Note 18 — THE PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK, &c.

The following passage from Mitford (Pennington, p. 37) may stand here as an instructive lesson, how blindly prejudice many sometimes speak: “Strong national partiality only, and determined habit, could lead to the imagination cherished by the French critics, that the Greek υ was a sound so unpleasant, produced by a position of the lips so ungraceful as the French u.”—History, book ii. sec. iii., note. Scaliger (Opuscula: Paris, 1610, p. 131) says rightly, “Est obscurissimus sonus in Græca vocali υ, quæ ita pronuntianda est ut proxime accedat ad iota.”