PREFACE. THE Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language naturally suggested an idea of the present work. Proper names from the Greek and Latin form so considerablo a part of every cultivated living language, that a Dictionary seems to be imperfect without them. Polite scholars, indeed, are seldom at a loss for the pronunciation of words they so fregently meet with in the learned languages; but there are great numbers of respectable English scholars, who, having only a tincture of classical learning, are inuch at a loss for a knowledge of this part of it. It is not only the learned professions that require this knowledge, but almost every one above the merely mechanical. The professors of painting, statuary, and music, and those who admire their works; readers of history, politics, poetry; all who converse on subjects ever so little above the vulgar, have so frequent occasion to pronounce these proper names, that whatever tends to render this pronunciation easy must necessarily be acceptable to the public. The proper names in Scripture have still a higher claim to our attention. That every thing contained in that precious repository of divine truth should be rendered as easy as possible to the reader, cannot be doubted: and the very frequent occasions of pronouncing Scripture proper names, in a country where reading the Scripture makes part of the religious worship, seem to demand some work on this subject more perfect than any we have hitherto seen. I could have wished it had been undertaken by a person of more learning and leisure than myself; but we often wait in vain for works of this kind, from those learned bodies which ought to produce them, and at last are obliged, for the best we can get, to the labours of some necessitous individual. Being long engaged in the instruction of youth, I felt the want of a work of this kind, and have supplied it in the best manner I am able. If I have been happy enough to be useful, or only so far useful as to induce some abler hand o undertake the subject, I shall think my labor amply rewarded. I shall still console myself with reflecting, that he who has produced a prior work, however inferior to those that succeed it, is under a very different predicament from him who produces as after-work, inferior to those that have gone before. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION THE favorab9 reception of the first edition of this work has induced me to attempt to make it still more worthy of the acceptance of the public. by the addition of several critical observations, and particularly by two Terminational Vocabularies, of Greek and Latin, and Scripture Proper Names. That so much labor should be bestowed upon an inverted arrangement of these words, when they had already been given in their common alphabetical order, may be matter of wonder to many persons, who will naturally inquire into the utility of such an arrangement. To these it may be answered, that the words of all languages seem more related to cach other by their terminations than by their beginnings; that the Greek and Latia languager seem more particularly to be thus related; and classing them according to their endings seemed to exhibit a new view of these languages, both curious and useful. for, as their accent and quantity depend so much on their termination, such an arrangement appeared to give an easier and more comprehensive idea of their pronunciation than the common classification by their initial syliables, This end was so desirable as to induce me to spare no paine, however dry and disgusting, to promote it; and, if the method I have taken has failed, my labor will not be entirely lost, if it convince futae prosodists that it is not unworthy of their attention. CONTENTS OF THE INTRODUCTION. 945 THE pronunciation of Greek and Latin not so difficult The ancient pronunciation of Greek and Latin a subject of great controversy among the learned, The English, however faulty in their pronunciation of Greek and Latin, pronounce them, like other European nations,according to the analogy of their own language, 945 Sufficient vestiges remain to prove that the foreign pro- 945 945 INTRODUCTION. 