Note 79 — TALE OF GHANIM BIN AYYUB[79], THE DISTRAUGHT, THE THRALL O' LOVE.

Our "Job." The English translators of the Bible, who borrowed Luther's system of transliteration (of A.D. 1522), transferred into English the German "j" which has the sound of "i" or "y"; intending us to pronounce Yacob (or Yakob), Yericho, Yimnites, Yob (or Hiob) and Yudah. Tyndall who copied Luther (A.D. 1525-26), preserved the true sound by writing Iacob, Ben Iamin and Iudas. But his successors unfortunately returned to the German; the initial I having from the xiii. century been ornamentally lengthened and bent leftwards became a consonant; the public adopted the vernacular sound of "j" (dg) and hence our language and our literature are disgraced by such barbarisms as "Jehovah" and "Jesus"—Dgehovah and Dgeesus for Yehovah and Yesus. Future generations of school-teachers may remedy the evil; meanwhile we are doomed for the rest of our days to hear

Gee-rusalem! Gee-rusalem! etc.

Nor is there one word to be said in favour of the corruption except that, like the Protestant mispronunciation of Latin and the Erasmian ill-articulation of Greek, it has become "English," and has lent its little aid in dividing the Britons from the rest of the civilised world.