In dealing with the vowel i, we have seen that in
Greek and Latin, in the middle of a word, it frequently
represented the sound y (ie), which belongs to both
vowels and consonants. Distinctly retained at the
beginning of words in Zend, Latin, and Teutonic, this
y has undergone various alterations in Greek which
have changed it, now into an aspirate, now into a soft
sibilant, now into a dental. Finally it became con-



Indo-European Phonetics. 367

founded with, a softened, palatal guttural, genus, genre,
and took in Prench the value and the sound of/. These
changes are partly determined by the proxinfity of
certain soft consonants; but some can only be explained
by a defect of pronunciation proper to the Greeks.
Where Sanscrit has yuhsma, we, Greek has va-fie^,
vfjLfies (classical vfji.ecs) ; yas, yd, yat, the relative pro-
noun, becomes oy, )?', o ; the root yag, to sacrifice, to
sanctify, whence the Persians have derived Yaxata
(Ized), the name of the divinities who form the escort
to Ahuramazda, furnishes to Sanscrit the verbal ad-
jective yagyas, worthy to be sacrificed ; this same word
must be recognised in the Greek dfyjoj, saint. Aspira-
tion is the great resource of the larynx when embarrassed.
Greek, in using it here and in many other circumstances,
as we shall see, does not differ from Spanish and
Plorentine, of which the one replaces the y and the x
by the/oto, Quijote, Quexada, Jeres, or the / by an h,
hijo, humo, Jiahlar ; the other, initial c or ^ by an h,
hasa, house, hrazie, thank you.