1н pronunciation of the learned languages is much more easily acquired than that of our own. Whatever might have been the variety of the different dialects among the Greeks, and the different provinces of the Romans, their languages, now being dead, are generally pronounced according to the respective analogies of the several languages of Europe, where those languages are cultivated, without partaking of those anomalies to which the living languages are liable. Whether one general, uniform pronunciation of the ancient languages be an object of sufficient importance to induce the learned to depart from the analogy of their own language, and to study the ancient Latin and Greek pronunciation, as they do the etymology, syntax and prosody of those languages, is a question not very easy to be decided. The question becomes still more difficult when we consider the uncertainty we are in sespecting the ancient pronunciation of the Greeks and Romans, and how much the learned are divided among themse ves about it. Till these points are settled, the English may well be allowed to follow their own pronunciation of Greek and Latin, as well as other nations, even though it should be confessed that it seems to depart more from what we can gather of the ancient pronunciation, than either the Italian, French or German. For why the English should pay a compliment to the learned languages, which is not done by any other nation in Europe, it is not easy to conceive; and as the colloquial communication of learned individuals of different nations so seldom happens, and is an object of so small importance when it does happen, it is not much to be regretted that when they meet they are scarcely intelligible to each other. * Middleton contends that the initial c before e and i ought to be pronounced as the Italians now pronounce it; and that Cicero is neither Sisero, as the French and English pronounce it nor Kikero, as Dr. Bentley asserts; but Tchitchero, as the Italians pronounce it at this day. This pronunciation, however, is derided by Lipsius, who affirms that the c among the Romans had always the sound of k. Lipsius says, too, that, of all the European nations, the British alone pronounce the i properly; but Middleton asserts, that of all nations they pronounce it the worst. Middleton De Lat. Liter, Pronun. Dissert. Lipsius, speaking of the different pronunciation of the letter G in different countries, says, Nos hodiè (de litera G loquente) quàm peccamus? Italorum enim plerique ut Z exprimunt, Galli et Belga ut J consonantem. Itaque illorum est Lezere, Fuzere; nostrum, Leiere, Fuiere, (Lejere, Fujere). Omnia imperitè, ineptè. Germanos Baltem audíte, quorum sonus hic germanus, Legere, Tegere; ut in Lego, Tego, nec unquam variant: at nos ante I, E, JE, Y, semper dicimusque Jemmam, Jætulos, Jinjivam, Jyrum; pro istis, Gemmam, Gatulos, Gingivam, Gyrum. Mutemus aut vapulemus.-Lipsius. De Rect. Pron. Ling. Lat. page 71. Hinc factum est ut tanta in pronuneiando varietas extiteret ut pauci inter se in literarum sonts consentiant. Quod quidem mirum non esset, si indocti tantùm à doctis in eo, ac non ipsi etiam alioqui eruditi inter se magna contentione dissiderent.-Adolp. Meker. De Lin. Græc. vet. Pronun. cap. ii. page 15. † Monsieur Launcelot, the learned author of the Port-Royal Greek Grammar, in order to convey the sound of the long Greek vowel 7, tells us, it is a sound between the e and the a, and that Eustathius, who lived towards the close of the twelfth century, says, that ẞn, ẞn, is a sound made in imitation of the bleating of a sheep; and quotes to this purpose this verse of an ancient writer called Cratinus: Ο δ' ἠλέθιος ὥσπερ προβάτον, βῆ, βῆ, λέγων βαδίζει. Is fatuus perinde ac ovis, bê, bê, dicens, incedit. He, like a silly sheep, goes crying baa. Caninius has remarked the same, Hellen. p. 26. E ongum, cajus sonus in ovium balatu sentitur, ut Cratinus et Varro tradiderunt. The sound of the e long may be perceived in the bleating of sheep, as Cratinus and Varro have handed down to us. Eustathius likewise remarks upon the 499 v. of Iliad I. that the word Βλάψ ἐστιν ὁ τῆς κλεψύδρας ήχος μιμητικῶς κατὰ της παλαίες ; βῆ ἔχει μίμησιν προβάτων φωνῆς. Κράτινος. BAd est Clepsydræ sonus, ex imitatione secundum veteres ; et B imitatur vocem ovium. Blops, according to the ancients, is a sound in imitation of the Clepsydra, as baa is ex But the English are accused not only of departing from the genuine sound of the Greek and Latin vowels, but of vio lating the quantity of these languages more than the people of any other nation in Europe. The author of the Essay upon the Harmony of Language gives us a detail of the particulars by which this accusation is proved: and this is so true a picture of the English pronunciation of Latin, that 1 shall quote it at length, as it may be of use to those who are obliged to learn this language without the aid of a teacher. "The falsification of the harmony by English scholars in their pronunciation of Latin, with regard to essential points, arises from two causes only: first, from a total inattention to the length of vowel sounds, making them long or short merely as chance directs; and, secondly, from sounding