SECTION IX. Of the Articulation of the GREEK and LATIN ALL inquiry about the harmony and versification of a language were vain and idle, without means for discovering in fome degree how it was spoken. But there remains from one of the politeft fcholars and ableft writers of that fplendid era called the Augustan age, in which the new Attic, or com mon Greek tongue, remained yet in highest cultivation, and apparently in greatest purity, a treatife in which the Grecian alphabet is defcribed. It is not reasonably to be expected that an account of a fpeech long fince dead, compofed for those who were familiar with it living, should afford all the information now to be defired; yet, confidering how hardly founds are to be explained by words, without reference to founds already known, the modern fcholar will find far more caufe for gratification at the amount and clearnefs of information given by Dionyfius of Halicarnaffus, in his treatife on Literary Compofition, than for complaint of either deficiency or obfcurity. Having divided the letters of the Greek alphabet into vowels and confonants, and then fubdivided the confonants into femivowels and mutes, Dionyfius proceeds to defcribe the vowels thus: Two • Two of the vowels, » and «, are long, two, and, fhort, and three, a, i, v, double-timed being fometimes long and fometimes fhort. The long vowels are of moft powerful effect and most pleasing found, and among them a has the fuperiorty. It is fpoken with the mouth at its utmost opening, and the breath directed • upward. In this defcription of the Greek alpha of the Auguftan age, we have exactly the a of the modern Romans, and, as far as I have had opportunity to observe and gather information, the alpha of the beft educated modern Greeks of Conftantinople and Athens. It is not the second English a, heard in the words father, after, command, which fome of our grammarians and lexicographers have inaccurately called the Italian a, but approaches much nearer, or even reaches the broad found of the first English a in falling, taller, or of the diphthongal character яи. Dionyfius proceeds: Next to a is . In pronouncing this vowel, the voice hangs about the root of the tongue, and is not delivered upward: the mouth is moderately open.' In these few words the found of the third, or flender English a, heard in made, male, and expreffed by the diphthongal characters in may, maid, mail, is fo exactly described, that, notwithstanding the different practice of the modern Greeks, who confound,, and », I cannot doubt but the Greek » of the Augustan n age, age was the fame with the English flender am. This differs from the Italian long e; in pronouncing which the voice comes forwarder in the mouth, and does not hang, as Dionyfius describes it for the Greek n, about the root of the tongue. The English reader unverfed in forein pronuntiation, may form to himself a perfect idea of the Italian long e, by only prolonging, without otherwife altering, the vowel-found, wherever, in an English word, he finds a fhort e followed by a confonant; as in men, fell, bet. The French have both founds their ai is not diftinguishable from ours, and their final é has the fame found; but in the middle of a fyllable, as in the word même, the long e refembles the Italian, Dionyfius again proceeds: comes third: In pronouncing this letter, the mouth is rounded, the lips contracted, and the breath makes its effort at the extremity.' In this pronuntiation of the long 0, the English and all the principal modern European tongues agree with the antient Greek. Inferior to this,' continues Dionyfius, 'is v: for the lips are confiderably contracted, the utterance is choked, and the found is narrow.' Here first we find difficulty in the defcription. The contraction of the lips might indicate the m In the Athenian pronuntiation of Plato's time, as we learn in his Cratylus, eta was analagous to epfilon, and differed from iota. Cratyl. p. 418. c. t. I. ed Serran. I alia n Italian u, which is the English close u, heard in rule, or oo in tool, moon; but the fuffocation of voice, and narrowness of found are not imputable to that vowel. Unfortunately the modern Greek pronuntiation will not help us on this occafion, for it gives conftantly the fame found to u as to the vowel next defcribed by Dionyfius, and clearly marked by him for a different found. The fancy has been cherished among the French learned that the Greek was the fame with their . But, could it otherwife be fuppofed that Grecian euphony was tainted with fo inelegant a noise, that the grace of Grecian utterance would bear the contortion of the mouth neceffary toward uttering that peculiar element of Parifian pronuntiation, Dionyfius contradicts it in his description of the next vowel: I,' he fays, is laft in merit among the ' vowels: for, in pronouncing it, the ftroke of the breath is about the teeth: the mouth i 'less opened than for any other vowel, and the lips give no brilliancy to the found.' Here the English long or double e, the Italian long i, and the modern Greek iota, are all fo exactly defcribed as to leave no room for doubting that the antient iota was precifely the fame letter. Nor can there need completer affurance that the Greek differed very confiderably from the French u. For the French z, requires a much more con contracted mouth than the English e, or the French, Italian, and modern Greek i; and its found, forein and unutterable to all European people but the French, is abhorred by the Italians and modern Greeks, and unknown in the fouthern dialects of France itself. ter u There remains from Ariftophanes, in his Plutus, an iambic verfe formed intirely of the letafpirated. The purpofe has been to mark a kind of whistling note of delight, uttered by a hungry man on fmelling the roaft-meat of a facrifice. Voffius has inferred that the found of ν was indiftinct and even offenfive"; but this notion feems meerly German; unwarranted by either Ariftophanes or Dionyfius, and rather contradicted by all antiquity. From Ariftophanes himself we have better information in another place: in his comedy of the Birds, the cuckoo's note is reprefented by the word xxxυ, which affords no flight evidence that, among the elder Attics at least, the ordinary found of was very nearly that of the modern Greek ou, the Italian u, the French ou, and the English 00. But that the found of ypfilon underwent alterations in the polite pronuntiation of the new Attic, or common Greek, appears certain. Perhaps differences previously exifting among the dialects, may have contributed to them; but what * Non obfcurum tantum, fed & fœdum & impurum. were |