LECTURE II.

"The initial changes are commonly the most perplexing feature of the Welsh language to those who know it only imperfectly; and those who observe the rules by ear are seldom acquainted with the rationale of their own faultless speech."-CHARLES WILLIAMS.

In spite of what was said in the former lecture, you will perhaps think that, although the chief differences between Welsh and Irish can be shown to have sprung up since the separation, the fact of their springing up at any time points to a radical difference in the constitution of the vocal organs of the Welsh and the Irish. It may, however, be premised that this does not follow, as it is to be borne in mind that the normal state of language is that of change, and that the same end may frequently be attained by different means. The end here alluded to is not the ultimate end of language, the expression of thought, but the economy of labour in the articulation of words, the exponents of thought. This, in default of a better name, one may call its economical end, and illustrations of it will offer themselves in the course of a sketch which I propose to give you of the so-called system of mutation of initial consonants in Welsh, and its counterpart in Irish, a subject which, even apart from its relevancy to the question, how nearly Welsh and Irish are related, has strong claims on our consideration, though we run the risk of only adding another chapter to the mass of nonsense already written on it. The fact is, our native grammarians, both Welsh and Irish,

look at it as at once the peculiarity and the pride of Celtic phonology, and regard it with the same air of mystery and wonderment to which English and German grammarians occasionally give expression in reference to the Teutonic ablautreihe or sing-sang-sung system of vowel mutation obtaining in languages of that stock. In reality there is nothing peculiar about either excepting the persistency with which they have been carried out; and as to the amount of credit they respectively reflect on the races which in the course of ages unconsciously and cleverly pieced them together, that is a matter on which opinion would probably vary according to the writer's nationality.

The following summary of the more common mutations in Welsh and Irish will be found convenient as

Irish mutation, such as that of c into ch, or b into bh (pronounced v), is commonly called aspiration, and that whereby nt becomes d, or nd nn, has been called eclipsis, while our own grammarians have managed to include the Welsh changes corresponding to both sets and others not usual in Irish in the following triad :

This neat little scheme is fairly accurate in an etymological sense, but it has not unfrequently been assumed to have a phonological value, which leads to mistakes, such as, for instance, the supposition that is related to in the same way as t to d, and not as th to dd or nearly so. For our present purpose

our Welsh sounds may be classified as follows:-
:-

Whether rh, ngh, nh, mh consist of simple surds, or are made up of surd r, ng, n, m plus h, is a question I leave undecided: the same remark applies to hj, written hi, as in ei hiaith walian hw, as in hwaer

her language,' and the Southsister'; but the Northwalian

chw corresponding to it cannot be a single surd: to my hearing it is made up of ch and a surd w. As to h, the last account of it (Kuhn's Zeitschrift, xxiii. 555) makes it a voiceless or surd vowel, if one may say so, a view based on the fact that the utterance of it cannot be connected with any special position of the parts of the mouth, but is regulated by one of the sounds it accompanies, though it is not usual to particularise the pronunciation accordingly as in the case of vocal breath, the quality of which enables us to parcel it out into a, e, i, &c. Sundry other remarks might be made on this table, such as that some phonologists unacquainted with Welsh choose to regard nasal surds as impossible, but I will only draw your attention to two things which require to be clearly realised: the first is the difference between a mute (otherwise called a stopped or explodent consonant) and a spirant (otherwise called a produced or fricative consonant). Compare, for instance, p and b with ph and v: in the former two the breath is suddenly checked and stopped by the lips being brought into contact with one another, while in the latter two there is no complete stoppage of it, since it is, so to say, allowed to squeeze through without interruption. The next is the distinction between surds (otherwise called voiceless or pneumatic consonants) and sonants (otherwise called voiced or phonetic consonants), as for instance between p and b, or between ph and v: thus p and ph in the Celtic languages imply

simple breath, while b and v involve not mere breath but voice, which the former produces by setting the vocal chords in vibration during its passage through the larynx. These distinctions require to be but slightly modified, in order to enable us with accuracy to treat our vowels, as I here intend to do, as sounds which are both sonant and spirant, as they are in fact almost pure voice more or less modified in its passage through the mouth.

Now one of the causes which bring about changes in language is the tendency, ever quietly asserting itself, to economise the labour of pronunciation, and it is heterogeneous sounds brought into immediate contact with one another, mutes with spirants, or surds with sonants, that form the hollows to be filled and the hills and the mountains to be lowered by the unreasoning laziness of speech: this levelling process is commonly called assimilation.

Let us now see how it will enable us to understand the mutations of consonants in Welsh and Irish:Old Welsh abal 'an apple,' and aper a confluence, a stream,' became in later Welsh afal and aber respectively; and why? In abal the b was flanked by vowels, that is a sonant mute by sonant spirants; and here both Welsh and Irish took the same path, and reduced the mute into a spirant, making abal into aval, written in Welsh afal: in the latter we have a surd mute between sonant spirants; and as language proceeds by degrees, and not by leaps or strides, it had the choice of two courses, and only two:-it might either reduce the surd mute into a sonant mute, thus making aper into aber, or reduce it into a surd spirant, which would give us apher. The former has become