native phonetic habits. They are then
so changed as to do as little violence as possible to these habits.
Frequently we have phonetic compromises. Such an English word as the
recently introduced _camouflage_, as now ordinarily pronounced,
corresponds to the typical phonetic usage of neither English nor French.
The aspirated _k_, the obscure vowel of the second syllable, the precise
quality of the _l_ and of the last _a_, and, above all, the strong
accent on the first syllable, are all the results of unconscious
assimilation to our English habits of pronunciation. They differentiate
our _camouflage_ clearly from the same word as pronounced by the
French. On the other hand, the long, heavy vowel in the third syllable
and the final position of the "zh" sound (like _z_ in _azure_) are
distinctly un-English, just as, in Middle English, the initial _j_ and
_v_[167] must have been felt at first as not strictly in accord with
English usage, though the strangeness has worn off by now. In all four
of these cases--initial _j_, initial _v_, final "zh," and unaccented _a_
of _father_--English has not taken on a new sound but has merely
extended the use of an old one.

[Footnote 167: See page 206.]

[Transcriber's note: Footnote 167 refers to the paragraph beginning on
line 6329.]

Occasionally a new sound is introduced, but it is likely to melt away
before long. In Chaucer's day the old Anglo-Saxon _ue_ (written _y_) had
long become unrounded to _i_, but a new set of _ue_-vowels had come in
from the French (in such words as _due_, _value_, _nature_). The new _ue_
did not long hold its own; it became diphthongized to _iu_ and was
amalgamated with the native _iw_ of words like _new_ and _slew_.
Eventually this diphthong appears as _yu_, with change of stress--_dew_
(from Anglo-Saxon _deaw_) like _due_ (Chaucerian _due_). Facts like these
show how stubbornly a language resists radical tampering with its
phonetic pattern.

Nevertheless, we know that languages do influence each other in phonetic
respects, and that quite aside from the taking over of foreign sounds
with borrowed words. One of the most curious facts that linguistics has
to note is the occurrence of striking phonetic parallels in totally
unrelated or very remotely related languages of a restricted
geographical area. These parallels become especially impressive when
they are seen contrastively from a wide phonetic perspective. Here are a
few examples. The Germanic langu