If we select the h as the representative of the guttural semi-vowel as heard in "loch," we shall, of course, not be allowed to use the same sign for the guttural flatus. In many languages both sounds are promiscuously expressed by the same sign, not so much because the two are nearly related, as because in the course of time the pronunciation of the semi-vowel was reduced in many languages to that of the mere flatus, whether asper or lenis. The other change, that of spiritus asper or lenis into a guttural semi-vowel, is of rare occurrence. The Sanskrit h (ह), for instance, which is always the guttural semi-vowel, becomes in other dialects a spiritus asper, and sometimes, particularly in vulgar pronunciation, even a spiritus lenis. The Sanskrit "hrit," the Latin "cor, cordis," becomes "heart" in English, and even ʼeart. Sanskrit "hansa" is χῆν in Greek, but ʼanser in Latin. Sanskrit "hima," snow, becomes "hiems" in Latin, and Latin "hibernum" is "ʼiver" in French. Latin "vehere," the Sanskrit "vah," loses its final semi-vowel in "via," which is "veha, veʼa, via."
A similar observation applies to the Semitic guttural semi-vowel, the hain (ע). In Hebrew it is sometimes not pronounced at all, or, as we should say, it is changed into the spiritus lenis; so that in the Arabic alphabet, in order to remove this ambiguity and to show at once the full or weak pronunciation of the guttural semi-vowel, the ע was split in two: the one, the ع little more than the spiritus lenis; the other, the غ, the hollow guttural semi-vowel which only a Semitic throat is able to utter.
Without paying any regard to these fluctuations and their alphabetical representations, the missionary, wherever he hears a guttural friction which can only be produced by a consonantal stoppage, should call it a semi-vowel; where there is no friction, but only a free emission of breath, it is the guttural flatus, the spiritus asper or lenis.
The palatal semi-vowel in Germany is usually transcribed by j, which, as far as archæological arguments go, would certainly be the most appropriate sign to represent the semi-vowel corresponding to the palatal vowel i. As, however, the j is one of the most variously pronounced letters in Europe, and as in England it has been usual to employ it as palatal media, it is better to discard it altogether from our alphabet, and to write y.
