Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  From hulh pronounced in the French fashion, and doubly aspirated, or else from hilh, was made hulf or hilf in the Aeolian fashion, which in Latin (and in many other languages on account of the similarity in the labial f and v) was pronounced, as we have seen, either at the beginning [1280] or over time hilv. Indeed, the Aeolic digamma must simply have been a thing midway between f and v, and an aspirate that had something of a consonant about it, and became a full consonant in due course. (One may also find aspirates regarded formally as consonants in Spanish, etc.) From hilv the Latins, as was their custom, created silv. And finally, just as with the Greeks the aspirate H, as it became utterly lost, went on to become a letter, and desinence of ὕλη, and ceased to be a radical character, so too with Latin speakers the word silv, as the language softened and took shape, went on to acquire its terminal vowel a.

  We may thus see how many changes the root hulh or hilh had to undergo (even if it were the very first word) depending upon the differences in peoples and times, prior even to its passing from its pure state as root to being a derived or compound word, indeed, prior to its undergoing any inflection, since ὕλη and silva, being nominatives, do not have any inflection. And I would further add, prior to becoming selva in Italian, since the root of this Italian word is the same hulh, and so too all the more modern words that are routinely spoken today have their very ancient and, for the most part, quite unrecognizable root in the original languages.

  These are not forced etymologies, nor dreams, even though they are very distant etymologies. And displaying a reluctance to believe in them, simply because they are distant, and because at first glance no resemblance is discernible between hulh and silva, is not to be strong-minded, but to be ignorant, of archaeology, of philology, and of the natural history of human organs, climates, etc., as also of the clear and certain history of so many other words and languages, a history markedly similar to this one. [1281] The history, too, of those Italian words which are known for certain to have derived from Arabic, Greek, and Latin itself, and have yet lost so much of their original physiognomy (in so much shorter a time and lesser variety of accidents), and can hardly be traced back to their origin. For there are two kinds of incredulity, one that derives from science, and the other (far more common) from ignorance, and from not knowing how to see how what is can be, from knowing only a few possibilities, etc., only a few truths and hence only a few probabilities, etc., from not knowing how far possibility extends. (See p. 1391, end.)

  So, if I am not mistaken, we have found a root that is original, or close to the original form, I mean hulh or hilh. It would be as intriguing as it would be useful to investigate this word, to discover whether it, or another resembling it, exists in foreign languages, especially Eastern ones, from which in the very earliest times the Western languages seem to have derived—as nations, opinions, and customs also seem to have derived—so that, in short, the East was inhabited before the West. The studies and discoveries that the moderns have made in recent times and are still making even today, respecting Eastern antiquities, would seem to lend ever more credence to this argument (consistent, indeed, with Christianity and with the ancient pagan traditions) about the greater antiquity of the East, as opposed to the West, or at any rate of Oriental society and civilization, generally speaking. Particular attention should be paid to the Indian languages.

  The savage languages would also be well suited to the above investigations, since they are probably the least distant from the original state, as are those who speak them.

  But before embarking upon such investigations, we need to make one last observation in this regard. Hitherto we have only considered the variations in the external form of the aforesaid root. We must also observe the variations in its meaning. ῾´Υλη does not only [1282] mean forest but also matter, material the substantive, etc. See the Dictionaries. Indeed, the latter is taken to be the proper meaning of this word. Hence or hiyyuli, in the Rabbinical texts, means matter or primal matter, a philosophical term.1 See Johann Buxtorf’s Lexicon Chaldaicum Talmudicum et Rabbinicum, under the (fictitious) root [he yod waw] Basel 1639, cols. 605, end–606. Where it is worth noting the manner in which the sound of the Greek υ, or French u, is imitated, that is to say, with two is and a u; from which (1) we may confirm what I have said on p. 1279, namely, that the Greeks considered this sound to be more like an i than a u; (2) it appears that the ancient pronunciation of the Greek υ endured even after that of the long e, that is, η, was turned into i; since the η in ὕλη is expressed in the above rabbinical word by a long i. On the other hand, the root is incorrectly formed by the Lexicographer, since it lacks lamed, a letter that is utterly radical in the context of the word referred to above. One may also see that the aspirate was still retained in the word ὕλη, since the only reason the rabbinical writers had for putting the He in the aforesaid word was to represent aspiration. More particularly, ὕλη also signifies firewood, timber, or wood in general. So too does silva (see Forcellini), further proof of the affinity of this word with the Greek word. I do not know, and it does not matter very much to find out for now, which of these meanings was the original one, whether forest, or firewood, or matter, or material, etc. Even in the barbarian Latin writers Silva may mean Lignum [wood], or Materia [matter]. See Du Cange’s Glossary. See also its entry for Hyle, and Forcellini likewise.

