβαῶτα, modelled after the nominative βεβαώς,[209] or the Latin genitives diei, dierum, modelled after the accusative diem for diam, but such instances fall under the laws and conditions of that phonetic assimilation which has been already described. Let us hold fast to the fact that the generalizations, the chief of which are summed up in the formula known as Grimm’s law, are at once uniform and unvarying. If an etymology is suggested, which violates these generalizations, that etymology must be rejected, however plausible or attractive. It is upon the fixed character of these generalizations that the whole fabric of scientific philology rests.

Necessarily similar generalizations may be made in the case of other languages which, like the Aryan, can be grouped into single families of speech; nay, they must be made before we are justified in grouping them together, or in comparing and explaining their grammar and vocabulary. It is not always, however, that the changes of sound are so marked and violent as in the Indo-European. A group of allied languages may be as closely related to one another as the modern Romanic dialects of Europe, and various causes may have combined to give a stability and fixity to their phonology which has made it change but slightly in the course of centuries. This is the case with the Semitic dialects, whose laws of sound-change are extremely simple. Practically the sound shiftings are confined to the sibilants, where the equivalence of sounds is as follows:—

One or two other general laws of phonetic change may be laid down for special members of the Semitic group; thus, in Assyrian, s before a dental becomes l, and kh is dropped when it answers to the Arabic and Ethiopic weak kh. In the Babylonian dialect, again, k took the place of g, and the n of the other dialects is sometimes replaced by r in Aramaic.

But the Semitic idioms are dialects rather than languages, so intimate is the connection between them, so slight the differences by which they are separated. It is quite otherwise if we turn to a group like the Malayo-Polynesian, where the word oran, “man,” may be represented in the different dialects by rang, olan, lan, ala, la, na, da, and ra.[211] But here, too, the law of equivalence is fixed and determinate: the Samoan s is changed into h in Tongan and Maori, while the Maori k is dropped in Samoan.

Equally extensive is the series of changes undergone by sounds in the Ugro-Finnic tongues, and when the law of sound-shifting has been determined not only for the Ugro-Finnic division of the Turanian family, but for the whole Turanian family, comprising Turkish, Mongol, and Mandshu, we may expect it to include a far larger number of changes of sound than that summed up in Grimm’s law. So far as the Ugro-Finnic dialects are concerned, M. de Ujfálvy, in continuance of the investigations of Riedl,[212] has been able to lay down the following rules for the phonetic permutations observable in these idioms: (1) The Finnish and Bulgar k becomes kh in Ostiak, Vogul, and Old Magyár, and h in modern Magyár; (2) k = ts; (3) k or g = s, z, ṣ, j, ts, &c.; (4) Finnish ks = Votiak hs (earlier ht); (5) Finnish kl, pl = Lapp vl; (6) Medial Finnish k and h = Bulgar and Ugrian v and f; (7) Initial Finnish h disappears in Livonian and Lapp (in Lapp also becomes v before a dental); (8) Finnish h = s, ṣ, ts, sy, ts (c), ẓ, tsy, &c.; (9) Finnish and Bulgar k, g, h = Lapp and Ostiak ng, n = Magyar g; (10) Medial Finnish nk = Lapp gg; (11) Finnish nt = Lapp dd; (12) gy, ny = y, v; (13) t = s (Finnish t = s, ṣ, sy, ts, z, ẓ, &c.); (14) Finnish s, h = Ostiak and Vogul t; (15) Finnish p = Votiak b = Magyar b, f; (16) Finnish t = Magyar s, z, ts; (17) Finnish m = Lapp bm; (18) Lapp dn = Finnish nn or n; (19) Finnish mb = Lapp bb; (20) Finnish kk, tt, pp = Vêpse and Livonian k, t, p; (21) Finnish k, t, p = Vêpse and Livonian g, d, b. This list of phonetic equivalents will make it clear that the original phonology of the Ugro-Finnic group is generally best represented by Suomi or Finnish; in some cases, however, Vêpse (or Tchude) is more archaic than Finnish, and in one case, that of the change of t into s, Ostiak and Vogul are more primitive than Suomi. Vêpse, again, shows that the long vowels of Suomi are due to contraction. Within Suomi itself kk, tt, and pp, after a liquid are softened into simple k, t, and p. The diphthongal consonants of Magyár (ly, my, ty, &c.), are the result of a contraction of a consonant and a vowel or diphthong following. The changes undergone by sounds within the Ugro-Finnic group may be summed up as a whole in the two formulæ: (1) The Finnish hard explosives are represented by soft explosives in the other languages of the group; (2) spirants, and the sounds derived from them, answer in the allied dialects to the explosives of Finnish. As for the Samoied idioms, similar phonetic permutations may be discovered in them also. In the Yurak dialect h = s, ng = nr, and k = ts; in Tavghi k and t tend to become g and d; in Yenissei dd = md (nt, nd, ntt, ltt), gg = rk (rg) or nk, and tt = bt, while in Ostiak-Samoied and Kamassinche the hard explosives pass into the soft g, d, b.[213]

