[15] What he says about the tongue performing no part in the formation of the vowels is manifestly false, as any one may convince himself by pronouncing the three sounds, au, ai, ee, successively, with open mouth before a mirror. He will thus observe a gradual elevation and advance of the tongue, as the sound to be emitted becomes more slender.
[16] This limitation must be carefully borne in mind; for after Athens ceased to be a capital, being overwhelmed by Alexandria, it still remained a sort of literary metropolis, giving, or affecting to give, the law in matters of taste, long after its authority had ceased practically to bind large masses of those whose usage fashioned the existing language.
[17] In some English schools a small concession has been made to common sense, and to sound principles of teaching, by confining the long slender sound of a to the long α, while the short α is pronounced like the short a in bat. Now, as changes are not easily made in England, especially among schoolmasters, who are a stiff-necked generation everywhere, it would have been worth while when they were moving, to kick the barbarous English a out of the scholastic world altogether. But their conservatism was too strong for this; besides, the ears of many were so gross that they would not have distinguished, or would have sworn that they could not distinguish, a long a from a short one, without giving the former the sound of an entirely distinct vowel! There is no limit to the nonsense that men will talk in defence of an inveterate absurdity.
[18] The following passage from Mitford (Pennington, p. 37) may stand here as an instructive lesson, how blindly prejudice many sometimes speak: “Strong national partiality only, and determined habit, could lead to the imagination cherished by the French critics, that the Greek υ was a sound so unpleasant, produced by a position of the lips so ungraceful as the French u.”—History, book ii. sec. iii., note. Scaliger (Opuscula: Paris, 1610, p. 131) says rightly, “Est obscurissimus sonus in Græca vocali υ, quæ ita pronuntianda est ut proxime accedat ad iota.”
[19] “Utut sit, id saltem nacti sumus interpretum S. sc. singularum atque omnium auctoritate ut constet ai mature atque optimis adeo Græcorum temporibus simplici vocali e respondisse.”—Seyffarth, p. 101. See also the Stanza from Callimachus, where ναίχι echoes to ἔχει, Epig. xxx. 5, (and Sextus Empiricus adv. Grammat. c. 5.)
[20] “Quâ potestate literæ ei fuerint eâ Græcorum ætate in quam veteres Sc. s. interpretes incidunt ex plurimis iisque variis verbis in singulas linguas conversis adeo clarum est ut nulla fere restet causa de eâ dubitare.”— Seyffarth. The Old Testament translators, in fact, use it as regularly forHirek and Yod, as they do ai for Tzere, Segol, and Sheva.
[21] With regard to this sort of evidence arising from wrong spelt words, it is manifest that a single example proves nothing. When Aunt Chloe, for instance, in the American novel, says, “I’m clar on’t,” this is no proof that the Americans pronounce the ea in clear like a; the only conclusion is, that certain vulgar people in America pronounce it so, and a word with a different vocalization must be written in order to express their peculiar method of utterance. But when mistakes of this kind occur extensively, and in quarters where there is no reason to suspect anything particularly vulgar, they authorize a conclusion as general as the fact, especially where no evidence exists pointing in a different direction.
[22] Thiersch uses the passage as a proof of the antiquity of the modern slender sound.—Sprachlehre, § 16, 5.
[23] Godofredi Hermani de emendenda ratione Græcæ grammaticæ, Lib. i. c. 2, quoted at length by Liscov, p. 21.
[24] On revisal it strikes me I have given the enemies of Itacism an unfair advantage by not stating, that, while in any other language the attenuation of so many different sounds into one, might have proved a very grievous evil, there is such a richness of the full sound of α (which the English have effaced) and ω in Greek, that the blemish rarely offends. I have to mention also, that, while a certain prominence even of this slender sound seems necessary to the phonetic character of Greek, as distinguished from Latin, I have no objection, in reading Homer and the elder poets, (were it only for the sake of the often quoted πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης!) to pronounce οι, as boy in English, and η, as we do it in Scotland; just as in reading Chaucer we may be forced to adopt some of the peculiarities of the pronunciation of his day. But in the common use of the prose language, I think it safer to stick by the tradition of so many centuries, than to venture on patches of classical restoration, where it is impossible to revive a consistent whole. I may say also, that if υ be pronounced uniformly like the French u, the itacism will be diminished by one letter, while the difference between that and the modern Greek pronunciation is so slight, that a Scotchman so speaking in Athens will be generally understood, whereas our broad Scotch u (oo) besides being entirely without classical authority, recedes so far from the actual pronunciation of the Greeks, as to be a serious bar in the way of intelligibility.