But it may be objected that if we admit such latitude to the use of onomatopœia in the formation of language, we should find among all languages a much greater identity than actually exists in the terms expressive of physical facts. This by no means follows. We have already seen that words express the relations of things, and the relations of things are almost infinite, and especially must they have been so to the delicate senses of the youthful world. Let us take the instance of the thunder: the impression produced by it is by no means single and distinct. To one man it may appear like a dull rumble, to another like a sudden crackling explosion, and to a third as a breaking forth of flashing light. Hence come a multitude of names. Adelung professed to have collected 353 imitative appellations from the European languages alone; and it is not difficult to see that a similar[114] principle was at work in the Chinese ley (pronounced rey), the Greenland kallak, and the Mexican tlatlatnitzel. Similarly, “the explosion of a gun which an English boy imitates by the exclamation Bang-fire, is represented in French by Pouf! The neighing of a horse is expressed by the French hennir; Italian, nitrire; Spanish, rinchar, relinchar; German, wiehern; Swedish, wrena, wrenska; Dutch, runniken, ginniken, brieschen, words in which it is difficult to see a glimpse of resemblance, although we can hardly doubt that they all take their rise in the attempt at direct[115] representation of the same sound.” In the same way, no one will deny that “ding-dong,” and the word “bilbil,” to ring, in the Galla language, are onomatopœians to represent the sound of a bell, and yet the two have hardly an element in common.
It has been noticed that birds are often named on this principle; as night-jar, whip-poor-will, cock, cuckoo, crow, crane, crake, quail, curlew, jay, chough, owl, turtle, &c.; and where the bird has one very marked cry we find a great similarity in the names by which it is known. Take for instance the peetwit,[116] Scandinavian pee-weip, tee-whoap; French, dishuit; Dutch, kiewit; German, kiebitz; Swedish, kowipa. But we should not expect this to be the case when a bird has a great variety of different sounds. The nightingale, according to Bechstein, has twenty distinct articulations, and it is therefore not surprising that even in the European languages it is known under widely different names. And besides names which are derived from its song (e.g. bulbul), it might be called from some other attribute entirely distinct from this, as perhaps in the Latin name luscinia; although, if this be the case, it is interesting to see how imitation asserts its prerogative in the modern names[117] usignuolo (Italian), ruyseñol (Spanish), rossignol (French), rousinol (Portuguese), which are probably corruptions of the diminutive lusciniola, used by Plautus.
In some cases an onomatopœian root is so natural as to run through all families of languages; e.g. the root lh or lk to imitate the sound and action of licking, as Hebrew לָחַךְ; Arabic, lahika; Syriac, lah; λείχω, lingo, ligurio, lingua, leccare, lechen, lécher; it is the same with the roots grf to express gripping, kr to express crying, and many others. The practice is, however (as we have already remarked), far more prominent in the Semitic than in the Indo-European family, and this is the cause of the extraordinary richness of synonyms in Hebrew and Arabic for the expression of natural objects. It is said that in Arabic there are 500 names for the lion, 200 for the serpent, more than eighty for honey, 400 for sorrow, and (what is quite incredible unless every periphrasis be counted a name) no less than 1,000 for a sword. M. de Hammer, an unimpeachable authority, has, in a little treatise on the subject, counted also 5,744 words relating to the camel. The ancient Saxon is said to have had fifteen words for the sea; and if we allowed merely poetical expressions like “the blue,” we might say the same of modern English.
Wide dialectic variety naturally results from a nomadic life; and it is easy to see how this extraordinary exuberance of primitive language, and the uncontrolled rapidity with which it exercised its powers of nomenclature, would tend, while writing and literature were as yet unknown, to make mutually unintelligible the language of different tribes.[118] This confusion of speech would, of course, be the most powerful impediment in the course of ambition, and would tend to defeat the attempts to construct and perpetuate a universal empire. It may have been the providential agent to assert for the human race, “a nobler destiny than to become the footstool of a few families.” This is strikingly shadowed forth in the Scripture narrative of the builders of Babel, which many competent authorities have considered as applicable to only a single family of nations, and have regarded in the light rather of “a sublime emblem, than of a material verity.”
The confusion of tongues is not represented in Scripture as a punishment,[119] but as the providential prevention of an arrogant attempt to establish among mankind a spurious centre of unity. It seems to have frustrated the lawless thirst for power which actuated the tribe of Nimrod.[120] But even if regarded as a punishment, God’s punishments are but blessings in disguise. The dispersion of nations has acted as a stimulant to the powers of humanity, and has been the direct cause of a beneficial variety in thought and action; and in the same way the diversity of languages has proved to be (as we shall see hereafter) an indisputable advantage, by adding fresh lustre continually to those conceptions which by long habit become pale and dim. Yet this dispersion and diversity is but the accident of a fallen state, and in the renovated earth—(though it can never be while nations are in their present condition)—all men will perhaps speak the same perfect[121] universal speech.
There are two totally distinct points from which an imitative root can take its origin. The first is from an artistic reproduction of the sounds of the outer world; the second is from the expressions of fear or anger, of disgust or joy, which the impression of any event or spectacle may call forth in the human being. The first of these elements is the onomatopœic; the second, the interjectional. These two sources have not been kept sufficiently clear and distinct, and the latter especially has been by many philologists entirely overlooked. We will proceed to make some remarks on both. The instances which we shall select might be almost indefinitely extended, and even were they less numerous we might perhaps be allowed to use the words of President de Brosses, “La preuve connue d’un grand nombre de mots d’une espèce doit établir une précepte générale sur les autres mots de même espèce, à l’origine desquels on ne peut plus remonter.”
As instances of the words which have arisen from the interjectional element, i.e. from the sounds whereby we express natural emotions, we may mention the large group of words that spring from the root “ach,” ah! oh! as utterances of pain, as ἄχος, ἀχέω, achen, ache; or from the sound of groaning, as væ, wehe, woe, wail; or from an expression of disgust, as putere (Fr. puer), foul, fulsome; or from smacking the lips with pleasure, as γλύκυς, dulcis, geschmack, &c. This latter class is very widely extended, even in the Semitic languages, as we have already shown in the case of the root lk (see [p. 84]). From the expression of disgust and fear, we get awe, ugly, ἀγάομαι, ἀγάζομαι and their cognates; from shuddering, the roots of φρίσσω, bristle, hérisser, &c.; from the first sounds of infancy, we get babe, bambino, babble, and many more; from sounds of anger, “huff,” and others; lastly, from “prut,” a sound of arrogance, we get the word “proud,” “pride,” as in German, “trotzig,” haughty, from “trotz,”[122] an interjection of defiance and contempt.
The other class of onomatopœias is far more extensive, and embraces the widest possible range of inanimate sounds. They may be ranged under the following heads; and although the examples are all taken from the[123]English language, they might be paralleled in almost any other.
1. Animal sounds, as quack, cackle, roar, neigh, whinny, bellow, mew, pur, croak, caw, chatter, bark, yelp, &c.
2. Inarticulate human sounds, as laugh, cough, sob, sigh, moan, shriek, yawn, whoop, weep, &c.