Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/202

184 but what, according to our notions of the meaning of sounds, would express rage or discomfort; how far are the roars and howls of wild beasts to be thus interpreted? We might as well imagine the tuning violin to be in pain, or the moaning wind to express sorrow. The connexion between interjection and emotion depending on the physical structure of the animal which utters or hears the sound, it follows that the general similarity of interjectional utterance among all the varieties of the human race is an important manifestation of their close physical and intellectual unity.

Interjectional sounds uttered by man for the expression of his own feelings serve also as signs indicating these feelings to another. A long list of such interjections, common to races speaking the most widely various languages, might be set down in a rough way as representing the sighs, groans, moans, cries, shrieks, and growls by which man gives utterance to various of his feelings. Such for instance, are some of the many sounds for which ''ah! oh! ahi! aie! are the inexpressive written representatives; such is the sigh which is written down in the Wolof language of Africa as hhihhe! in English as heigho! in Greek and Latin as  heu! cheu! Thus the open-mouthed wah wah! of astonishment, so common in the East, reappears in America in the hwah! hwah-wa! of the Chinook Jargon; and the kind of groan which is represented in European languages by weh! ouais! vae! is given in Coptic by ouae! in Galla by wayo! in the Ossetic of the Caucasus by voy! among the Indians of British Columbia by woï!'' Where the interjections taken down in the vocabularies of other languages differ from those recognized in our own, we at any rate appreciate them and see how they carry their meaning. Thus with the Malagasy u-u! of pleasure, the North-American Indian's often-described guttural ugh! the kwish! of contempt in the Chinook Jargon, the Tunguz yo yo! of pain, the Irish wb wb! of distress, the native Brazilian's teh teh!