Note 24 — THE PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK, &c.

On revisal it strikes me I have given the enemies of Itacism an unfair advantage by not stating, that, while in any other language the attenuation of so many different sounds into one, might have proved a very grievous evil, there is such a richness of the full sound of α (which the English have effaced) and ω in Greek, that the blemish rarely offends. I have to mention also, that, while a certain prominence even of this slender sound seems necessary to the phonetic character of Greek, as distinguished from Latin, I have no objection, in reading Homer and the elder poets, (were it only for the sake of the often quoted πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης!) to pronounce οι, as boy in English, and η, as we do it in Scotland; just as in reading Chaucer we may be forced to adopt some of the peculiarities of the pronunciation of his day. But in the common use of the prose language, I think it safer to stick by the tradition of so many centuries, than to venture on patches of classical restoration, where it is impossible to revive a consistent whole. I may say also, that if υ be pronounced uniformly like the French u, the itacism will be diminished by one letter, while the difference between that and the modern Greek pronunciation is so slight, that a Scotchman so speaking in Athens will be generally understood, whereas our broad Scotch u (oo) besides being entirely without classical authority, recedes so far from the actual pronunciation of the Greeks, as to be a serious bar in the way of intelligibility.