  It is certainly intriguing to observe that among the Spanish, madera, identical to materia [matter], which our Italian ancestors also pronounced matera, today simply means wood in general, or timber. And among the French it is well known that bois means both forest and wood. See the French Dictionaries and whether there is anything relevant in the Crusca, under selva, bosco, foresta, materia, etc. We, too, when writing poetically, would very often say selva, etc., for legna [wood], etc., as is the case with the Latin poets.

  One therefore could and should seek out in the Oriental, etc., languages the root hulh or hilh, not only in [1283] the sense of selva [forest] but also in that of matter, wood, timber, etc., and whichever of them it was found in would serve to confirm my argument. (2–5 July 1821.) See p. 2306.

  For p. 1270. Even after someone has performed the wondrous analysis of all the articulate sounds utterable in a single language, and conceived the momentous project of expressing them one by one, and representing them in writing, once, in short, the alphabet has been invented, one would be sure to experience as much difficulty in the application, as one always does when passing from theory to practice. Indeed you could say that writing a language that had never been written was the same as applying theory to practice. Countless difficulties, drawbacks, and muddles were bound to arise in the first scripts. Alphabets, like all things human, and especially things that are so difficult and so subtle, remained imperfect for a very long time. That is to say, it was only after very many experiments and reflections that the analysis of sounds could have been done perfectly. Such an analysis could not immediately arrive at wholly elementary sounds. Hence useless and redundant signs on the one hand, lack of necessary signs on the other. Hence a system marred by too little simplicity and too much. Archaeologists can readily see and take note, and they do take note of the progress made by the alphabet, both in one and the same nation, and in its passing on to other nations, as it did. What is certain, however, is that the very first alphabets must have been far more imperfect than the highly imperfect and first ones known to us, and that they must have remained for a long time in that, or a similar state of imperfection, and so have played all the greater a part in altering the language as written down, the language as communicated to other nations and times, etc. What a quantity of words that could be very well distinguished in pronunciation must have been confused in writing. Either one then sought to distinguish them in arbitrary ways, or by leaving them so indistinct that the properties, meanings, and origins of the words [1284] gradually came to be confused. In either case you may see how much the necessary imperfection of the first scripts (and by first I mean t
hose lasting several centuries) must have undermined the perfect preservation of the original roots, distorted their form, muddled up their meanings, etc. etc. Discuss likewise in relation to the other drawbacks that derived from the imperfections of alphabets, and the effects these imperfections were bound to have for the words.

  But even disregarding any imperfection in the original alphabets, or alphabet, I would reiterate the point that attaching spoken words to the signs then invented was bound to occasion the same difficulties as we face when we move down from theory to practice. Let us observe children as they first begin to write, even though they may know how to read well, or the ignorant ones who know how to form all the letters, however, and to write under dictation. What a host of blunders there must be because of the limited practice they have had in attaching a particular sign to a particular sound, and in analyzing the word that they hear and resolving it into its elementary sounds in order to apply the appropriate sign to each elementary sound. (Note that they employ an alphabet of their own created out of the language in which they are writing, and the appropriate and distinctive signs of the precise sounds that they are supposed to represent.) They can barely manage to copy well, that is, to transfer not from sound to sign, but from sign to sign. Likewise with children who are beginners at writing, when they have to write the words they are thinking of from dictation, or without having a copy in front of them. Likewise, full-grown men also, who know how to speak well, but who are not used to reading or writing, omit, transpose, alter, and add so many letters, make their written word so different from the spoken that they themselves would be ashamed to pronounce their writing after the fashion in which it is set down. Yet they believe that it corresponds to the pronunciation. See p. 1659. The writer who writes [1285] by transferring on to paper the words that his mind suggests to him, writes under his own dictation. How long did he have to wait before achieving perfection in representing with signs each sound that he conceived! And the countless errors occasioned by the first writers’ necessary lack of skill were bound to be perpetuated in large part in the scripts, and to muddle and damage a good number of words, their shapes, their meanings, etc. (And we should remember in this regard that the ancient languages reached us by writing alone.) And I will leave to one side the well-known ancient custom of writing all the words continuously without gaps, distinctions, punctuation marks (in which Hebrew is almost wholly lacking), etc.,1 and everyone can see how many confusions and errors it must have given rise to. The same goes for the other drawbacks of paleography, the consequences of which were greater in the cultured, etc., languages than one might suppose. We may also see the same in the Codices written in periods when the art of writing had already been complete for a long time. We see, I repeat, so many errors, so many slips perpetuated in a work, etc., where criticism labors, and very often does not manage to correct them, and just as often is not even aware of them, etc. etc. See p. 1318. From all the above it seems that the original languages, simply through their being used in writing alone, without there being as yet any literature at all, were bound to suffer extreme alteration, disfigurement, and distortion.