Quite as regular as the permutations of sounds in the Finnic group is the law of sound-change discovered by Bleek to exist in the Bâ-ntu or Kafir family. The following table gives it for the principal members of the group:—

The Bâ-ntu law of sound-shifting has the advantage over its Aryan analogue, that it deals with actually existing sounds which can still be heard and noted by the scientifically trained ear, whereas many of the Aryan languages and sounds recorded in Grimm’s law are now extinct. The Aryan philologist, accordingly, has to assume that the spelling of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Gothic words is a fair approximation to their pronunciation. It is upon this assumption that the whole fabric of historical grammar is built; nay, comparative philology itself, which began with the comparison of allied forms and words in the classical languages of India and Europe, is also based upon it. The assumption offers little difficulty to the Italian, whose spelling accurately represents his pronunciation, or to the German, who writes pretty much as he speaks; but it need not be pointed out how strange and unnatural it seems to the Englishman. English spelling, under the guidance of the printers, has become a mere system of marks and symbols, arranged upon no principle, selected with no rational purpose, each of which by a separate effort of the memory is associated with some sound or word.

For the scientific philologist, no less than for the practical teacher, a return to the phonetic spelling of our English language is of the highest importance. What the philologist wishes to know is not how words are spelt, but how they are pronounced, and this end can be obtained only by means of an alphabet in which all the chief sounds of the language are represented, and each character represents but one sound. No doubt the practical man does not want the alphabet required by the phonologist, who must denote every shade of sound and have separate symbols for the sounds heard not in English only, but in other languages as well, but the alphabet of the practical man should be based on that of the phonologist. The reformed alphabet should be one which would enable the child or the foreigner to recognize at once the sound of the word he is reading, and the philologist to determine the pronunciation of the writer.

Thanks to Messrs. Ellis, Pitman, and others, the question of reforming our English spelling has not only been brought before the public, but the conditions under which it is practicable have been discussed and ascertained, and the merits of rival schemes put to the test. The sounds of the English language have been analyzed, and the great work of Mr. A. J. Ellis on the “History of English Pronunciation” has shown how our absurd and anomalous spelling grew up. At the present time we have in the field the phonology of Mr. Pitman—an alphabet of thirty-eight letters—a large proportion of which have new forms; the palæotype and glossic of Mr. Ellis, the former retaining the type now used by the printers, but enlarging the alphabet by turning the letters, and similar devices, the latter by its likeness to the present spelling intended to bridge over the passage from the present or “Nomic” mode of spelling to the reformed one; the narrow and the broad Romic of Mr. Sweet, the second an adaptation of the first to practical use; the ingenious system of Mr. E. Jones, which by the employment of optional letters for the same sound contrives to introduce little apparent difference in the spelling of English words; and several other English and American systems that have been proposed, more especially the reformed alphabet of the American Philological Association, together with the transitional alphabet intended to lead on to it. Some of these are true phonetic alphabets, words spelt in them varying according to the pronunciation of the writer, others are merely attempts to reform the present spelling of English words by making it more consistent, and bringing it more into harmony with their actual pronunciation. Such attempts would only substitute a less objectionable mode of spelling for the existing one, a mode of spelling, too, that would in course of time become as stereotyped and far removed from the pronunciation of the day as is the present system. With such attempts, therefore, the scientific philologist can have but little sympathy; his efforts must rather be directed towards the establishment of a phonetic alphabet, based on a thorough analysis of English sounds and conformed to practical requirements.

