Let WH be represented by ʍ. The difference between W and ʍ is that W is produced by vocalised breath and certain lip-movements as described above; whereas ʍ is produced by the same lip-movements, but with unvocalised breath. Hence, in lieu of the buzzing sound, we find in ʍ a whispered or “whistled breath.” It is this breath-sound of ʍ which has been so persistently mistaken for the Aspirate H. The sole office of the H in this digraph is to prescribe the unvocalization of the W. The nature of the subject renders it difficult to parade proofs of these facts on the pages of a book, in order to convince persons who, having a veneration for Mr Walker’s hoo hoo theory, might wish to uphold in theory that which they probably depart from in practice. By careful attention to most thoroughly good speakers it will be noticed that an unvocalised W (ʍ) is the phonic rendering of the digraph WH; although the “whistled breath” may be mistaken for an Aspirate by a careless observer, or by one resolute in error.
It is not easy to understand why these facts are not more widely recognised and insisted upon by modern orthoepists and writers on phonological science; and it is very difficult to attribute a cause to the longevity of the erroneous notions that Mr Walker was an early means of disseminating. When we see in our pronouncing dictionaries that whip is to be pronounced “hwip,” the only belief open to us is that their writers intend two vowel-sounds to be heard in a word containing only one vowel; for they can scarcely mean that the h shall aspirate a consonantal w, nor that a jerked h‘ shall precede the word (thus h‘ + wip), nor can they desire that the h shall aspirate a whistle—Hʍip. To say the least, the rendering of any of these would require a vocal gymnast to make it effective. But if two vowels are to be employed, the first must needs be aspirated and the second not; so that a phonetic spelling of whip and why would be “hoo ip” and “hoo i”! And, according to Mr Walker and his disciples, this is the correct pronunciation. But the fact remains that even those gentlemen, who in their dictionaries have scrupulously reproduced Mr Walker’s rule, have seldom been known to violate the principles of a correct pronunciation by adhering to it when speaking. The sore straits to which the rule occasionally reduces them might elicit pity. “Hw” is found to be unmanageable before o; and therefore we find that since the days of Mr Walker, a perfect unanimity has prevailed among orthoepists with regard to the extrusion of W from the pronunciation of every word in which the digraph WH precedes an o; whence it comes that in all dictionaries in common use, whole, whom, who, &c., are phonetically expressed “hole,” “hoom,” “hoo,” &c.; for, according to their method, to retain the W were to give these words the sound of hoo ole, hoo oom, and hoo oo! If, on the other hand, one remembers that WH is an unvocalized W, no more hesitation will be experienced in giving it its due before an o than before any other vowel. ʍole, ʍoom, and ʍoo, are quite as easy to pronounce as ʍist ʍip, or ʍale. Who is, however, very frequently made an exception by the best speakers of English, and pronounced “hoo.” The word lost its ʍ in the seventeenth century, and does not seem in a fair way to recover it.
Mr Ellis, so far as the writer is aware, is the only authority who has entered a protest against the modern conception of WH; and he gives it as his opinion that, from the earliest times, WH—whether mistaken for Hw or Hoo—has always been and still is, if rightly pronounced, WH.
This digraph is peculiar to the English language. English-speaking people differ in their manner of using it. In the south of England, it is seldom more than W; and which and what are pronounced “wich” and “wot.” The educated classes must, by courtesy, be supposed without the pale of this accusation. In the northern parts of England WH is decidedly more correctly used; in Scotland the pronunciation of it is perfect. In few cases would it be other than absurd to seek, out of England, for a criterion of English pronunciation; but this is one of the exceptions wherein the norm is best found north of the Tweed. Scotch H’s are harsh and grating, or like the H of HU (see page [37]), or akin to the results of those guttural spasms that attend the primiparous aspirate-labours of a reformed H-dropper; and the Scotch are known to wrongfully accuse Englishmen of dropping H’s, that in reality have been properly aspirated; but the Scotch neither exaggerate nor neglect the proper rendering of WH, and even their farm-labourers are worthy to be taken as models.[[13]] Whale, whelp, when, where, whole, are, in Scotland, distinctly and properly, ʍale, ʍelp, ʍen, ʍere, and ʍole. Notwithstanding this indisputable fact, the four varieties of Ogilvie’s excellent dictionary (the northern Scotchman’s lexical fetish) give “hwale,” “hwen,” &c., as being the received pronunciation. In so doing they agree with all contemporary productions of their kind. The rationale of the inversion is a mystery; but a clue to the cause of this and other errors-upon-precedent, would very probably be found to have Mr John Walker at one end of it and the conservative spirit of subsequent orthoepists at the other.
PERMUTATION.
The principles of reciprocal interchange of sounds, which are actively at work whenever new languages are coming into being, or old ones are splitting, or falling into decay, can only be adequately apprehended by obtaining a general but clear view of the entire scheme of philology. The annals of H would, however, be glaringly in default if no mention were made of its relations to foreign letters.
Philology is a modern science. Leibnitz rescued it from the domain of pure fancy; Sir William Jones supplied it with ground to work upon; Bopp (a great authority on ancient Aspirates), Pott, and a host of others, began to build. The Greeks had been impressed with the idea that their language came from their gods; this made the study of alien tongues appear unimportant; hence, Greek philological research ended where it began. Analogous convictions shut the gates of progress on the most civilized of the Shemitic races. The Romans, again, when seeking to discover the origin of tongues, looked eastward for inspiration; but they did not look far enough. Long generations of their successors burrowed, like moles, in the Plains of Shinar. Grimm came, and there was light. The name of this great German philosopher has become so inseparably associated with the sudden strides made by modern linguistic science, as to have raised him from the ranks of philological pioneers, and placed him—in popular estimation—at the head and front of the whole enterprise. Whatever be the exact degree of his merit as a discoverer or thinker, as a successful propagator of rational views he stands a colossus and a marvel. Labeled fragile by the sceptic, and dangerous by the orthodox, his theories out-lived both grimaces and frowns, and within a few years of their birth aroused Europe to the fact that a “Babel” had been, and still was, both within and around her; and, seemingly by miracle, they even succeeded in carrying conviction and recognition of a truth that confuted tradition, to the very centres of some of the ecclesiastical circles of the day. Grimm’s discoveries, while pointing out the slow but constant changes that languages undergo, showed also that all the languages of Europe and half those of Asia had sprung from a common origin—and that, not the Hebrew one dogmatically assigned to them by the Early Fathers. Fortunately for Grimm, he published in the beginning of the nineteenth century; had he been a contemporary of poor Galileo he might have been subjected to some inconvenience and censure.
Grimm—who, by-the-bye, was a bigoted patriot—devoted himself chiefly to an investigation of the Teutonic tongues, and to a study of the German language; but the result of his labours has shown the changes that sounds undergo when a word is being distributed among different peoples. The Law bearing his name is tabulated below:—
| Old Indo-European and Classic. | Introduced into Low German tongues (English, &c.) | In High German. |
|---|---|---|
| Aspirate sounds | become soft | hard |
| Soft „ | „ hard | Aspirate |
| Hard „ | „ Aspirate | soft |
These rules are not without exceptions, but, especially in the case of sounds that begin words, the exceptions are not numerous enough to nullify the rule.