  Let us now try to reconcile the above observations with the facts. It seems that the Oriental languages were the first in the world. It is certainly the case that the Western alphabets came from the East, and therefore that the first alphabets were Eastern, and the first inventor of the alphabet must have been Eastern. Now the Eastern alphabets lack signs for vowels at the outset. This seems strange. So far as the analysis of articulated sounds is concerned, it seems to me that the vowels, being in reality the principal elements, should be the first and the most easily found. Many Critics strive in a somewhat forced fashion to recover the vowels in the original alphabets from the East. But let us consider the matter as philosophers, and see just how much our judgment [1286]—we who are so accustomed to, and versed in the analysis of articulate sounds, which has been established and perfected for such a long time—differs from that of the first person or persons who, without any guidance or help, conceived of this highly subtle and abstruse operation.

  Even if the vowels are the first sounds that man utters (and indeed the beasts too), and are the foundation of all and every language, it is clear to anyone who scrutinizes them closely, that they are thinner sounds; or, if I may so put it, sounds that are more spiritual, and harder to distinguish from the remaining sounds, than consonants are. We call them that because they cannot stand on their own, and need vowels, and the Greeks likewise called them σύμφωνοι, which is as if to say convowels. Where the quest for elementary sounds is concerned, this would seem to lead us directly to the immediate discovery of vowel sounds, and yet precisely the reverse is true, since it was what prevented and was bound by its very nature to prevent the primary analysis of language from reaching such a point. The vowels were considered to be sounds inseparable from the other articulated sounds; they were thought of as virtually unarticulated sounds, as inexpressible parts of speech, as parts so fleeting that they could not be fixed in writing and represented separately with their own individual signs. In short, the analysis of the elements of words, the decomposition of the articulated human voice did not get as far as these thin elements, that is to say, as far as the vowels, and it was not known that the vowel sounds were elementary, and [1287] divisible from the others. And consonants—whose very name in our languages demonstrates that they are substances which are compound, or require composition, or, in short, are more compound or less simple than vowels—were considered to be simple substances. See p. 2404.

  Since the first scripts lacked vowels, they were just like the writing that is used in several methods of shorthand, and the East continued for very many centuries to write thus, almost in shorthand.1 (And so I believe it continues still in several languages.)

  Note that the first alphabets had an abundance of signs for aspirates (which were very frequent and had a very pronounced sound in the Oriental languages, as in Spanish), and that these same signs would then become vowels in the alphabets of the West, taken indeed from the East. And this on account of the natural analogy between aspirates and vowels, which when pronounced on their own are almost just aspirates. They also had an abundance of signs for aspirated consonants, as distinct from signs for nonaspirated ones, an abundance that was not necessary when there were the signs for aspirates which could be combined with those for nonaspirated consonants called soft, and thereby denoting the aspirated consonants, as the Latins did, and in earlier times the Greeks, who used to write ΤΗΕΟΣ [GOD], ΨΥΚΗΗ [SOUL], or ΠΣΥΚΗΕ [SOUL], etc. But this is the natural tendency of the human mind, as its entire progress, both in general and in particular, that is, in any science or art whatsoever, consists in drawing ever nearer to the elements of things and ideas, and in understanding that even the ostensibly most simple of things or ideas contains another, simpler one. See in this regard p. 1235, beginning.

  [1288] Let us now observe the consequences of this quasi-stenographic script, that is, a script without vowels and one which was for so long a time to be found throughout the East, even after their art of writing had been wholly perfected, the original script among men. Let us observe, I repeat, the consequences for our argument, that is, the alterations brought by writing to the earliest roots, and the loss it has caused us of perfect knowledge of many of them, etc.

  All scholars know that no great account should be taken of the vowels in Eastern languages and words, whether in studying them or in comparing them with other languages and words, in seeking out their roots, origins, properties, rules, etc., and that the vowels in these languages are for the most part highly variable and uncertain, and you have to go mad trying to reduce what pertains to them to (endlessly subdivided) rules.1 Now how can that be? This is indeed at odds with the universal nature of human speech, whose soul, whose principal and crucial parts are the vowels, and these ought by rights to be less variable and more regulated than the consonants. This must simply be attributed to th
e imperfect manner of writing to which we have referred (an imperfection due to that script being the first in the world, etc.), and it also serves to demonstrate, contrary to the opinion of some critics, that the most ancient and original Eastern alphabets did effectively lack signs for the vowels. It is not the case that the vowels [1289] did not and do not form the substance of the Eastern languages, as of more or less all others. They do form the substance of those languages, but not of their grammar, and this for the reason given. Indeed, many Eastern languages, e.g., Hebrew (and I believe, generally speaking, almost all of them), have a greater abundance of vowels than our own languages. The Hebrew language has 14 different vowels, none of which is a diphthong. This is the first consequence and effect of the imperfection of that script on speech, and on the character of the languages which employed that script.