The question of spelling reform is nothing new. Mr. Ellis has brought to light a MS. written in 1551 by John Hart of Chester, and entitled “The Opening of the unreasonable writing of our inglish toung: wherin is shewed what necessarili is to be left, and what folowed for the perfect writing therof.” This the author followed up by a published work in 1569, called “An Orthographie, conteyning the due order and reason, howe to write or painte thimage of mannes voice, most like to the life or nature.”[214] The object of this, he says, “is to vse as many letters in our writing, as we doe voyces or breathes in our speaking, and no more; and neuer to abuse one for another, and to write as we speake.” Hart, however, it would seem, tried to amend the pronunciation as well as the spelling of English. The year before (1568) Sir Thomas Smith, Secretary of State in 1548, and successor of Burleigh, had published at the famous press of Robert Stephens in Paris, a work, “De recta et emendata linguæ anglicæ scriptione, dialogus.” In this he had suggested a reformed alphabet of thirty-four characters, c being used for ch, ð for th (in then), and θ for th (in think), long vowels being indicated by a diæresis. In 1580 came another book in black letter on the same subject, by William Bullokar. His alphabet consisted of thirty-seven letters, most of which have duplicate forms, and in which c’, g’, and v’, represent s, j, and v. He composed a primer and a short pamphlet in the orthography he advocated. In 1619, Dr. Gill, head-master of St. Paul’s School, published his “Logonomia Anglica,” which was quickly followed by a second edition in 1621. His alphabet contained forty characters, and, as might be expected from his position, his attempt to reform English spelling was a more scholarly one than those of his predecessors. He found a rival in the Rev. Charles Butler, an M.A. of Magdalen College, Oxford, who brought out at Oxford, in 1633, “The English Grammar, or the Institution of Letters, Syllables, and Words in the English Tongue.” He printed this phonetically, according to his own system, as well as another book, “The Feminine Monarchy or History of the Bees” (Oxford, 1634). “These,” says Mr. Ellis, “are the first English books entirely printed phonetically, as only half of Hart’s was so presented. But Meigret’s works were long anterior in French.” Butler represents the final e mute by ’. In 1668 Bishop Wilkins published his great work, the “Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language.” In this he has a good treatise on phonetics, in which he probably made use of an important work on the physiological nature of sounds, brought out by John Wallis, Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, in 1653;[215] and he has transcribed the Lord’s Prayer and Creed in his phonetic alphabet of thirty-seven letters. After Bishop Wilkins the matter rested for a while; but in 1711 the question of reforming English spelling was once more raised, this time, however, in a practical direction. Dean Swift appealed to the Prime Minister to appoint a commission for “the Ascertaining, Correcting, and Improving of the English Tongue.”[216] His appeal, however, was without effect; and the next to apply himself to the subject was Benjamin Franklin, who, in 1768, put forth “A Scheme for a New Alphabet and reformed mode of Spelling, with Remarks and Examples concerning the same, and an Enquiry into its Uses.” Franklin embodied his views in a letter to Miss Stephenson (dated September 20th, 1768), written in his phonetic alphabet, and intended to meet objections to the proposed reform. It is curious to find the wholly mistaken objection already put forward that “all our etymologies would be lost” by a reform of spelling.

But spelling reformers have not been confined to England. Ninety years ago a reform of Dutch spelling was successfully carried out, though the result was unsatisfactory, as might have been expected from the ignorance of phonology that existed at the time. Spanish spelling has recently undergone revision on the part of the Academy; and even German, which seems to the Englishman so far advanced on the road towards perfection, is in process of reformation. The work was begun by Schleicher, who not only struck out the aphonic h and other useless letters, but even emulated the Emperor Claudius by inventing a new character. A committee was lately appointed by the Minister of Education to decide upon such changes of spelling as seemed to them desirable, and a thorough-going system of reform, with a new alphabet, like that of Mr. Pitman, has been inaugurated through the exertions of Dr. Frikke and others.[217]

Of scientific alphabets, also, the phonologist has now his choice. Putting aside Melville Bell’s “Visible Speech,” in which each character symbolizes by lines the action of the vocal organs in forming the sound it represents, the best are the well-known “Standard” and “Missionary Alphabets” of Lepsius and Max Müller, the alphabets of Ellis and Prince L-L. Bonaparte, and the alphabet of Sweet. Max Müller’s alphabet is founded on that of Sir W. Jones, and he brings with justice the charge against Lepsius’s “Standard Alphabet” that its physiological analysis is sometimes wrong, and that many of its characters have been found too complicated for use. Sweet’s alphabet has the advantage of avoiding new type, of having special signs for voice and whisper, for quantity and stress, force, pitch, and glide, and of indicating by a full stop the place of a “force-impulse.” Prince L-L. Bonaparte’s alphabet, however, as edited by Ellis, is the most complete; indeed, out of his 385 characters, there occur a few which have not been detected in any known language. The two last alphabets will be found in the Appendix to the present chapter.

