Investigations Into The Laws Of English Orthography And Pronunciation

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1862 edition. Excerpt: ... sibilation commenced on English ground, thus French nature pronounced with hard /, in England, first became na-tyur, and finally na-tshur, and soldier was first changed into soldyer and finally into solJzher. 32. The process of assibilation was not entirely foreign to the Anglo-Saxon before the Norman conquest. Either immediately before, or very soon after this event, we find the Saxon words ceaf, cealk, ceat, cearl, ceosan, ciern, cyst, cyrice, cyn, cicen, cidan, cild (it must be noticed that the Anglo-Saxon c was pronounced like k) assibilated into chaff, chalk, cheat, churl, choose, churn, chest, church, chirm, chicken, chide, child. This assibilation took place in the usual manner. E in the diphthongs ea and co was hardened into y after the guttural c or k. Yfirst weakened k into t, and finally became itself assibilated into sh (of this we have an instance in the forms feccan and fetian to fetch); hence the sound tsh in chaff, &c. This sibilation of k before ea and co afterwards extended to those cases where it was followed by y and i, and subsequently also reduced the French ch=sh to the same standard as in chafe, chain, chamber, chance, change, charm, chaste, chief, choice, &c. rem.--It is a mooted point among the grammarians whether the French ch originally sounded tsh and afterwards dropped the t, or whether it sounded sh from the very first. In case it sounded like tsh at first, and dropped the t afterwards, we need not assume that the Anglo-Saxon ch extended its pronunciation to the French words, but, on the contrary, there would be reason to suppose that the French ch imprinted its pronunciation on the Anglo-Saxon c. This, indeed, is held by Dr. Ripp (Physiologie d. Sprache, vol. ii, page 90), while Prof. Diez asserts...