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The Bible was originally written in the Hebrew language, and the Hebrew language at that time had no vowels in writing. It was written with consonants, and without being divided into chapters or into verses, and there was no system of punctuation whatever.
Two periods in the development of the language may be clearly distinguished. In the older period the vocalization of the language was completely carried out, and the collision of two consonants was almost without exception avoided.
It is said that he invariably stations some one in the back of the audience to signal to him when his voice is either too low or unnecessarily loud. In the next place, distinctness depends upon enunciation. The debater who drops off final syllables, slurs consonants, runs words together, or talks without using his lips and without opening his mouth is hard to understand.
If an obstruction is thrown into the channel the result is a consonant. Vowels and consonants, then, constitute the elements of speech. The vowels are the emotional elements and the consonants are the intellectual elements. By means of vowel sounds alone emotions may be awakened, but when definite ideas are expressed, words which are a combination of vowels and consonants must be used.
The vowels had their broad Italian sounds, and the speech was full of soft gutterals and vocalic syllables, like the endings ën, ës, ë, which made feminine rhymes and kept the consonants from coming harshly together. Great poet as Chaucer was, he was not quite free from the literary weakness of his time.
For example, because of its initial "s"-sound and its hard consonants, the word "struggle" seems to express, in the effort required to pronounce it, something of the emotional tone of struggle itself; but how do we know that this is not due to the association with its meaning, which we have been unable to abstract from?
It had been so with all the old French names, the L'Homme-Dieus and Des Isles and Beaulieus; the air, or the granite, or one knows not what, caused an ossification of the consonants, a drying up of the vowels, till these names, once soft and melodious, became more angular, more rasping in utterance, than ever Smith or Jones could be. They were Huguenots, the d'Arthenays.
Various strange things had appeared from his pen, and, most curious of all, a little book entitled, "Yahveh Christ," in which he had endeavored to demonstrate that the doctrine of the Trinity was to be found entangled in the consonants out of which former scholars made the word "Jehovah," and more recent scholars "Yahveh"; that this word, in fact, proved the doctrine of the Trinity.
Voice-color being largely determined by the resonance-cavities, the articulation of consonants in the resonance-cavity of the mouth covers the open process of vowel-formation and gives color to the resultant word and tone. Thus, when "love" is sung, although l is not a strong consonant but one of a small group called subvocals, it is sufficient to cover and color the open o production.
Thus, the group sh-m-r expresses the idea of "guarding," the group g-n-b that of "stealing," n-t-n that of "giving." Naturally these consonantal sequences are merely abstracted from the actual forms. The consonants are held together in different forms by characteristic vowels that vary according to the idea that it is desired to express. Prefixed and suffixed elements are also frequently used.
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