double consonants as only one letter. The remedy of this last fault is obvious. With regard to the first, we have already observed, that each of our vowels hath its general long sound and its general short sound totally different. Thus the short sound of e lengthened is expressed by the letter a, and the short sound of i lengthened is expressed by the letter e and with all these anomalies usual in the application of vowel characters to the vowel sounds of our own language, we proceed to the application of vowel sounds to the vowel characters of the Latin. Thus, in the first syllable of sidus and nomen, which ought to be long, and of miser and onus, which ought to be short, we equally use the common long sound of the vowels; but in the oblique cases, sideris, nominis, miseri, oneris, &c., we use quite another sound, and that a short one. These strange anomalies are not in common to us with our the sound of every Greek vowel had been conveyed to us by as faithful a testimony as the pra; we should certainly have had a better idea of that harmony for which the Greek lan guage was so famous, and in which respect Quintilian candidly yields it the preference to the Latin. Aristophanes has handed down to us the pronunciation of the Greek diphthong av au, by making it expressive of the barking of a dog. This pronunciation is exactly like that preserved by nurses and children among us to this day in bow wow. This is the sound of the same letters in the Latin tongue; not only in proper names derived from Greek, but in every other word where this diphthong occurs. Most nations in Europe, perhaps all but the English, pronounce audio and laudo, as if written oudio and lowdo; the diphthong sounding like ou in loud. Agreeably to this rule, it is presumed that we formerly pronounced the apostle Paul nearer the origi nal than at present. In Henry the Eighth's time it was writ ten St. Poule's, and sermons were preached at Poule's Cross The vulgar, generally the last to alter, either for the better or worse, still have a jingling proverb with this pronunciation, when they say, As old as Poules. The sound of the letter u is no less sincerely preserved in Plautus, in Menæch. page 622, edit. Lambin, in making use of it to imitate the cry of an owl "MEN. Egon' dedi? PEN. Tu, Tu, istic, inquam, vin' afferri noctuam, Quæ tu, tu, usque dicat tibi? nam nos jam nos defessi su mus.' "" "It appears here," says Mr. Forster, in his defence of the Greek accents, page 129," that an owl's cry was tu, tu, to a Roman ear, as it is too, too, to an English." Lambin, who was a Frenchman, observes on the passage, "Alludit ad noc tuæ vocem seu cantum, tu, tu, seu tou, tou." He here alludes to the voice or noise of an owl. It may be farther observed that the English have totally departed from this sound of the u in their own language, as well as in their pronunciation of Latin. Erasmus se adfuisse olim commemorat cum die quodam solenni complures principum legati ad Maximilianum Imperatorem salutandi causâ advenissent; Singulosque Gallum, Germanum, Danum, Scotum, &c. orationem Latinam, ita barbarè ac vastè pronunciasse, ut Italis quibusdam, nihil nist risum moverint, qui eos non Latine sed suâ quemque linguâ, locutos jurâssent -Middleton, De Lat. Lit. Pronun The love of the marvellous prevails over truth: and I ques tion if the greatest diversity in the pronunciation of Latin ex ceeds that of English at the capital and in some of the coun ties of Scotland, and yet the inhabitants of both have no great southern neighbours, the French, Spaniards and Italians. They pronounce sidus, according to our orthography, seedus, and in the oblique cases preserve the same long sound of the i nomen they pronounce as we do, and preserve in the oblique cases the same long sound of the o. The Italians also, in their own language, pronounce doubled consonants as distinctly as the two most discordant mutes of their alphabet. Whatever, therefore, they may want of expressing the true harmony of the Latin language, they certainly avoid the most glaring and absurd faults in our manner of pronouncing it. "It is a matter of curiosity to observe with what regularity we use these solecisms in the pronunciation of Latin. When the penultimate is accented, its vowel, if followed but by a single consonant, is always long, as in Dr. Forster's examples. When the antepenultimate is accented, its vowel is, without any regard to the requisite quantity, pronounced short, as in mirabile, frigidus; except the vowel of the penultimate be followed by a vowel, and then the vowel of the antepenultimate is with as little regard to true quantity pronounced long, as in maneo, redeat, odium, imperium. Quantity