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lish into 9th century English. But this is a mistake. Our forefathers said the as we say it, though they wrote it with a single sign for the th, and correctly so, for the sound is a simple one.

The letter j was originally used merely as a different form of i, an i with a tail to it. The sounds which we now represent by i and j were not distinguished by symbol till the 17th century. Rather earlier than this, a distinction was made in the use of the letters u and v so that they represented respectively vowel and consonant.

The word alphabet comes from the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha, beta.

62. This seems to be a suitable point at which to give an answer to the question,-When are Capital letters to be used?

I. At the beginning of every sentence.

2. At the beginning of every line in poetry.

At the beginning of quoted passages: e.g. He said,

"Let us go and see."

4. For Proper names.

5. For the various names of God.

6. For titles of office and officials:-Secretaryship of the Treasury, Lord Chancellor: but capitals are often dispensed with in these cases.

7. Sometimes at the beginning of nouns and adjectives, to call attention to their importance.

I.

8. For the pronoun I and for the interjection O.

QUESTIONS.

What is meant by Orthography? Point out any orthographical irregularities in the spelling of scent; island; proceed, precede; sovereign. [Through ignorance of the derivation (French sentir) the c was introduced into scent, and the s was inserted in iland owing to confusion with isle or insula. Both proceed and precede contain the Latin

cedo. Why should this be differently represented in the two words? Sovereign has been spelt thus owing to a mistaken idea that it comes from reign. It should be sovran.]

2. Give examples of the different pronunciation of these letters:i, u, ie, ti, ch.

3. In what other ways do we represent the sounds of au in haul, o in fond, g in ginger, x in Xenophon, sc in science?

4. Mention words in which the following letters are written but not sounded:- p, b, gh, t, !.

5. Give illustrations from the English language (1) of the softening of the final guttural, (2) of the substitution of d for th, (3) of the loss of letters, (4) of the insertion of the letters b and d.

6. Show that the orthography and the pronunciation of several English words are at variance. Can you account for the discrepancy? [Refer to $$ 59 and 60. Doubt, receipt, hymn, chronicle, hour, psalm, viscount, know, would be suitable examples for annotation.] 7. Give examples in English spelling of—

(1) single letters representing double sounds:

(2) two or more letters representing an indivisible sound: (3) different letters representing the same sound:

(4) the same letter representing different sounds:

(5) redundant and silent letters.

8. It is said that the introduction of a system of purely phonetic spelling would obliterate traces of the history of many of our words. Show the force of this remark in the case of the following:-chronometer, phantom, vitiate, honour, rheumatism.

9. Explain the presence of the italicised letters in the following words: debt, wetter, pair, favour, number, rhyme, blackamoor.

10.

Describe some of the anomalies of our modern spelling, and mention words which are not spelt uniformly by standard writers.

[A few typical examples of uncertain orthography are subjoined: add to the list. Judg(e)ment, recal(l)s, mov(e)able, benefit(t)ed, monied, dullness, civilize, favo(u)r, gallop(p)ed.]

II. In what other ways are the following words spelt in current literature?-programme, rhyme, inflexion, medieval. Can you say anything for or against them?

[Programme was borrowed from the French, not compounded (like telegram) from the Greek. Rhyme is thus spelt from a wrongly-supposed connexion with rhythm. Inflexion is the correct form, as the supinestem of the Latin flecto is flex-, not flect-.]

12. Mention some of the most important facts in the history of our Alphabet.

62

CHAPTER VII.

ETYMOLOGY.

63. A language is a collection of articulate and significant sounds. If we listen to a baby, we find that his utterances consist of such sounds as ul-ul-ul, ga-ga, um-um, sounds which are merely noises, like the barking of a dog or the crowing of a cock. Significance, or meaning, they may indeed have, and the observant mother or nurse may understand that one noise is made when the baby wants his bottle and that another expresses his happiness when he has got it. But to persons outside the family circle these cries convey no more meaning than the cries of the farmyard. Articulate they certainly are not. When the baby says 'pa,' 'ma,' we remark with truth that he is beginning to talk quite nicely. Talk, speech, words,-these terms point to sounds which are significant and articulate, and such sounds in English form the subject-matter with which we have to deal in English grammar. In our daily lives we commonly use words in connexion with other words to form sentences, but we can consider them by themselves, though we do not use them by themselves. The part of grammar which treats of words taken separately is called Etymology: the part which treats .of words as forming portions of a sentence is called Syntax. In dealing with Etymology we shall often find it useful to cross the confines of Syntax.

64. Etymology deals with the classification of words, their derivation, and inflexion.

There are various ways of classifying words. In the dictionary we arrange them in alphabetical order; in the spelling-book we arrange them according to their number of syllables. Now as language is employed by us for the expression of our thoughts, and our thoughts are usually expressed in sentences, for the purposes of grammar we shall group the words of the language in classes according to their different functions in the sentences which we form with them to express our meaning. By 'different functions' we mean the special work accomplished by different kinds of words. The function of a pump is to raise water; of a balance to weigh things; of a noun to serve as a name of things; of a verb to make assertions about things. Small differences of function may be neglected in the classification of words, (just as we classify a machine as a pump, whether it is a force-pump or a common-pump), but we cannot usefully reduce the number of classes of words in grammar below eight, and these eight different classes we call the Parts of Speech.

65. The Parts of Speech are the classes into which the words of a language fall, when they are arranged according to their separate functions in a sentence.

The following sentence contains eight words, and the part played by every one of the eight is different:

"Oh! and was he in good health yesterday.?"

Oh is an interjection, a sound expressing sudden feeling. We could omit it from the sentence without disturbing the construction: as the derivation of the name implies, it is something 'thrown in.'

And is a conjunction: it joins on the words which follow it to the previous sentence.

Il'as is a verb.

He is a pronoun.

In is a preposition showing that the noun health stands in a certain relation to the rest of the sentence.

Good is an adjective limiting or restricting the meaning of the word health.

Health is a noun.

Yesterday is an adverb limiting the application of the verb as regards

time.

66. In parsing a word, our first business is to refer it to its proper class among these parts of speech. The form of the word is seldom of help to us in English when we are thus engaged. It is often necessary to look to the context before we can decide in any particular case to what class the word belongs.

Thus in the sentence 'The after growth was considerable,' after is an adjective: in 'After me, the deluge,' it is a preposition: in 'Jill came tumbling after,' it is an adverb: in 'He called after you left,' it has the force of a conjunction. So again the word stone has various functions in different sentences. In Stone him to death,' it is a verb: in 'He threw a stone,' it is a noun: in 'This is a stone fence,' it is an adjective. Once more, the word but serves in many capacities. In 'Many are called, but few are chosen,' it is a conjunction: in 'But few are chosen,' where but signifies ‘only,' it is an adverb: in 'All but John were drowned,' where but signifies 'except,' it is a preposition: in 'There is no one but thinks you mad,' but does the work of a relative pronoun with a negative attached, 'There is no one who does not think you mad.'

67. Attempts have been made to reduce these eight parts of speech to a smaller number of groups. Thus words have been arranged in the following four divisions:

i. Names of THINGS.

(I.

Nouns.

2. Personal Pronouns. (3. Adjectives.

ii. Expressing ATTRIBUTES 4. Verbs.

iii. Expressing RELATIONS

5. Adverbs.

16. Conjunctions, between sentences. 17. Prepositions, between things.

iv. Expressing SUDDEN FEELINGS, 8. Interjections.

At our present stage there would be no advantage in discussing this or any similar scheme in detail. From the

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