Page:The Aryan Origin of the Alphabet.djvu/43

Rh new value of Ph which was now given to the letter Φ which we shall find was the old W. And similarly this F letter sign is given the V and Ph values in Indian Asokan, Sanskrit and Hindi by modern scholars and transliterators.

In "Semitic" Phœnician this Viper-sign in its reversed form occurs in the identical relative place in that alphabet, immediately after E, as in our modern alphabet, and is called Vau by Semitic scholars and given the various alphabetic values of V, U and W. But it now seems probable that the later Phœnicians also pronounced this letter as F or Fi.

On the Fa and Fi values for certain Sumerian signs hitherto read Pa or Pi see Dictionary.

This guttural or throat letter, in both its early angular < and crescentic 𐌂 forms, occurs in the Egyptian signaries from the pre-dynastic period downwards, and on through the Cadmean and Greek alphabets to the Latin (see Plate I).

The Sumerian parent of the soft G or Gi is obviously the pictogram (which possibly also had a hard value as often in English) Gi, "a lever-balance" (see Plate I, col. i). The crescentic form of the letter was evidently derived from the Sumerian crescent sign which has the value of Ge or Gu; whilst its square or two-lobed form with the hard sound is apparently from the Sumerian Ga, "to give," which is one of the forms of that letter in Indian Asokan (see col. 11), and in the cursive form it occurs in Hindi with the late aspirated value of Gh. This latter square form with middle bar is evidently the source of our modern G with its middle bar, and of the double loop in our small  g,  g.