"

It is difficult to form any conception of the extent to which the whole
surface of a language may be altered by what we have just described as
phonetic change. Think that in the French _vingt_ you have the same
elements as in _deux_ and _dix_; that the second part of the French
_douze_, twelve, represents the Latin _decim_ in _duodecim_; that the
final _te_ of _trente_ was originally the Latin _ginta_ in _triginta_,
which _ginta_ was again a derivation and abbreviation of the Sanskrit
_da'sa_ or _da'sati_, ten. Then consider how early this phonetic disease
must have broken out. For in the same manner as _vingt_ in French,
_veinte_ in Spanish, and _venti_ in Italian presuppose the more primitive
_viginti_ which we find in Latin, so this Latin _viginti_, together with
the Greek _eikati_, and the Sanskrit _vin'sati_ presuppose an earlier
language from which they are in turn derived, and in which, previous to
_viginti_, there must have been a more primitive form _dvi-ginti_, and
previous to this again, another compound as clear and intelligible as the
Chinese _eul-shi_, consisting of the ancient Aryan names for two, _dvi_,
and ten, _da'sati_. Such is the virulence of this phonetic change, that it
will sometimes eat away the whole body of a word, and leave nothing behind
but decayed fragments. Thus, _sister_, which in Sanskrit is _svasar_,(30)
appears in Pehlvi and in Ossetian as _cho_. _Daughter_, which in Sanskrit
is _duhitar_, has dwindled down in Bohemian to _dci_ (pronounced
_tsi_).(31) Who would believe that _tear_ and _larme_ are derived from the
same source; that the French _meme_ contains the Latin _semetipsissimus_;
that in _aujourd'hui_ we have the Latin word _dies_ twice!(32) Who would
recognize the Latin _pater_ in the Armenian _hayr_? Yet we make no
difficulty about identifying _pere_ and _pater_; and as several initial
h's in Armenian correspond to an original _p_ (_het_ = _pes_, _pedis_;
_hing_ = {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}; _hour_ = {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PERISPOMENI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}), it follows that _hayr_ is _pater_.(33)

We are accustomed to call these changes the growth of language, but it
would be more appropriate to call this process of phonetic change decay,
and thus to distinguish it from the second or dialectical process which we
must