CHAPTER V
PHONETIC ACCIDENTS
The history of a word has to be studied from the double point of view of sound and sense, or, to use more technical terms, phonetics and semantics. In the logical order of things it seems natural to deal first with the less interesting aspect, phonetics, the physical processes by which sounds are gradually transformed. Speaking generally, it may be said that phonetic changes are governed by the law of least resistance, a sound which presents difficulty being gradually and unconsciously modified by a whole community or race. With the general principles of phonetics I do not propose to deal, but a few simple examples will serve to illustrate the one great law on which this science is based.
The population of this country is educationally divided by the letter h into three classes, which we may describe as the confident, the anxious, and the indifferent. The same division existed in imperial Rome, where educated people sounded the aspirate, which completely disappeared from the every-day language of the lower classes, the so-called Vulgar Latin, from which the Romance languages are descended, so far as their working vocabulary is concerned. The anxious class was also represented. A Latin epigrammatist[42] remarks that since Arrius, prophetic name, has visited the Ionic islands, they will probably be henceforth known as the Hionic islands. To the disappearance of the h from Vulgar Latin is due the fact that the Romance languages have no aspirate. French still writes the initial h in some words by etymological reaction, e.g., homme for Old Fr. ome, and also at one time really had an aspirate in the case of words of Germanic origin, e.g., la honte, shame. But this h is no longer sounded, although it still, by tradition, prevents elision and liaison, mistakes in which are regarded much in the same way as a misplaced aspirate in English. The "educated" h of modern English is largely an artificial restoration; cf. the modern hotel-keeper with the older word ostler (see p. [164]), or the family name Armitage with the restored hermitage.
PHONETIC LAZINESS
We have dropped the k sound in initial kn, as in knave, still sounded in Ger. Knabe, boy. French gets over the difficulty by inserting a vowel between the two consonants, e.g., canif is a Germanic word cognate with Eng. knife. This is a common device in French when a word of Germanic origin begins with two consonants. Cf. Fr. dérive, drift, Eng. drive; Fr. varech, sea-weed, Eng. wrack. Harangue, formerly harengue, is Old High Ger. hring, Eng. ring, the allusion being to the circle formed by the audience. Fr. chenapan, rogue, is Ger. Schnapphahn, robber, lit. fowl-stealer. The shallop that "flitteth silken-sail'd, skimming down to Camelot," is Fr. chaloupe, probably identical with Du. sloep, sloop.
The general dislike that French has for a double consonant sound at the beginning of a word appears also in the transformation of all Latin words which began with sc, sp, st, e.g., scola > escole (école), spongia > esponge (éponge), stabulum > estable (étable). English words derived from French generally show the older form, but without the initial vowel, school, sponge, stable.
The above are very simple examples of sound change. There are certain less regular changes, which appear to work in a more arbitrary fashion and bring about more picturesque results. Three of the most important of these are assimilation, dissimilation, and metathesis.