Henry Sweet

“ The German orthography is comparatively phonetic: it has hardly any silent letters, and it generally has one symbol for each sound, each symbol having only one value, the exceptions falling under a few simple rules, which are easily remembered. There are other languages which have still more phonetic orthographies, such as Spanish, Welsh and Finnish. But even the best of them are not perfect: even when they are not actually misleading, they are always inadequate. On the other hand, no system of writing is wholly unphonetic. ”

“ A standard spoken language is, strictly speaking, an abstraction. No two speakers of standard English pronounce exactly alike. And yet they all have something in common in every sound they utter. There are some divergences, some peculiarities of pronunciation, which pass unnoticed, while others, less considerable perhaps in themselves, are at once felt as archaisms, vulgarisms or provincial isms, as the case may be, by the majority of educated speakers. ”

“ The history of Volapük has an interest greater than that of the language itself. It has proved (1) that people in general are ready to adopt an artificial language, and (2) that an artificial language is easier to learn than any national language, and supplies an efficient means of communication between those who have no other language in common. ”

“ The dictionary, as far as it was worked out by Grimm himself, may be described as a collection of disconnected antiquarian essays of high value.
Grimm’s scientific character is notable for its combination of breadth and unity. He was as far removed from the narrowness of the specialist who has no ideas, no sympathies beyond some one author, period or corner of science, as from the shallow dabbler who feverishly attempts to master the details of half-a-dozen discordant pursuits. Even within his own special studies there is the same wise concentration ”

“ Some govern both accusative and dative, such as ofer (over) , on (on, in) , under (under) . The general rule is that when motion is implied they take the accusative, when rest is implied, the dative. Thus on with the accusative signifies 'into,' with the dative 'in.' But this rule is not strictly followed, and we often find the accusative used with verbs of rest, as in hē his hūs ġe·timbrode ofer stān (he built his house on a rock) , and conversely, the dative with verbs of motion, as in hīe fēollon on stǣnihte (they fell on stony ground) . ”

“ But how the ear transmits to the brain the impression of sound is still a mystery. Again, although the mechanism of the vowel is clear enough, there is still no generally received acoustic theory of its formation. In fact, from the physical science point of view there is as yet no science of phonetics.
The real function of phonetics is philological and literary. The only sound basis of a theoretical knowledge of phonetics is the practical mastery of a limited number of sounds—that is to say, of the sounds which are already familiar to the learner in his own language. ”

“ It gets rid of the German word-order and the irregularities of German grammar, but it is often impossible to understand a Volapük text without thinking in German. The following is a specimen of the language:—
Löfob kemenis valik vola lolik, patiko etis pekulivöl, kels konfidoms Volapüke, as bale medas gletikün netasfetana.
“I love all my fellow-creatures of the whole world, especially those cultivated (ones) who believe in Volapük as (being) one of the greatest means of nation-binding.” ”

“ The gender is partly natural, partly {8}grammatical. By the natural gender names of male beings, such as se mann (the man) , are masculine; of female beings, such as sēo dohtor (the daughter) , are feminine; and of young creatures, such as þæt ċild (the child) , neuter. Note, however, that þæt wīf (woman) is neuter.
Grammatical gender is known only by the gender of the article and other words connected with the noun, and, to some extent, by its form. Thus all nouns ending in -a, such as se mōna (moon) , are masculine, sēo sunne (sun) being feminine. ”

“ But from this centre his investigations were pursued in every direction as far as his unerring instinct of healthy limitation would allow. He was equally fortunate in the harmony that subsisted between his intellectual and moral nature. He made cheerfully the heavy sacrifices that science demands from its disciples, without feeling any of that envy and bitterness which often torment weaker natures; and although he lived apart from his fellow men, he was full of human sympathies, and no man has ever exercised a profounder influence on the destinies of mankind. ”

“ The preterite subjunctive is often expressed by should and would with an infinitive, as in Modern English.
Scolde is used after verbs of desiring, requesting and commanding:—biddende þone Ælmihtigan þæt hē him ārian scolde (praying the Almighty to have mercy on him) . In the following example the verb of commanding is understood from the noun ǣrende:—hē sęnde tō þæm cyninge bēotlic ǣrende, þæt hē ā·būgan scolde tō his mannrǣdenne, ġif hē his fēores rōhte (he sent to the king an arrogant message, that he was to turn to his allegiance, if he cared about his life) . ”

“ The advantages of beginning a foreign language in a phonetic notation are many and obvious. In the first place, the learner who has once mastered the notation and learnt to pronounce the sounds the letters stand for, is able to read off at once any text that is presented to him without doubt or hesitation, and without having to burden his memory with rules of pronunciation and spelling. Another advantage of phonetic spelling is that when the learner sees the words written in a representation of their actual spoken form he is able to recognize them at once when he hears them. ”