It is possible that the phonograph may hereafter assist us in constructing a more perfect alphabet than is now possible. Just as Melville Bell’s letters have a physiological origin, so the letters of the alphabet of the future may be derived from the forms assumed by sounds on the sensitive plate of the phonograph. The phonautograph had already informed us that every sound we utter has a distinct shape and pattern; it only remained to apply this fact practically by the invention of the phonograph.

The phonautograph as constructed by Barlow, Léon Scott, and König, is made to record the sounds of the human voice by the help either of a pencil or of a gas-flame. The pencil is set in motion by a thin membrane, against which sounds and words are spoken, and draws on a cylinder covered with sand the curves which delineate the sounds uttered. When a gas-flame is employed, the forms assumed by it take the place of those drawn on the sand. In Edison’s phonograph the fact that the form of every sound can thus be imprinted on a tangible substance has been utilized for the reproduction of speech. A plate of tin-foil is folded round a revolving cylinder indented from one end to the other with a spiral groove. As the cylinder revolves the groove is kept constantly beneath a needle, which is attached to a membrane or sounding-board, against which the voice is impinged through a conical aperture: with each sound that is uttered the needle presses the tin-foil into the furrow below, imprinting upon it at the same time the form of the sound. By reversing the process the needle is made to travel once more over the indented tin-foil, and the sounding-board being thus set in motion reproduces the sounds originally spoken. Before the tin-foil is thus reduced to its original smoothness, a cast of it may be taken, and at any subsequent period another piece of tin-foil may receive the impression of the cast, and so reproduce the words which first caused the indentations. It is needless to point out the assistance which the phonograph is likely to render to phonology. It is still, of course, new and faulty, and unable, for instance, to reproduce sibilants; but it cannot fail to be improved and become almost as perfect a speaking-machine as the human throat itself. Already it has contributed some facts of importance to phonetic science. Thus we find that all sounds may be reproduced backwards by simply beginning with the last forms indented on the tin-foil, sociability, for example, becoming ytilibaishos. Diphthongs and double consonants may be reversed with equal clearness and precision, so that bite, which the phonograph pronounces bâ-eet, becomes tee-âb In this way we have learnt that the ch of cheque is really a double letter, the reversed pronunciation of the word being kesht.

The problem of reproducing human speech has thus been approached more successfully from the physical and acoustic side than from the physiological side, where it was attacked by Faber, Kempelen, and others. They attempted to construct instruments in which the vocal organs could be represented with the greatest exactness attainable, the lungs being replaced by a pair of bellows, the trachea by a hollow tube, and so on. But though these instruments spoke, it was not in human speech, or anything like it. The utmost they could do was to imitate the first utterances of a child, or the imperfect and laboured syllables of one who is learning a foreign tongue.

Nevertheless, it is not in the organs of the human voice any more than in the mechanism of a lifeless instrument that we have to discover the source and creator of speech. All that the vocal organs can do is to supply the skeleton into which the mind breathes the breath of life. Unmeaning sounds do not constitute language: until a signification has been put into them, the sounds that have been described and analyzed are no better than the singing of the birds, the stirring of the trees, or even the dead utterances of a machine. Phonology, like anatomy, deals only with the dry bones which have yet to be clothed upon with living flesh.

