Our blunted senses can no more realize the original delicacy of the appellative faculty, than they can attain to the keen perfection in which they still exist in the savage.—Lepsius.
Whatever opinion we have of the onomatopœia theory of the origin of language, so ably advocated by Farrar, Wedgwood, and Whitney, and so keenly ridiculed by Max Müller and others, it is impossible to deny that there is a natural relationship between thought and articulate sound,—in other words that certain sounds are the natural expression of certain sensations, and of mental states that are analogous to those sensations. All languages contain words which, in their very structure as composite sounds, more or less nearly resemble in quality, as soft or harsh, the sounds they designate. Such, in our language, are words representing animal sounds, as quack, cackle, roar, whinny, bellow, caw, croak, hiss, screech, etc.; words representing inarticulate human sounds, as laugh, cough, sob, shriek, whoop, etc.; sounds representing the collision of hard bodies, as clap, rap, tap, slap, etc.; sounds representing the collision of softer bodies, as dab, dub, thud, dub-a-dub; sounds representing motion through the air, as whizz, buzz, sough, etc.; sounds representing resonance, as clang, knell, ring, twang, etc.; and sounds representing the motion of liquids, as clash, splash, dash, etc.[27] Even the various degrees of intensity in sound are expressed by modifications of the vowels,—high notes being represented by i, low, broad sounds by a, and diminution by the change of a or o to i; while continuance is expressed by a reduplication of syllables, as in murmur, etc., and by the addition of r and l, as in grab, grapple, wrest, wrestle, crack, crackle, dab, dabble. Animals are often named, upon the same principle, from their cries, birds especially, as we see in whip-poor-will, cuckoo, crow, quail, curlew, chough, owl, peewit, turtle, and many others. Again, we find that, independently of all confusion between a word and its associations, words having a harsh signification generally have a rough, harsh form, while words that denote something soft and pleasing, or sweet and tender, seem to breathe the very sensation they describe. The various passions of men naturally find expression in different sounds. Anger, vehemence, gentleness, etc., have each a language, a style of utterance, peculiar to themselves. Love and sorrow prompt smooth, melodious expressions, while violent emotions express themselves in words that are hurried, abrupt and harsh.
Were further proof wanting of this connection between external sounds and the processes of the mind, it is supplied in the strongest form by the fact that the different languages of the earth are stamped with marks of predominant local influences,—of the climate, scenery, and other physical conditions amid which they have been evolved. Rousseau, a century ago, called attention to the fact that the languages of the rich and prodigal South, being the daughters of passion, are poetic and musical, while those of the North, the daughters of necessity, bear a trace of their hard origin, and express by rude sounds rude sensations. Who does not discern in the “soft and vowelled undersong” of the Italian the effect of a climate altogether different from that which has produced the stridulous, hirrient roughness of the German, the Dutch, and the Russian tongues? What but different geographical positions has made the language of the South-Sea Islanders so different from the dissonant clicks of the Hottentot, or the guttural polysyllables of the Cherokee? What other cause has made the language of the Tlascalans, the hardy and independent mountaineers dwelling in the high volcanic regions between Mexico and Vera Cruz, so much rougher than the polished Tezucan, or the popular dialect of the Aztecs, who are of the same family as the mountaineers? It is because the vocal organs, which are formed with exceeding delicacy, are affected by the most trifling physical influences, that English is spoken in Devonshire, England, with a splutter, and in Suffolk with an attenuated whine; that the language spoken in the northern counties is harsher than that spoken in the southern; and that in the mountainous regions we find a harsher dialect than we hear in the plains.
The manner in which words are formed by means of the imitations of natural sounds is illustrated by the word “cock” which is considered by etymologists to be an abbreviated imitation of chanticleer’s “cock-a-doodle-doo!” From the name of the animal, which is thus derived from its cry, and then generalized and made fruitful in derivatives, come, by allusion to the bird’s pride and strut, the words “coquette,” “cockade,” the “cock” of a gun, to “cock” one’s eye, to “cock” the head on one side, a “cocked” hat, a “cock” of hay, a “cock”-swain, a “cock”-boat, the “cock” of a balance, and so on. It is in all probability by this method more than by any other, that words were produced in all the earlier stages of language, while the interjectional or exclamatory principle was, doubtless, next in importance.
It is sometimes objected to the theory of the extensive use of onomatopœia in the formation of language, that, were it true, we should find in the different languages of the earth a greater identity than actually exists in the terms expressive of physical facts. We should not find words so unlike as “bang” in English and pouf in French, employed to denote the sound of a gun; or γρύλλοϛ in Greek, quirquirra in the Basque, and sirsor in Chinese, used as names for the grasshopper. Why, if the theory in question be true, do we find a clap of thunder called in Sanscrit vaǵraǵvala, in Gaelic tàirneanach, in Bohemian hromobitz, in Icelandic thruma? Why does Coleridge sing of the nightingale’s “murmurs musical and sweet jug-jug,” while Tennyson says that “Whit, whit, whit, in the bush beside me, chirrupt the nightingale”?
The answer to this is, that man in naming things does not attempt to reproduce the identical sound which he hears, but artistically to reproduce it, or rather the impression which it has made, just as a painter often deviates from the actual colors of nature, and paints a picture more or less ideal, to enhance the effect of his art. The imitation is not a dull, literal echo of the sound, but an echo of the impression produced by it on the human intelligence; not a mere spontaneous repercussion of the perception received, but a repercussion modified organically by the configurations of the mouth, and ideally by the nature of the analogy perceived between the sound and the object it expresses.[28] These repercussions, moreover, have been greatly blurred by the lapse of ages,—so much so, in many cases, as to be indistinguishable. Again, we must remember that the impressions made by the same sounds on different minds, and even on the same mind in different moods, will greatly vary; and that in naming objects from other characteristics than the sound, different characteristics are chosen by different peoples. According to the mental constitution, the preponderance of reason or imagination, for example, in the name-giver, or particular experiences in connection with the object, the designating quality which is deemed most fit to furnish the name for it will vary. Thus it happens that in Sanscrit there is a great variety of names for the elephant, such as the “hand-possessing” animal, the “toothed,” the “two-tusked,” the “great-toothed,” the “pounder,” the “roarer,” the “forest-roarer,” the “mailed,” the “twice-drinking,” the “mountain-born,” the “vagabond,” and many others. Thus it happens that in Arabic there are five hundred names for the lion, two hundred for the serpent, and not less than a thousand for the sword. The nightingale is said to have twenty distinct articulations; and if this is true, we should expect that in the different languages of Europe it would have different names. The old poets all speak of the nightingale’s song as “most melancholy,” but in modern verse we read of
“the merry nightingale
That crowds and hurries and precipitates
With fast thick warble its delicious notes.”
So with thunder; the impression it makes upon hearers varies with the varying qualities of their minds. To one man it is a dull rumble, to another a crackling explosion, and to a third a sudden flashing of light. As Archdeacon Farrar finely says: “What the eye sees and the ear hears depends in no small measure on the brain and the heart. The hieroglyphics of nature, like the inscriptions on the swords of Vathek, vary with every eye that glances on them; her voices, like the voice of Helen to the ambushed Greeks, take not one tone of their own, but the tone that each hearer loves best to hear.”[29]