On the Approaches to the English Language [pp. 434-456]

1874.] ON THE APPROACHES TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
uncommonly easy language; the forms, i. e., what we call the
grammar, can be learned in a month or six weeks. Of course,
to trace the relations of Gothic to kindred tongues may
be made the labor of a lifetime. But to master the forms sufficiently to use the vocabulary and to parse, need not require
more than six weeks of average study once learned, they are
an "acquisition for ever." Starting from Gothic and proceeding to Anglo-Saxon on one hand, or to Old High German on another, or to Norse in a third direction, the student feels every
inch of the way that he has secured his base of operations, that
he has something to fall back upon. When he encounters the
formidable array gife, geofe; geaf, gif, gef; gaefon, gedfon, gifon;
giften, giefJen, geofen, he is not disconcerted, for he knows that
these are all mere Anglo-Saxon variations of the simple Gothic
schedule giba; gaf; gebum; gibams (I give; I gave; we gave;
given). He can readily reduce hyran, hran, hiiran to the one
Gothic form h1ausjan (to hear), showing that the s between two
vowels has been converted into r, and the stemn-diphthong au,
first condensed to a, has been umlauted by thej (i), which j dis.
appeared in Anglo-Saxon after it had fulfilled its function. If
he wishes to know whether ea in a given Anglo-Saxon word is
short or long, i. e., whether it is the breaking e-a of a primitive
short a, or an originally long a with e prefixed, he has only to
consult Gothic, and the chances are that he will find the answer.
Thus, in bearn (Scottish bairn, a child) the ea is a breaking, for
Gothic shows barn. But in edre (ear) the ea is long, because
Gothic shows auso, the an being thickened to a, as in AngloSaxon becim, Old Saxon barn, HIigh German baum (a tree).
Before leaving this matter of Gothic, we wish to guard against
one misconception. What has been said in favor of Gothic as
the initiatory discipline for the beginner in English philology
may require some qualifications. It is supposed, even to this
day, among philologists generally, that Gothic stood nearest to
the primitive Teutonic language, because of its very simplicity
and regularity. The baldness, so to speak, of its outlines suggests a dim, mysterious antiquity. Yet even Jacob Grimm confessed that Old High German, much younger in its literary remains and exhibiting an endless variety of dialectic forms, seemed
to him somehow an older language; while one of the greatest
living scholars, the greatest in his own department,-George
Curtius of Leipsic,-has thrown out the hint that perhaps this
445