Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/768

722 Y YThe history of this symbol has already been given under U. The three symbols U, V, Y are only differentiations of one original form. The sound of y in Greek was that of French u in " lune " and German u in " iibel." In Boeotian and Laconian Greek the old M-sound was retained ; but it was represented by ov, a digraph which had also the value of u in other dia lects where it arose from phonetic change, e.g., in TOVS (for TOVS). The name v [>tX6v was probably given to distin guish it from v 8ia Si^Ooyyov, that is, the same sound, but denoted by 01, which in the 2d century B.C. was be ginning to have the value of v ; just so I tyiXov is opposed to at, or ZSia 8i<J>66yyov. The difference in sound between the full and the modified u is this : for the first the lips are rounded as much as possible, and the back part of the tongue is raised towards the palate; for the second the rounding of the lips is the same, but the tongue is in the position for i, so that in sounding u we are sounding i with the lips rounded in addition. This explains the ease with which the i-sound is produced instead of u by persons unfamiliar with the latter sound : when an Englishman pronouncing "Miiller" says "Miller," he puts the tongue right for i but omits to round the lips as well. This change has been a regular one in our language. There is no doubt that y (i.e., u) was a sound of Early English (or Anglo- Saxon), as of the other Teutonic languages, in words like "fyr" (fire), "synn" (sin); it was the "umlaut" of u, especially when followed in the next syllable by i or e ; so "burg" has for gen. and dat. "byrig," orig. "burges," "burge." But in Middle English y passed into i : thus "fyr" (sounded as fiir) came to be sounded as "fir" (feer), and this (as in other cases where I occurs) was diphthongized in com paratively modern times into " fire " (faiar). Thus in the middle of a word y lost its special value; on the other hand, at the beginning of a word it easily passed into the con sonant y, the value which it has regularly in modern English. This explains the fact that the English language had no symbol for the sound of French u when this sound was re-introduced into England after the Norman Conquest. Accordingly the French symbol as well as the sound was taken : it is found in words like "muse," "lute," sounded as "myyz," "lyyte." The yy gradually developed into the iu sound with which we are familiar in " miuz," " Hut"; but the spelling remained unchanged. It must have been awkward to have the symbol u representing both the full (native) sound and the modified (French) sound ; this was partially obviated by borrowing for the full w-sound the French writing ou : e.g., " hus " was written " house," with out at first any change of sound ; but this was not consist ently carried out. Much later, at the end of the 16th century, the sound was diphthongized into "haus" (as now), but the spelling (ou) remained. The fact that y and i became indistinguishable led to the use of y at the end of a word instead of i : thus we write " day " instead of the older "dai." In Early English we find the symbol 3 (which is a modi fication of the Anglo-Saxon g) used initially with the value of g, and medially (chiefly before t) where modern English writes gh, as in light. This is due to French scribes, who used the French (i.e., our modern) form of g for the ^r-sound, and then the 5 for the sound which had been weakened in Anglo-Saxon from g to y, as in yard (our yard) for ori ginal yard (Norse garth ; in North English Aysgarth and Qatesgarth). About the 15th century this same symbol was mistaken for z, and as such it is still occasionally em ployed in cursive, when 3 is written instead of z. YACHOW-FTJ, a prefectural city in the Chinese province of Sze-ch uen, is situated in 30 4 N. lat. and 103 4 E. long., and is a place of some antiquity and note, being first mentioned in history during the Chow dynasty (1122- 255 B.C.). It is prettily placed in a valley surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills, on the banks of the river Ya. The town is large, populous, and busy, and owes its im portance to the fact that it stands at the parting of the tea and tobacco trade route to Tibet via Tatsien-lu and the cotton trade route to western Yun-nan via Ningyuen-Fu. Yachow-Fu is the seat also of a considerable silk manu facture ; and in its immediate neighbourhood there exist both coal and iron. The city wall measures 2 miles in circumference, and is pierced by four gates. The popula tion is estimated at about 40,000. YACHTING is the sport of racing in yachts 1 and boats with sails for money or plate, and also the pastime of cruising for pleasure in sailing or steam vessels. The history of yachting is the history of yacht -racing, inas much as competition improved yachts just as horse-racing improved horses. It dates from the beginning of the 19th century; for, although there were sailing yachts long before, they were but few, and belonged exclusively to princes and other illustrious personages. For instance, in the Anglo-Saxon period Athelstan had presented to him by the king of Norway a magnificent royal vessel, the sails of which were purple and the head and deck wrought with gold, apparently a kind of state barge. Elizabeth had one, and so has every English sovereign since. During her reign a pleasure ship was built (1588) at Cowes, so that the association of that place with the sport goes back three hundred years. In 16GO Charles II. was presented by the Dutch with a yacht named the " Mary," until which time the word "yacht" was unknoAvn in England. The Merrie Monarch was fond of sailing, for he designed a yacht of 25 tons called the " Jamie," built at Lambeth in 1662, as well as several others later on. In that year the "Jamie" was matched for ,100 against a small Dutch yacht, under the duke of York, from Greenwich to Graves- end and back, and beat her, the king steering part of the time apparently the first record of a yacht match and of an amateur helmsman. The first authentic record of a sailing club is in 1720, when the Cork Harbour Water Club, now known as the Royal Cork Yacht Club, was established in Ireland, but the yachts were small. Maitland, in his History of London (1739), mentions sailing and rowing on the Thames as among the amusements then indulged in ; and Strutt, in his Sports and Pastimes (1801), says that the Cumberland Society, consisting of gentlemen partial to this pastime, gave yearly a silver cup to be sailed for in the vicinity of London. The boats tisually started from Blackfriars Bridge, went up the Thames to Putney, and returned to Vauxhall, being, no doubt, mere sailing boats and not yachts or decked vessels. From the middle to the end of the 18th century yachting developed very slowly : although matches were sailed at Cowes as far back as 1780, very few yachts of any size, say 35 tons, existed in 1800 there or elsewhere. In 1812 the Royal Yacht Squadron was established by fifty yacht-owners at Cowes and was called the Yacht Club, altered to the Royal Yacht Club in 1820 ; but no regular regatta was held there until some years later. The yachts of the time Avere built of heavy materials, like the revenue cutters, full in the fore body and fine aft ; 1 The English word yacht is the Dutch jacht,jcujt, fiomjachten, " to

hurry," "to hunt."