is, however, vitiated to make i short even in this case, as in oblivio, vinea, virium. The only difference we make in pronunciation between vinea and venia is, that to the vowel of the first syllable of the former, which ought to be long, we give a short sound; to that of the latter, which ought to be short, we give the same sound, but lengthened. U accented is always, before a single consonant, pronounced long, as in humerus, fugiens. Before two consonants no vowel sound is ever made long, except that of the diphthong au; so that, whenever a doubled consonant occurs, the preceding syllable is short. Unaccented vowels we treat with no more ceremony in Latin than in our own language." Essay upon the Harmony of Language, page 224. Printed for Robson, 1774. This, it must be owned, is a very just state of the case; but though the Latin quantity is thus violated, it is not, as this writer observes in the first part of the quotation, merely as chance directs, but, as he afterwards observes, regularly, and, he might have added, according to the analogy of English pronunciation, which, it may be observed, has a genius of its own; and which, if not so well adapted to the pronunciation of Greek and Latin as some other modern languages, has as fixed and settled rules for pronouncing them as any other. The learned and ingenious author next proceeds to show the advantages of pronouncing our vowels so as to express the Latin quantity. "We have reason to suppose,' says he, "that our usual accentuation of Latin, however it may want of many elegancies in the pronunciation of the Augustan age, is yet sufficiently just to give with tolerable accuracy that part of the general harmony of the language of which accent is the efficient. We have also pretty full information from the poets what syllables ought to have a long, and what a short quantity. To preserve, then, in our pronunciation, the true harmony of the language, we have only to take care to give the vowels a long sound or a short sound, as the quantity may require; and, when doubled consonants occur, to pronounce each distinctly." Ibid. page 228.† In answer to this plea for alteration, it may be observed, that if this mode of pronouncing Latin be that of foreign nations, and were really so superior to our own, we certainly *This corruption of the true quantity is not, however, peculiar to the English; for Beza complains in his country: "Hinc enim fit ut in Græca oratione vel nullum, vel prorsus corruptum numerum intelligas, dum multæ breves producuntur, et contra plurimæ longæ corripiuntur. Beza de Germ. Pron. Græcæ Linguæ, p. 50. By what this learned author has observed of our vicious pronunciation of the vowels, by the long and short sound of them, and from the instances he has given, he must mean that length and shortness which arises from extending and contracting them, independently of the obstruction which two consonants are supposed to occasion in forming the long quantity. Thus we are to pronounce manus as if written and divided into man-nus; and pannus as if written pay-nus, or as we always hear the word panis (bread); for in this sound of pannus there seems to be no necessity for pronouncing the two consonants distinctly or separately, which he seems to mean by distinctly, because the quantity is shown by the long sound of the vowel: but if by distinctly he means separately, that is, as if what is called in French the schéva or mute e were to follow the first consonant, this could not be done without adding a syllable to the word; and the word pannus would in that case certainly have three syllables, as if written pan-eh-nus. That is, in the general pronunciation of Greek; for, let the written accent be placed where it will, the quantitative accent, as it may be called, follows the analogy of the Latin. "The Greek language," says the learned critic, "was happy in not being understood by the Goths, who would as certainly have corrupted the t in airía, wriov, &c. into alola, wolov, &c. as they did the Latin "motio and doceo into mosnio and dosheo." This, however, may be questioned; for if in Latin words this impure sound of t take place only in must perceive it in the pronunciation of foreigners, when we visit them, or they us: but I think I may appeal to the expe rience of every one who has had an opportunity of making the experiment, that, so far from the superiority being on the side of the foreign pronunciation, it seems much inferior to our own. I am aware of the power of habit, and of its being able on many occasions, to make the worse appear the better reason but if the harmony of the Latin language depended so much on a preservation of the quantity as many pretend, this