f the penultimate unit, second the fact
that a final vowel was pronounced. When he knew these two things
he gave the Latin word the sounds which it would have if it were
an English word imported from the Latin. Thus he finds the word
_civilitate_. I am not sure that he could find it, but that does not
matter. He would know 'civility', and he learns that the penultima of
the Latin word is long. Therefore he says _c[)i]v[)i]l[)i]t[=a]t[)e]_.
Again he knows '[)i]nf[)i]n[)i]t' (I must be allowed to spell the
word as it is pronounced except in corrupt quires). He finds that
the penultima of _infinitivus_ is long, and he therefore says
_[)i]nf[)i]n[)i]t[=i]v[)u]s_. Again he knows 'irradiate', and
finding that the penultima of _irradiabitur_ is short he says
_[)i]rr[=a]d[)i][)a]b[)i]t[)u]r_. It is true that some of these
verb forms under the influence of their congeners came to have
an exceptional pronunciation. Thus _irradi[=a]bit_ led at last to
_irradi[=a]bitur_, but I doubt whether this occurred before the
nineteenth century. The word _dabitur_, almost naturalized by Luther's
adage of _date et dabitur_, kept its short _a_ down to the time when
it regained it, in a slightly different form, by its Roman right;
and _am[)a]mini_ and _mon[)e]mini_ were unwavering in their use. Old
people said _v[=a]ri[)a]bilis_ long after the true quantities had
asserted themselves, and the word as the specific name of a plant may
be heard even now. Its first syllable of course follows what I shall
call the 'alias' rule. We may still see this rule in other instances.
All men say 'hippop['o]t[)a]mus', and even those who know that this
_a_ is short in Greek can say nothing but 'Mesopot[=a]mia', unless
indeed the word lose its blessed and comforting powers in a disyllabic
abbreviation. When a country was named after Cecil Rhodes, where the
_e_ in the surname is mute, we all called it 'Rhod[=e]sia'. Had it
been named after a Newman, where the _a_ is short or rather obscure,
we should all have called it 'Newm[=a]nia ', while, named after a
Davis, it would certainly have been 'Dav[)i]sia'. The process of
thought would in each case have been unconscious. A new example is
'aviation', whose first vowel has been instinctively lengthened.

Again, when the word 'telegram' was coined, some scholars objected to
its formation and insisted upon 'telegrapheme', but the most obdurate
Grecian did not propose to keep the long Greek vowel in the first
syllable. Wh