Note 43 — THE PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK, &c.

In a paper on the Comparison of the Forms of the Nominative Case in certain Latin and Greek Nouns, (Zeitschrift für die Alterthums-Wissenschaft. 9ͭͤͬ Jahrgang, No. 49,) Professor Ross writes to Professor Bergh of Marburg, as follows:—“My views are founded chiefly on the observation of the dialect used by the common people of Greece, among whom and with whom I lived so long. This dialect, indeed, now spoken by the Greek shepherds and sailors, and which, of course, is not to be learnt from books, but from actual intercourse with the people, the majority of philologists are apt to hold cheap, but it has been to me a mine of rich instruction, and I have no hesitation in saying that, at all events, in reference to the non-Attic dialects of the Greek tongue, to Latin, Oscan, and even Etruscan, more may be got from this source than from the many bulky commentaries of the grammarians of the Middle Ages. See what I have said on this point in my Reisen auf den Griechischen Inseln, iii. p. 155.”