“ Although by the introduction of the Code Napoléon into Westphalia Grimm’s legal studies were made practically barren, he never lost his interest in the scientific study of law and national institutions, as the truest exponents of the life and character of a people. ”

“ From a more theoretical point of view phonetics is, in the first place, the science of linguistic observation. Without phonetic training the dialectologist, and the missionary who is confronted with a hitherto unwritten language, can neither observe fully nor record accurately the phenomena with which they have to deal. These investigations have greatly widened the scope of the science of language. The modern philologist no longer despises colloquial and illiterate forms of speech. ”

“ Wilhelm’s character was a complete contrast to that of his brother. As a boy he was strong and healthy, but as he grew up he was attacked by a long and severe illness, which left him weak all his life. His was a less comprehensive and energetic mind than that of his brother, and he had less of the spirit of investigation, preferring to confine himself to some limited and definitely bounded field of work ”

“ The importance of Grimm’s generalization in the history of philology cannot be overestimated, and even the mystic completeness and symmetry of its formulation, although it has proved a hindrance to the correct explanation of the causes of the changes, was well calculated to strike the popular mind, and give it a vivid idea of the paramount importance of law, and the necessity of disregarding mere superficial resemblance. ”

“ The inventor has taken great pains to reduce the number of his roots to a minimum; there are 2642 of them in his dictionary, the Universala Vortaro (from Ger. Wort, “word”) , which does not include such international words as poezio, telefono; these the learner is supposed to recognize and form without help. The most eccentric feature of the vocabulary, and the one to which it owes much of its brevity, is the extensive use of the prefix mal- to reverse the meaning of a word, as in malamiko, “enemy,” and even malbona, “bad.”
The phonology of the language is very simple. ”

“ In summing up the merits and defects of Esperanto we must begin by admitting that it is the most reasonable and practical artificial language that has yet appeared. Its inventor has had the double advantage of being able to profit by the mistakes of his predecessors, and of being himself, by force of circumstances, a better linguist. ”

“ Sounds which are distinct in one generation may be confounded in another, and new distinctions may be made, new sounds may arise. A spoken language is, therefore, necessarily a vague and floating entity, and English is no exception to the rule. ”

“ The pitches of the breath consonants are absolutely fixed in each individual pronunciation, while those of spoken vowels can be varied indefinitely within the compass of each voice by tightening the vocal chords in various ways and shortening their vibrating portions· the tighter and shorter the vibrating body, the quicker its vibrations, and the higher the tone. But when a vowel is whispered or breathed nothing is heard but the resonance of the con figurative passages, especially in the mouth, and the pitches of these resonant cavities are as fixed as those of the breath consonants ”

“ At first he tried to construct his roots a priori by arbitrary combinations of letters. Then he fell back on the plan of taking his roots ready-made from existing languages, as the inventor of Volapük had done before him. But instead of taking them mainly from one language, he has selected them from the chief European languages, but not impartially. Like all inventors of artificial languages, he is more ready to experiment with foreign languages than with his own; and hence the Slavonic roots in Esperanto are much less numerous than those taken from the other European languages. ”

“ Where there is no traditional orthography, as when Old English (Anglo-Saxon) was first written down in Latin letters, spelling was necessarily phonetic; but where there is a large literature and a class of professional scribes, the influence of the traditional orthography becomes stronger, till at last the invention of printing and the diffusion of one standard dialect over a large area occupied originally by a variety of other dialects make changes of spelling as inconvenient as they were once easy and natural. ”

“ Combinations of stops and vowel-like consonants (tr, gl, kw) are glideless in English and most other languages. In English the breath-glide after a voiceless stop unvoices the beginning of the following vowel-like consonant; thus try is almost (trhrai) .
Vowel-glides.—Vowels are begun and ended in various ways. In the “gradual beginning,” which is the usual one in English and French, the glottis is gradually narrowed while breath is being emitted. In the “clear” beginning the breath is kept back till the glottis is closed for voice, which begins without any “breathiness.” ”

“ The labours of past generations—from the humanists onwards—had collected an enormous mass of materials in the shape of text-editions, dictionaries and grammars, although most of it was uncritical and often untrustworthy. Something had even been done in the way of comparison and the determination of general laws, and the conception of a comparative Teutonic grammar had been clearly grasped by the illustrious Englishman George Hickes, at the beginning of the 18th century, and partly carried out by him in his Thesaurus. ”