[37.] DOUBLETS FROM DIALECTS AND OTHER SOURCES.—Besides the doublets due to Norman-French influences, there are many interesting cases which may be referred to. Some are evidently due to differences of dialect. The English language grew up from different centres, which had little or no connection with each other, on account of the difficulties of travelling. Hence a word would take different forms in different dialects—like church in the south of the English-speaking country, and kirk in the north; so also with cole, of which the northern form is kail. Sometimes one word is merely a later and modified form of another, as draw of drag. In all cases doublets are forms of the same word, which have come through different experiences of place, or time, or other influence. In short, they should be recognised as really one word, with a difference in spelling and meaning, resulting from its history. Other specimens of doublets are down and dune; shriek and screech; shell and scale; wagon and wain.
[38.] PRONUNCIATION.—The Norman-French refined our mode of speaking; made the existing vowel-sounds less coarse; gave us some new vowel-sounds; and, above all, taught us to give up most of our rough throat-sounds or gutturals. They gradually turned out the gutturals from the beginning of words; and genoh became enough, and gif, if. They turned them out of the middle of words; and nagel became nail, and hagel, hail. They got rid of them at the ends of words; and we no longer pronounce the guttural in flight, might, right, and sight. This is all the more absurd and remarkable that we write the sound that once was there with two strong gutturals, g and h. Sometimes the influence of the Norman-French was to turn the guttural into a kind of hissing sound or sibilant; and it is in this way that we came to say teach, beseech, and catch. But the ch in these words comes back to its older use, and becomes a gh again, in the past tense—in taught, besought, and caught.
[39.] LATIN OF THE FOURTH PERIOD.—The Latin introduced into our language by the Norman-French was a spoken Latin. It was the Latin of the ear and mouth. It was the everyday speech of the people; and underwent very great change. The Latin introduced into our language by learned men was a written or printed Latin. It was the Latin of the eye and pen. This Latin is called the Latin of the Fourth Period; and it was brought into our language by a powerful movement known as the Revival of Learning.—When the Turks took Constantinople in 1453, the learned Greeks of that capital fled from the city, carrying with them their precious manuscript copies of Greek and Latin writers. They fled into Italy, into Germany, and into France and England. They taught Greek and Latin in the universities of these countries; and very soon the study of Greek and Latin became the fashion among all persons of leisure; and the stores of thought and beauty in Homer and Sophocles, in Virgil and Horace, were diligently studied and appropriated. Queen Elizabeth was a good Greek scholar, and could both speak and write good Latin. Now began to come into our language thousands of Latin words; until, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, an eminent writer complains that Englishmen will have ‘to learn Latin to understand English, and a work will prove of equal facility in either.’ Unlike the Latin words of the Third Period, the Latin words introduced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries suffered little or no change. They were transferred from Latin books just as they were—by the accurate aid of the hand and eye, and underwent no process of change or corruption. The Latin opinio became opinion; notio, notion; suggestio, suggestion; separatum, separate; iteratum, iterate; and so on. It would be a great mistake, however, to suppose that all the Latin of this Fourth Period came directly from the Latin. Most of it came through the medium of French, as did the Latin of the Third Period; but unlike it, it was not the language of the people. In French, as in English, it was the language merely of books, of the literary and of learned men.—It is worthy of notice that many words which we use every day, and which we think must always have been in the language, only came in about this period, and are therefore comparatively new. Thus Mr Gill, the high-master of St Paul’s School in 1619, and the teacher of John Milton in his boyhood, complains of the introduction of words which are now quite common to all of us. He says: ‘O harsh lips! I now hear all around me such words as common, vices, envy, malice; even virtue, study, justice, pity, mercy, compassion, profit, commodity, colour, grace, favour, acceptance.’ The wonder nowadays would be how we could possibly get on without these words, and how we could ever have done without them.
[40.] MOUTH LATIN AND BOOK LATIN.—The introduction of Latin words into our English speech by two doors—by the living conversation of living people, and by the silent door of books, has given rise to a phenomenon of the same kind as that described in section 36. But the phenomenon of duplicates or doublets presents itself to our notice on a much larger scale now; and, in every case, the duplicate word becomes in reality two separate words—employed for separate purposes, and with perfectly distinct meanings. Thus, though legal, leal, and loyal are, in their origin, fundamentally the same word, their meanings are perfectly distinct and even widely different; hospital and hotel are the same words, but they are no longer used in the same sense; while fact and feat have also widely diverged from each other in use and in signification. The Latin words that have come from the Latin language by the path of books, have kept their Latin shape, and may be called Book Latin. The Latin words that have come to us by the path of Norman-French have undergone great alterations; and they may be called spoken Latin. The chief process of alteration undergone by them is that of squeezing; three syllables have generally been squeezed into two. The following is a list:
DUPLICATE WORDS OR DOUBLETS.
Notes.—Benison is the opposite of malison. A caitiff was a person who allowed himself to be taken captive. A feat of arms was a fact or deed of arms; hence a feat par excellence. The hard guttural c in fabric has become a sibilant g in forge, by Nor. Fr. influence. The g in fragile was originally hard. Major is a greater captain; a mayor is a greater alderman. Orison may be compared with benison, poison, reason, and treason. The p in separate has become a v in sever; both letters being labials. The cutting down of the five syllables in superficies into two in surface, is the most remarkable instance of compression in the whole list.
Many of the Book Latin words in the above list, such as captive, debit, defect, fact, &c., were borrowed directly from the Latin, and not through the medium of French books.
[41.] GREEK DOUBLETS.—The same phenomenon has also taken place with reference to Greek words. It is of course the newer form of these words that was given us by the revival of learning; the older forms may have existed in the language since the coming of Augustine in the end of the sixth century.
| Greek. | Older form. | Newer form. |
| Adamas, | adamant, | diamond. |
| Asphodĕlos, | asphodel, | daffodil. |
| Balsamon, | balsam, | balm. |
| Blasphemein, | blaspheme, | blame. |
| Cheirourgos, | chirurgeon, | surgeon. |
| Dactŭlos (a finger), | date (the fruit), | dactyl. |
| Phantasia, | fancy, | phantasy. |
| Phantasma, | phantasm, | phantasy. |
| Presbutĕros, | priest, | presbyter. |
| Paralysis, | palsy, | paralysis. |
| Scandalon, | slander, | scandal. |