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Document number: 8554
Date: 29 Apr 1862
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: NORRIS Edwin
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number: envelope 22117
Last updated: 4th June 2013

Brompton
29 April, 1862

Dear Sir

I have just got the Zeitschrift <1> and looked at p.104 on receipt of your Note for which many thanks. Mordtmann <2> is right; the error is mine, not the printer’s; I suppose I must have followed my ear only in making the dictionary, and I have no doubt the text is right. It is curious enough that there are two errors (typographical) in the three lines: the printer’s Atòutò for Atutò, and Cuneiform sign for Cuneiform sign .

I have run my eye over five or six pages of Mordtmann, and find in them little more than what I have said myself, with a slight alteration of the order, but no doubt I shall find some Verbesserungen. <3> I am however surprised to see that he is more of a linguist than philologue. He evidently imagines the Modern Greeks and Modern Persians (he does not say in which dialect) pronounce as they did 2500 years ago, and waxes wrath at those who think otherwise: see page 7 where he talks of “Kauderwälsch” “ [illegible] wälsch”, “useless rubbish” &c &c. Can he really believe that the ancient Greeks pronounced [Greek text] as a Greek does now? That Herodatus who must have heard something like Gugu, could have twisted this into Geehes, as a modern Greek does? Or have turned Kurus to Keeros? Can he be ignorant that this very name is pronounced Cheeros by some Greeks at this moment and that there are half a dozen systems of Persian pronunciation in use to this day, almost distinct enough to be mutually unintelligible? Which of these would he make the true language of Darius? <4> But of course you must have noticed this yourself, and I need say no more of it. I thank you for calling attention to the paper, which I shall read carefully.

Believe me dear Sir yours very truly
Edwin Norris

H Fox Talbot Esqre
&c &c &c

[envelope:]
H. F. Talbot Esq
Athenaeum Club
S.W.
Millburn Tower
Edinburgh.
[added pencil note in another hand:] Archaeological. S. Norris

Notes:

1. Zeitschriften der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft

2. Andreas David Mordtmann (1811-1879), German orientalist.

3. bettering

4. Darius I (550-486 BC), Darius the Great, the 3rd emporor or 'King of Kings' of the Achaemenid Empire.

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