But by its very nature a science of meanings, sematology, as it has been named, can never have the same certitude, the same exactness, as a science of sounds. The laws of sematology are far less distinct and invariable; significant change cannot be reduced to the same set of fixed rules as phonetic change. The phenomena with which sematology deals are too complicated, too dependent on psychological conditions; the element of chance or conscious exertion of will seems to enter into them, and it is often left to the arbitrary choice of an individual to determine the change of meaning to be undergone by a word. Still this meaning must be accepted by the community before it can become part of language; unless it is so accepted it will remain a mere literary curiosity in the pages of a technical dictionary. And since its acceptance by the community is due to general causes, influencing many minds alike, it is possible to analyze and formulate these causes, in fact, to refer significant change to certain definite principles, to bring it under certain definite generalizations. Moreover, it must be remembered that the ideas suggested by most words are what Locke calls “mixed modes.” A word like just or beauty is but a shorthand note suggesting a number of ideas more or less associated with one another. But the ideas associated with it in one mind cannot be exactly those associated with it in another; to one man it suggests what it does not to another. So long as we move in a society subjected to the same social influences and education as ourselves we do not readily perceive the fact, since the leading ideas called up by the word will be alike for all; but it is quite otherwise when we come to deal with those whose education has been imperfect as compared with our own. A young speaker often imagines that he makes himself intelligible to an uneducated audience by using short and homely words; unless he also suits his ideas to theirs, he will be no better understood than if he spoke in the purest Johnsonese. If we are suddenly brought into contact with experts in a subject we have not studied, or dip into a book on an unfamiliar branch of knowledge, we seem to be listening to the meaningless sounds of a foreign tongue. The words used may not be technical words; but familiar words and expressions will bear senses and suggest ideas to those who use them which they will not bear to us. It is impossible to convey in a translation all that is meant by the original writer. We may say that the French juste answers to the English just, and so it does in a rough way; but the train of thoughts associated with juste is not that associated with just, and the true meaning of a passage may often depend more on the associated thoughts than on the leading idea itself. Nearly every word, in fact, may be described as a complex of ideas which is not the same in the minds of any two individuals, its general meaning lying in the common ideas attached to it by all the members of a particular society. The significations, therefore, with which the comparative philologist has to concern himself, are those unconsciously agreed upon by a body of men, or rather the common group of ideas suggested by a word to all of them alike. Here, again, some general causes must be at work which may yet be revealed by a careful analysis. The comparative philologist has not to trouble himself, like the classical philologist, with discovering the exact ideas connected with a word by some individual author; it is the meaning of words as they are used in current speech, not as they illustrate the idiosyncrasies of a writer, which it is his province to investigate.

“The genealogies of words,” says Pott,[218] “are the genealogies of concepts.” As in phonology we have the growth or decay of sounds, so in sematology we have the growth or decay of ideas. The three principles of linguistic change, imitation, emphasis and laziness, are incessantly at work on the meanings as well as upon the sounds of words. Analogy is ever lending them new senses, and the metaphorical senses may come to be used to the utter forgetfulness of the original one. The Latin who spoke of his “mind” or “soul” as animus had altogether forgotten that at the outset animus was merely the “wind” or “breath.” Here analogy or imitation is helped by laziness, which makes us forget a little-used meaning. Impertinent has almost lost its prior and proper signification, and our children will have to seek it in the records of an obsolescent literature. But a dead meaning may again rise to life; the early meaning of a word, whether recovered from books or from the fresh spring of a local dialect, may once more impress itself upon a community anxious to emphasize and mark out an idea by an unfamiliar term.

Professor Whitney[219] has summed up significant change under the two heads of specialization of general terms and generalization of special terms, but a more thorough-going attempt to determine its laws and distinguish its causes has been made by Pott.[220] First of all, he points out, words may be more accurately defined either by widening or by narrowing their signification. While in the Neo-Latin languages caballus, “a nag,” has taken the wider meaning of “horse” in general, under the form of cavallo or cheval, the modern Greek ἄλογον is no longer the “irrational beast,” but is narrowed into the specific sense of “horse.” Like our deer, which once meant “wild animals” generally (German thier), so emere has narrowed its primary signification of “taking” into the special one of “buying.” But, on the other hand, when we speak of “going to town,” it is not “town” in general or any town whatsoever that is meant, but London alone.

