Forlong - Rivers of Life

Preface. xxxix
which has improved and educated them, and all the more because they have only given
them sufficient symbols for proper pronunciations, teaching them, as English schoolmasters
do our own youths, not to call “coming” “Koomen,” “own” “ā-w-n” or
sing out their words as the unedueate.d do on the hill sides.
For some years back scholars have very properly spelt Greek names as Greeks
spelt them, but we have not yet gone far enough, as in rejecting the Latin y—our
i, f, ai or wai, where the. Greek put his u or upsilon, which no doubt at times
came near to the y of Latin days. The u is, however, too much connected with
important mythological matters and is too much like a consonant in ancient tongues
to be so set aside. Thus we almost lose sight of the ancient Phenician Fire-god
of Western Asia—Pur, Pru or Phru, in his ever sacred Puratheia or Pry-taneum,
that Agastān or holy hearth of every Eastern race. Even a Presbuter or Pres-
buteros is clearer than a Presbyter, and Skuths and Kushites than Scyths, Cuthites
or Cythites.
With Easterns, the real vowels were originally mere breathings, which they did
not trouble themselves much about. When these therefore appear in diacritieal,
Masoretik or other pointings, as in Hebrew, Arabik, Persian, &c., it has been thought
best to avoid them, for, as Sir William Drummond wrote, “they arc impertinent
impositions” by which scribes and pedants of comparatively modem times have tried
to force upon us their own local or favourite pronunciation. Nothing has done
more to prevent the public seeing the old idea, particularly when instead of these
mere markings Western Aryans slipped in bona fide letters when transcribing the
words into Aryan languages.
Of course vowel markings promoted uniformity of pronunciation, and are specially
favored by Westerns when learning Eastern. tongues, and vicc versa, but it has been
questioned whether languages like religions would not have got on better without
tying down the young to Creeds and Articles—grammars and lexicons. Here at least
both must be somewhat in abeyance whilst mora ancient matters are being
investigated.
Parkhurst and leamed Jews have wisely excluded the Hebrew pointings and
given us general rules for guidance, which, however, no Eastern scholars require,
knowing that where vowels or symbols exist in a language, as for a, e, i, o, u, &c., he
has no right to interpose such sounds but only a breathing b or f. Especially must
this be the rule where the objeet is to find the earliest pronunciations at or before the
great writing era of the sixth and seventh centuries B.C. Any other rule leads to all