Maitland Club > Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart

LOGOPANDECTEISION. 307
another, and after many yeers abode in a strange land, despair from attaining at any
time to the perfect accent of the language thereof, because, as the waters of that stream
cannot be wholesome whose source is corrupted, nor the superstructure sure whereof
the ground-work is ruinous, so doth the various manner of pronouncing one and the
same alphabet in severall nations, produce this great and lamentable obstruction in the
discipline of languages.
14. The <7 of the Latin word legit, is after four several manners pronounced by the
English, French, Spanish, and Dutch ; the ch likewise is differently pronounced by
divers nations ; some uttering it after the fashion of the Hebrew shin, as the French
do in the word chasteau, chascun, chastier, chatel ; or like the Greek kappa, as in the
Italian words chiedere, chiazzare, chinatura ; or as in Italy are sounded the words
ciascheduno, ciarlatano ; for so do the Spanish and English pronounce it, as in the
words achaque, leche, chamber, chance : other nations of a gutteral flexibility, pro-
nounce it after the fashion of the Greek x. Nor need we to labor for examples in
other letters, for there is scarce any hitherto received, either consonant or vowel,
which in some one and other, taking in all nations, is not pronounced after three or
four several fashions.
15. As the alphabets are imperfect, some having but 19 letters, others 22, and
some 24, few exceeding that number, so do the words composed of those letters in the
several languages come far short of the number of things, which, to have the reputa-
tion of a perfect tongue, ought to be expressed by them.
16. For supply of this deficiencie, each language borrows from another; nor is the
perfectest amongst them, without being beholden to another, in all things eminciable,
bastant to afford instruction. Many astronomical and medicinal terms have the Greeks
borrowed from the Arabians, for which they by exchange have from the Grecians
received payment of many words naturalized in their physical, logical, and metaphy-
sical treatises. As for the Latin, it oweth all its seientifick dictions to the Greek and
Arabick, yet did the Roman Conquest give adoption to many Latin words in both
these languages, especially in matters of military discipline and prudential law.
17. And as for all other languages as yet spoke, though to some of them be ascrib-
ed the title of original tongues, I may safely avouch there is none of them which, of it
self alone, is able to afford the smattring of an elocution fit for indoctrinating of us in
the precepts and maximes of moral and intellectual vertues.
18. But, which is more, and that which most of all evinceth the sterility of all the
languages that since the deluge have been spoke, though all of them quintesenced in
one capable of the perfections of each, yet that one so befitted and accommodated for
compendiousness and variety of phrase, should not be able, amidst so great wealth, to
afford without circumlocution the proper and convenient representation of a thing,
yea of many thousands of things, whereof each should be expressed with one single
word alone.