CHAPTER II. 1. NUMBER OF GREEK LETTERS.-2. VOWELS.-3. DIPHTHONGS. 4. CONSONANTS. NUMBER OF GREEK LETTERS. 1. It will form no part of the plan of the following essay to discuss the date of the invention of letters. The use of language must have preceded the use of letters; nor do we ever meet with the remotest hint that Cadmus taught the Greeks to utter sounds which they had never uttered before. The art invented or introduced by him seems, by common consent, to be considered as limited to the giving to the sounds of the human voice a visible and permanent representation. But though the exact date of this invention is not important to the present inquiry, it is material to learn, whether letters were invented in Greece, or brought thither from another country, where a different language was spoken; whether all the letters now in use were invented at once; and if not, which are to be referred to an earlier and which to a later age. If the letters had been invented by a Greek, he would most probably have found a character to represent each of the primary sounds of which his language was composed; so that the letters subsequently invented, though convenient, would not perhaps have been necessary. But letters brought from Phoenicia, supposing the Phoenician language materially different from the Greek, might often be so clumsy and imperfect a mode of representing Grecian language, as to drive the Greeks to add new letters of their own to express sounds not represented by the Phoenician alphabet; so that the generally received history of the invention itself affords us no means of showing how many of the Greek letters represented primary sounds. We have strong and undisputed testimony that several letters of the Greek alphabet were not invented till after Homer's time if Homer could write his poems without them, they could not have been absolutely necessary; but if Homer was as illiterate as many men of letters have supposed, he may have uttered many sounds which the alphabet of his day had no means of representing. The lesson to be drawn from hence is one, not of despair, but of humility. We must be content to get what knowledge we can on the subject from authority and from tradition. Dionysius of Halicarnassus says, that some have considered the primary letters or elements of language to be thirteen in number, and that the rest are but compounds of these; others again have made them more numerous even than the twenty-four, which were then in use.-xiv. 92. To avoid repetition, it may be observed, that any quotation from Dionysius, without any other addition or reference, is to be considered to be taken from the treatise of Dionysius of Halicarnassus Пepi συνθέσεως ὀνομάτων. I quote from the London edition, in octavo, 1747, ed. Upton: xiv. 92. means the fourteenth section and the ninetysecond page of this edition. It would have been more satisfactory if Dionysius had expressly told us what were the thirteen letters, which were by some considered as the elements of the voice (στοιχεῖα τῆς φωνῆς), and had added his own opinion: we shall, however, perceive as we go on what they were; and perhaps Dionysius, though willing to take the number as he found it, saw no absurdity in reducing the primary letters to so small a number. VOWELS. 2. To begin with the vowels. One would suppose, from the long and bitter disputes which have arisen on the pronunciation of the Greek vowels, that this branch of the inquiry was wrapped up in utter uncertainty, instead of being explained (as it is) in the clearest possible manner by the best-informed of all possible witnesses. Dionysius thus points out the mode in which the Greek vowels ought to be pronounced : "The vowels are seven in number: two long, namely the H and the ; two short, namely the E and the O; and three double-timed, namely the A, the I, and the Y, which are both extended and contracted; which some call double-timed, as I have done, and others changeable. All these are pronounced thus: the windpipe compressing the breath, the mouth disposed in an easy manner, the tongue not acting at all, but remaining unmoved. The long vowels, however, and those double-timed vowels which are made long in speaking, occasion an extended and continuous stream of the breath (τεταμένον καὶ διηνεκῆ τὸν αὐλὸν τοῦ πνεύματος); while the short, or those made short, are pronounced as if cut off with a single impulse of the breath and a short action of the windpipe. Of these, the most powerful and the sweetest in sound are the long vowels and those double-timed vowels which are lengthened in the pronunciation, because they are sounded for a long time and do not eut short the course of the breath; the short, and those which are shortly spoken, are inferior, inasmuch as they are small in sound, and emasculate the voice. Of these long vowels, that which has the most agreeable sound is the A when it is extended for it is spoken thus: the mouth as much opened as possible, and the breath directed upwards towards the palate. The second is the H, for it forms below, near the root of the tongue, the sound which is directed accordingly, and not upwards; the mouth being moderately opened. The third is the 2; for in this the mouth is rounded and the lips disposed into a circle, and the breath strikes upon the extremity of the lips. The Y is less than this; for here a considerable contraction (συστολῆς γενομένης ἀξιολόγου) takes place in the lips themselves, so that the sound is compressed (viyeτα) and rendered shrill. The lowest of all is the I, for the impulse of the breath is against the teeth; the mouth being but little opened, and the lips doing nothing to improve the sound. "Of the short vowels neither has a pleasing sound, but the less unpleasing is the O, for it opens the mouth more than the other, and receives the impulse of the breath more in the windpipe.”—xiv. 92. : I can imagine, that when in the introduction I was sweeping away so many sources of information as being of no real authority on our subject, some of my readers may have been inclined to ask what authorities I left and in answer I now say, that this chapter of Dionysius ought to have more weight than all the conjectures, however learned, which have been raised from fancied similarities. Here, instead of guessing at the probable sound of a Greek vowel from its probable sound in another country, we have a Greek stating how it ought to be sounded in Greece. In place of the authority of a stonemason, we have that of a philosopher, critic and historian, learned himself, and writing for the instruction |