Then, secondly, there is metaphor, with its ceaseless play upon speech. Language is the treasure-house of worn-out similes, a living testimony to the instinct of man to find likeness and resemblance in all he sees. The Tasmanians, who had no general terms, had yet the power of seeing resemblances between things: though they could not form the concept “round,” they said “like the moon” or some other round object. All the words which have a spiritual or moral meaning go back to a purely sensuous origin: Divus, Deus, Dieu was once “the bright sky;” soul was nothing but the “heaving” sea. It is only by likening such ideas to the objects of sense that we can imagine them at all, or convey a hint of our meaning to others. The vocabulary of a language on its significant side grows by metaphor and analogy. We have only to take a word like post, once the Latin positum, “what is fixed” or “placed,” and trace it through its many derived meanings of “stake,” “position,” “office,” “station,” “public medium of correspondence,” and “receptacle for letters,” to see how endless are the shades of colour which a single word may catch from those with which it is associated. To know the idioms of a language and the conditions under which its speakers live, is often to know the history of the changes in signification undergone by its vocabulary. The mere expression “send to the post” gave to the word post its last meaning of a building in which letters are deposited and sorted, and the conditions of schoolboy life are a clue to many of the metaphorical uses of words which bear quite another meaning in school life from what they do in ordinary language. Where else but in a country of examinations could “pass” signify to go through an examination with success? Each craft, each industry has its own store of technical words, many of which are merely words in common use employed in particular senses intelligible only to those who belong to it.

Words, thirdly, will vary in meaning according to their application to persons or things, to what is good or bad, great or small. What a difference there is, for instance, between a “beautiful woman” and a “beautiful picture,” “a fine day” and “a fine fellow.” Silly, again, is simply the German selig, “blessed,” and such is still its meaning in Spenser’s “silly sheep;” but in modern English it has long lost its favourable sense, and is used only in an unfavourable one. Diminutives, originally the symbols of affection, have in many cases become the symbols of contempt, while “childishness” is as much a compliment when applied to a child as it is the reverse when applied to a man.

In the fourth place, words change their signification according to their use as active or passive, as subjects or as objects. “The sight of a thing” has a very different meaning from “the enjoyment of a sight,” as different, in fact, as is the meaning of venerandus when applied to the object of veneration or to his admirer. The passive has been evolved from the middle τύπτομαι, “I beat myself” passing gradually into “I am beaten.” In English we may say indifferently “a matter is reflected,” or “a matter reflects itself,” after the usage of French. Similarly a neuter verb may be regarded as an active followed by the reflective pronoun; our “to be silent,” or “to walk,” for example, are the French “se taire,” “se promener.”

Fifthly, an idea may be expressed either by a compound or periphrasis, or by a single word. The Latin nepos is the French petit fils, our “ninety” the French quatre-vingt-dix. The Taic languages of Further India preserve the primitive habit of denoting a new idea by comparing it with some other to which it stands in the relation of species to genus. Thus in Siamese “a heifer” is lúk nghoa, “child (of a) bull;” “a lamb” is lúk-ké, “child (of a) sheep,” much as in English inkstand is “a stand for ink.” It is only by comparison that an object can be known, its limits marked and determined; it is equally only by comparison that an idea can be defined and made intelligible. But when this has once been done, there is no longer any need of setting genus and species side by side in speech and thought; to do so is but a survival of the early machinery of language. The fact that the derivatives of the Aryan speaker are replaced by compounds, or rather antithetic words, in Taic, shows not only the mental superiority of the former, but also the fundamental contrast that exists between the two modes of thought. Collectives imply no small power of abstraction, and the collectives formed by antithesis in Taic are as much a proof of it as the existence of our “contentment” by the side of the Siamese arói chái, literally “pleasant heart.”

In the sixth place, we must always keep steadily in view the relativity of ideas and of the words which denote them. The same word may be applied in a variety of senses, the particular sense which it bears being determined by the context. The manifold shades of meaning of which each word is capable, the different associations of ideas which it may excite, give rise to varieties of signification which in course of time develop into distinct species. Hence come the idioms that form the characteristic feature of a dialect or language, and make exact translation into another language so impossible. Hence, too, that diversification of synonyms which causes words like womanly and feminine gradually to assume different meanings, and prevent us from saying “I am very obliged,” or “I am much tired.”

