Labial consonants ir p 0.
Palatal consonants K Y X.
Lingual consonants r 6 O.
These consonants, thus arranged in °classes,* by the place of their origin, as lip sounds, pala tal (or guttural) sounds, or tongue and teeth sounds, may also be arranged in uorders,v xsr forming smooth or surd sounds, 3 y 15 forming sonants or voiced sounds, while sex 0 were originally erscr plus an aspiration, like ph in uphill, kh in bake-house, and th in pot-hook. These sounds at an early date became the spi rants f, ch (as in the German lachen or the Scotch loch), and the Anglo-Saxon and Eng glish th.
The spirants a and C.
The liquids a and p.
The nasals is, v and an n palatal (fi) = ng.
Double consonantsf=s, y or x a and* =w, or 4 + a (C a sonant or voiced spirant was originally a double consonant arising from 40 or ad). For a more complete discussion of the Greek alphabet, its origin, its growth, the vary ing dialectic forms of the letters, the two Attic alphabets, see ALPHABET.
That fresh vigor which has always charac terized the Greek mind, that vividness of sense conception that caused the Greeks at so period in their history to seek expression in art, architecture and music, could not fail to show itself in their language making it confess edly the most perfect vehicle for the expression of thought that has ever existed. At or near the beginning of sentences the Greek, by the use of some little particle, enclitic or post-positive, often showed the very mood of his mind, his pre-existent attitude, toward the thought that he was to utter. The written word thus speaks with the spontaneous vivacity that a French man's shrug of shoulder or play of feature or bodily pose so vividly conveys. Distinctions so fine that they elude exact and idiomatic rendi tion except by oral translation, in which em phasis and shade of meaning may be com municated to the hearer by voice and facial ex pression, are by the use of particles like ye, rot, Irv, ol.v and 86 set before the eyes of the reader in black and white. Another thing that contributes largely to the clearness and conciseness of the language is its richness in verb-forms. A middle voice expressed the warmth of personal interest or advantage in an act; the optative mood, missing in the Latin language, expressed future relations and desires a shade more vaguely and remotely than did the subjunctive or future indicative; in the subordinate moods and in the infinitive we find a clear distinction made between present and aorist, a distinction not of time, however, for these moods are naturally future (or, as in the case of the infinitive, devoid of any time idea whatsoever) but of the nature of the act as habitual or repeated, or as simply occurring once. Thus °He wishes to write good letters
is expressed by the present infini tive, while °He wishes to write a good letter' is expressed by the aorist infinitive. `Honor thy father and thy mother* and °Bow down to are respectively present and aorist imperatives. This distinction has been fully preserved in Modern Greek and is one of the most convincing proofs that the spirit of the ancient Greek language has never died. The existence of present, future, aorist and perfect infinitives and participles permits a nicety of expression that hardly any other language can equal. The fact that the infinitive, apart from the distinction above mentioned, which charac terizes the nature of the action rather than its time, is an indeclinable neuter noun and can (especially when used with the article to denote its case) be used with surprising clearness as subject or object or predicate, rn cognate or object relations with adjectives, verbs and prep ositions, and absolutely in an accusative of specification construction, makes it one of the most flexible elements of the Greek language. The early discrimination of a definite article (here, too, we note the relative poverty of the Latin) from an original demonstrative pronoun greatly increased the usefulness of both infini tive and participle, for modifiers of the verb idea in both could be placed between article and noun in such a way as to show their relation most clearly. This gave a definiteness of appli cation to all adnominal words and phrases that were attributive to nouns or to adjectives that were used as nouns. To the existence of a definite article is due the fact that Greek is more like English than Latin, for it permits, nay, compels an order of words that is logical and straightforward.