Lectures on the Science of Language

by F. Max Müller

He received the clear and straightforward answer,

Bow-wow!

This, no doubt, was as good as the most eloquent conversation on the same subject between an Englishman and a French waiter. But I doubt whether it deserves the name of language. We do not speak of a bow-wow, but of a dog. We speak of a cow, not of a moo. Of a lamb, not of a baa. It is the same in more ancient languages, such as Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. If this principle of Onomatopoieia is applicable anywhere, it would be in the formation of the names of animals. Yet we listen in vain for any similarity between goose and cackling, hen and clucking, duck and quacking, sparrow and chirping, dove and cooing, hog and grunting, cat and mewing, between dog and barking, yelping, snarling, or growling.

There are of course some names, such as cuckoo, which are clearly formed by an imitation of sound. But words of this kind are, like artificial flowers, without a root. They are sterile, and are unfit to express anything beyond the one object which they imitate. If you remember the variety of derivatives that could be formed from the root spac, to see, you will at once perceive the difference between the fabrication of such a word as cuckoo, and the true natural growth of words.

Let us compare two words such as cuckoo and raven. Cuckoo in English is clearly a mere imitation of the cry of that bird, even more so than the corresponding terms in Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin. In these languages the imitative element has received the support of a derivative suffix; we have kokila in Sanskrit, and kokkyx in Greek, cuculus in Latin.[330] Cuckoo is, in fact, a modern word, which has taken the place [pg 362] of the Anglo-Saxon geac, the German Gauch, and, being purely onomatopoëtic, it is of course not liable to the changes of Grimm's Law. As the word cuckoo predicates nothing but the sound of a particular bird, it could never be applied for expressing any general quality in which other animals might share; and the only derivatives to which it might give rise are words expressive of a metaphorical likeness with the bird. The same applies to cock, the Sanskrit kukkuṭa. Here, too, Grimm's Law does not apply, for both words were intended to convey merely the cackling sound of the bird; and, as this intention continued to be felt, phonetic change was less likely to set in. The Sanskrit kukkuṭa is not derived from any root, it simply repeats the cry of the bird, and the only derivatives to which it gives rise are metaphorical expressions, such as the French coquet, originally strutting about like a cock; coquetterie; cocart, conceited; cocarde, a cockade; coquelicot, originally a cock's comb, then the wild red poppy, likewise so called from its similarity with a cock's comb.

Let us now examine the word raven. It might seem at first, as if this also was merely onomatopoëtic. Some people imagine they perceive a kind of similarity between the word raven and the cry of that bird. This seems still more so if we compare the Anglo-Saxon hrafn, the German Rabe, Old High-German hraban. The Sanskrit kârava also, the Latin corvus, and the Greek korōnē, all are supposed to show some similarity with the unmelodious sound of Maître Corbeau. But as soon as we analyze the word we find that it is of a different structure from cuckoo or cock. It is derived from a root which has a general predicative [pg 363] power. The root ru or kru is not a mere imitation of the cry of the raven; it embraces many cries, from the harshest to the softest, and it might have been applied to the nightingale as well as to the raven. In Sanskrit this root exists as ru, a verb which is applied to the murmuring sound of rivers as well as to the barking of dogs and the mooing of cows. From it are derived numerous words in Sanskrit. In Latin we find raucus, hoarse; rumor, a whisper; in German rûnen, to speak low, and runa, mystery. The Latin lamentum stands for an original ravimentum or cravimentum. This root ru has several secondary forms, such as the Sanskrit rud, to cry; the Latin rug in rugire, to howl; the Greek kru or klu, in klaiō, klausomai; the Sanskrit kruś, to shout; the Gothic hrukjan, to crow, and hropjan, to cry; the German rufen. Even the common Aryan word for hearing is closely allied to this root. It is śru in Sanskrit, klyō in Greek, cluo in Latin; and before it took the recognized meaning of hearing, it meant to sound, to ring. When a noise was to be heard in a far distance, the man who first perceived it might well have said I ring, for his ears were sounding and ringing; and the same verb, if once used as a transitive, expressed exactly what we mean by I hear a noise.

You will have perceived thus that the process which led to the formation of the word kârava in Sanskrit is quite distinct from that which produced cuckoo. Kârava[331] means a shouter, a caller, a crier. It might [pg 364] have been applied to many birds; but it became the traditional and recognized name for the crow. Cuckoo could never mean anything but the cuckoo, and while a word like raven has ever so many relations from a rumor down to a row, cuckoo stands by itself like a stick in a living hedge.

It is curious to observe how apt we are to deceive ourselves when we once adopt this system of Onomatopoieia. Who does not imagine that he hears in the word “thunder” an imitation of the rolling and rumbling noise which the old Germans ascribed to their God Thor playing at nine-pins? Yet thunder is clearly the same word as the Latin tonitru. The root is tan, to stretch. From this root tan, we have in Greek tonos, our tone, tone being produced by the stretching and vibrating of cords. In Sanskrit the sound thunder is expressed by the same root tan, but in the derivatives tanyu, tanyatu, and tanayitnu, thundering, we perceive no trace of the rumbling noise which we imagined we perceived in the Latin tonitru and the English thunder. The very same root tan, to stretch, yields some derivatives which are anything but rough and noisy. The English tender, the French tendre, the Latin tener, are derived from it. Like tenuis, the Sanskrit tanu, the English thin, tener meant originally what was extended over a larger surface, then thin, then delicate. The relationship betwixt tender, thin, and thunder would be hard to establish if the original conception of thunder had really been its rumbling noise.

Who does not imagine that he hears something sweet in the French sucre, sucré? Yet sugar came from India, and it is there called śarkhara, which is anything [pg 365] but sweet sounding. This śarkhara is the same word as sugar; it was called in Latin saccharum, and we still speak of saccharine juice, which is sugar juice.

In squirrel again some people imagine they hear something of the rustling and whirling of the little animal. But we have only to trace the name back to Greek, and there we find that skiouros is composed of two distinct words, the one meaning shade, the other tail; the animal being called shade-tail by the Greeks.