Seventhly and lastly, change of signification may follow in the wake of change of pronunciation or the introduction of new words. Phonetic decay may cause the old form of a word to be forgotten, and so allow it to assume the new meaning which has gradually been evolved out of its earlier one. This is the history of most of those inflections which can be traced back to independent words, such as the sign of the past tense in English, once the reduplicated perfect of do. The signification of jeopardy has travelled far from that of jeu parti, but preparation had first been made by the change of pronunciation. There are many myths and mythological beings which owe their existence to the same cause. It was not till Promêtheus had lost all resemblance in outward name to the pramanthas or “fire-machine” of India that he borrowed his attributes from προμήδομαι, and became the wise benefactor of mankind, the gifted seer of the future, whose brother was Epimêtheus, or “Afterthought.” It is the same with the legends that group themselves round the distorted name of a locality. The nose of brass or gilt which adorns Brasenose College at Oxford could never have come into existence until the old Brasinghouse or “Brewery” had been transformed, and the phœnix that stands in the centre of the Phœnix Park at Dublin, would have been impossible without the assistance of Saxon lips, which turned the Irish fion uisg or “fine water” into phœnix. But change of pronunciation is especially serviceable in increasing the wealth of a language by producing two co-ordinate forms out of a single original one. In course of time the two forms assume different meanings, due to the different contexts in which they may be used, and when once all memory of the original identity has perished, the distinction of meaning becomes fixed and permanent, and tends to grow continually sharper. In the second century B.C. a Latin writer could still use prior as a neuter, prios or prius as a masculine; but a time soon came when prior was classed exclusively with other masculine nouns in -or or -tor, prius with neuter nouns like genus. So, again, the Latin infinitive active amare and the infinitive passive amari were at the outset one and the same—the dative singular of a verbal noun in -s (amas-), and one verb, fio, the Greek φυ(ι)ω, continued to the last to preserve a recollection of the fact by the length of the final syllable in fieri or fiesei, “to become.” But the shortening of final syllables which characterizes Latin was early at work, and out of the dative amasei soon originated the two co-existing forms amase (amare) and amasi (amari). For a while they were used indifferently, but when the distinction that exists between the German waren zu haben and the English “were to be had” came to make itself felt, one form remained the property of the active, while the other was appropriated to the passive. But a consciousness of the origin of amari seems to have long survived in the language, since there was a tendency to associate it more closely with the other forms of the passive voice by affixing to it the characteristic of the passive, r (amarier). What is here effected by the diversification of the same word, may also be effected by the diversification of two synonyms, one of which has come from abroad. Sometimes both may come from abroad, but at different times, the result being that whereas one of them has been naturalized in the language, the other is but the nurseling of a learned age. Priest and presbyter, for instance, have both descended from the same source, and were once identical in meaning. But not only may the old words of a dialect be thus affected by new comers, the foreign words may even succeed in destroying the native ones altogether. The same natural selection which has wellnigh extirpated many of the native plants of Central America in the presence of the imported cardoon, is also at work in language. Our Old English sicker has had to give way before sure, the Old French sëur, Provençal segur, Latin securus, and the Latin equus has been replaced in the Romanic dialects by caballus, “a nag.” Caballus is at once an example of the way in which the meaning of a word may be widened, and of the operation of natural selection in the field of speech.

The etymologist must keep before him the laws both of phonology and of sematology before he can venture to group words together and refer them to a common root. For the etymologist is not merely a historian, or student of historical grammar; above and beyond the words which can be traced back, step by step, to their early forms, by the help of contemporaneous records, there are many more, the derivation of which has to be constructed much in the same way that a palæontologist reconstructs a fossil animal by the help of a single bone. The task is often a difficult and a delicate one, and the best trained scholars may sometimes fail. The result of false analogy may be regarded as an organic form, or a foreign word, conformed possibly to the genius of the language which has borrowed it, may be mistaken for a native. The præ-Aryan populations of Greece or of Britain must have left some remains of their languages in the vocabulary of Greek and Keltic, and Greek and Keltic words which have been counted as Aryan may, after all, be but aliens. Apart from these dangers, there is further the double one of assuming a connection between ideas which have nothing to do with one another, and of separating ideas which start from a common source. On the one hand, we are apt to judge of primitive man by ourselves, and to fancy that the ideas which we associate together were equally associated together by him. On the other hand, we have only to turn to the Ugrian idioms, with their greater transparency and openness to analysis to see the passage of one signification in a root into another of a wholly different kind, accompanied by a modification of the vowel. Thus karyan is “to ring,” and “to lighten;” kar-yun and kir-yun, “to cry,” but kir-on, “to curse;” kah-isen, koh-isen, kuh-isen, “to hit,” “stamp;” käh-isen, köh-isen, “to roar;” keh-isen, kih-isen, “to boil.”[221] We have here the same symbolization of a change of meaning by a change of vowel as in the Greek perfect δέδωκα by the side of the present δίδωμι.