har mony would surely overcome the bias we have to our own pronunciation; especially if our own were really so destructive of harmony as it is said to be. Till, therefore, we have a more accurate idea of the nature of quantity, and of that beauty and harmony of which it is said to be the efficient in the pro nunciation of Latin, we ought to preserve a pronunciation which has naturally sprung up in our own soil, and is congenial to our native language. Besides, an alteration of this kind would be attended with so much dispute and uncertainty as must make it highly impolitic to attempt it. The analogy, then, of our own language being the rule for pronouncing the learned languages, we shall have little occasion for any other directions for the pronunciation of the Greek and Latin proper names, than such as are given for the pronunciation of English words. The general rules are followed almost without exception. The first and most obvious powers of the letters are adopted, and there is scarcely any difficulty but in the position of the accent; and this depends so much on the quantity of the vowels, that we need only inspect a diotionary to find the quantity of the penultimate vowel, and this determines the accent of all the Latin words; and, it may be added, of almost all Greek words likewise. Now, in our pronunciation of Latin words, whatever be the quantity of the first syllable in a word of two syllables, we always place the accent on it: but in words of more syllables, if the penulti mate be long, we place the accent on that; and if short we accent the antepenultimate. The Rules of the Latin Accentuation are comprised in a clear and concise manner by Sanctius within four hexameters: Accentum in se ipsâ monosyllaba dictio ponit. Exacuit sedem dissyllabon omne priorem. Ex tribus, extollit primam penultima curta: Extollit seipsam quando est penultima longa. These rules I have endeavored to express in English verse. Each monosyllable has stress of course; Words of two syllables the first enforce: A syllable that's long, and last but one, Must have the accent upon that or none, But if this syllable be short, the stress Must on the last but two its force express. The only difference that seems to obtain between the pronunciation of the Greek and Latin languages, is that, in the Latin, ti and si, preceded by an accent, and followed by another vowel forming an improper diphthong, are pronounced as in English, like sh or th, as natio, nation; persuasio, persuasion, &c.; and that, in the Greek, the same letters retain their pare sound, as φιλαυτία, ἀγνωσία, προβατιον, κ. τ. λ.ᾗ This dif those words where the accent is on the preceding vowel, as in natio, facio, &c.; but not when the accent follows the t, and is on the following vowel, as in satietas, societas, &c., why should we suppose any other mode of pronunciation would have been adopted by the Goths in their pronouncing the Greek? Now no rule of pronunciation is more uniform in the Greek language than that which places an acute on the iota at the end of words, when this letter is succeeded by a long vowel, and, consequently, if the accent be preserved upon the proper letter, it is impossible the preceding t and s should go into the sound of sh; why, therefore, may we not suppose that the very frequent accentuation of the penultimato i before a final vowel preserved the preceding from going into the sound of sh, as it was a difference of accentuation that occasioned this im pure sound of t in the Latin language? for though i at the end of words, when followed by a long vowel, or a vowel once long and afterwards contracted, had always the accent on it in Greek, in Latin the accent was always on the preceding syllable in words of this termination; and hence seems to have arisen the corruption of t in the Gothic pronunciation of the Latin language. T It is highly probable, that in Lucian's time the Greek r. when followed by i and another vowel, had not assumed the sound of o; for the Sigma would not have failed to accuse him of a usurpation of her powers, as he had done of her character and if we have preserved the pure in this situation when we pronounce Greek, it is, perhaps, rather to be placed to the preserving power of the accented in so great a number of words, than any adherence to the ancient rules of pronuncistion; which invariably affirm that the consonants had but one sound; unless we except the y before y, , x, ; as dyysλος, άγκυρα, ἀγχίστα, κ. τ. λ. where the y is sounded bike.. but this, says Henry Stephens, is an error of the copyists, whe have a little extended the bottom of the v, and made a y of it: for, says he, it is ridiculous to suppose that was changed |