[279]. (Charles de Brosses) ‘Traité de la Formation Mécanique des Langues, &c.’ Paris, An. ix., vol. i. p. 238; vol. ii. p. 313. Lazarus and Steinthal, ‘Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie,’ &c., vol. i. p. 421. Heyse, ‘System der Sprachwissenschaft,’ p. 73. Farrar, ‘Chapters on Language,’ p. 202.
[280]. Similar sounds are used to command silence, to stop speaking as well as to stop going. English husht! whist! hist! Welsh ust! French chut! Italian zitto! Swedish tyst! Russian st’! and the Latin st! so well described in the curious old line quoted by Mr. Farrar, which compares it with the gesture of the finger on the lips:—
‘Isis, et Harpocrates digito qui significat st!’
This group of interjections, again, has not been proved to be in use outside Aryan limits.
[281]. Catlin, ‘North American Indians,’ vol. i. pp. 221, 39, 151, 162. Bailey in ‘Tr. Eth. Soc.,’ vol. ii. p. 318. Job xxvii. 23. (The verb shârak also signifies to call by a hiss, ‘and he will hiss unto them from the end of the earth, and behold, they shall come with speed,’ Is. v. 26; Jer. xix. 8.) Alcock, ‘The Capital of the Tycoon,’ vol. i. p. 394. Cook, ‘2nd Voy.’ vol. ii. p. 36. Casalis, ‘Basutos,’ p. 234.
[282]. Wedgwood, ‘Origin of Language,’ p. 83, ‘Dictionary,’ Introd. p. xlix. and s.v. ‘foul.’ Prof. Max Müller, ‘Lectures,’ 2nd series, p. 92, protests against the indiscriminate derivation of words directly from such cries and interjections, without the intervention of determinate roots. As to the present topic, he points out that Latin pus, putridus, Gothic fuls, English foul, follow Grimm’s law as if words derived from a single root. Admitting this, however, the question has to be raised, how far pure interjections and their direct derivatives, being self-expressive and so to speak living sounds, are affected by phonetic changes such as that of Grimm’s law, which act on articulate sounds no longer fully expressive in themselves, but handed down by mere tradition. Thus p and f occur in one and the same dialect in interjections of disgust and aversion, puh! fi! being used in Venice or Paris, just as similar sounds would be in London. In tracing this group of words from early Aryan forms, it must also be noticed that Sanskrit is a very imperfect guide, for its alphabet has no f, and it can hardly give the rule in this matter to languages possessing both p and f, and thus capable of nicer appreciation of this class of interjections.
[283]. Mpongwe punjina; Basuto foka; Carib phoubäe; Arawac appüdün (ignem sufflare). Other cases are given by Wedgwood, ‘Or. of Lang.’ p. 83.
[284]. See Wedgwood, ‘Dic.’ Introd. p. viii.
[285]. See Wedgwood, Dic., s.v. ‘mum,’ &c.
[286]. Bates, ‘Naturalist on the Amazons,’ 2nd ed., p. 404; Markham in ‘Tr. Eth. Soc.,’ vol. iii. p. 143.