The four facts to be remembered in etymology are thus summarized by Professor Max Müller.[222] (1.) The same word takes different forms in different languages. Each language or dialect has its peculiar phonetic laws and tendencies; because a particular interchange of sounds takes place in one language it does not follow that it does so in another. In Greek, for instance, s between two vowels is lost, in Latin it becomes r. Our English two is the same word, so far as origin is concerned, as the German zwei, the Latin and Greek duo, the Sanskrit dwi; the English silly is the German selig, “blessed.” As words are carried down the stream of time, they change in both outward form and inward meaning, and this change is in harmony with the physiological and psychological peculiarities of the particular people that uses them. (2.) The same word, again, takes different forms in one and the same language. Brisk, frisky, and fresh all come from the same fountain-head, and bank and bench are the differentiated forms of which banquet is the Romanized equivalent. So, too, in French noël and natal are but forms of the same word of different ages, like naïf and native, chétif and captif. Then (3) different words take the same form in different languages. The Greek καλέω and the English call have as little connection as the Latin sanguis and the Mongol sengui, “blood,” or the modern Greek mati for ὀμμάτιον, and the Polynesian mata, “an eye.” To compare words of different languages together because they agree in sound is to contravene all the principles of scientific philology; agreement of sound is the best possible proof of their want of connection, since each language has its own phonology and consequently modifies the forms of words in a different fashion. The comparison even of roots is a dangerous process, not to be indulged in unless the grammar of the languages to which they belong has been shown to be of common origin. What we call roots are only the hypothetical types to which we can reduce the words of a certain group of tongues; they are, therefore, merely the expression of the phonetic laws common to all the members of the group. But it does not follow that the selected phonetic laws which all the members of a certain group of tongues have in common are the same as the phonetic laws of another language or another group. Roots, moreover, owing to their shortness, their vagueness, and their consequent simplicity, are necessarily limited in number, while the ideas they convey are so wide and general as to cover an almost infinite series of derived meanings; to say nothing of the probability that many of them are to be traced to imitations of natural sounds. (4.) Different words, in the fourth place, may take the same form in one and the same language. The French feu, “fire,” is the Latin focus; feu, “late,” the Low Latin fuitus (from fui). So too the English page, in the sense of a servant, comes ultimately from the Greek παίδιον, page, in the sense of a leaf of a book, from the Latin pagina. An arbitrary and antiquated spelling may often keep up a distinction between such words in writing when in speaking all distinction has long since disappeared. The French sang, cent, sans, sent, s’en, the English sow, sew, so, are respectively pronounced in the same way. That no inconvenience would be caused by writing them in the same way is shown not only by the fact that many words of similar sound but varying sense, such as sound, box, or lie, are not distinguished in writing, but also by the ease with which we can distinguish between them in conversation, although in conversation we are unable to dwell upon a word or view it by the light of the completed sentence, as is the case in reading. The scientific etymologist would welcome the accurate representation of sounds by symbols, his object is to know what sounds pass into others in the course of centuries, and this he can only ascertain when the spelling represents the pronunciation; the amateur etymologist had better leave the subject alone. Etymology is not a plaything for the amusement of the ignorant and untrained; it is a serious and difficult study, not to be attempted without much preparation and previous research. The etymologist must be thoroughly trained in the principles of scientific philology, he must have mastered both phonology and sematology, and he must be well acquainted with more than one of the languages with which he deals. Then and then only can his labours be fruitful; then, and then only will his work be a gain and not a hindrance. False etymologies stand in the way of true ones, and the charlatans who have brought the name of etymology into contempt have discredited the labours of better men. There is much in etymology which must always defy analysis, there is much which will have to be corrected hereafter, but this will matter little if we have once learnt the lesson that change of sound and meaning can only take place in accordance with fixed and invariable law. Etymology is but a means to an end, and that end is partly the history of the development of thought and civilization as reflected in the fossil records of speech, partly the discovery and illustration of the laws which govern the shifting and decay of sounds and the modifications of sense.