Particles of the English Language, 325 Our author rejects the connection of the particle ja with jehan to say^% and his reasons are strong. Jehan itself is according to him formed irregularly (unorganisch) from zah the praeterite of eihhan the Old High German verb cor- responding with the Gothic aikan^ (Latin, aijere)^ of which the past tense was aidik. Now as the particle ja exists in Gothic, it clearly could not come from a derivative of a tense of a High German verb. It ought rather to have been aik or ai in Gothic — but is it not possible that it may have been a transposition of this syllable, like na and an, en and ne^^^ or his own still bolder case of et and t€ ? Our English ay may perhaps be looked on as confirming this view, and being a transposition of ja. Thus the process would have been reversed and ja changed again to ai ; but there is perhaps greater reason to suppose that it is the Saxon a, of which we shall have occasion to speak a little further on ; especially from the use of aye in the sense for ever. All such conjectures are idle when opposed to Grimm's learning and thorough knowledge of his subject, which I doubt not would have suggested what I have stated, had there not been some objection which I do not see. The Gothic particle used in negative answers was ne, but the other Teutonic dialects seem early to have adopted a less simple form. The High German is nein ; the Anglo- Saxon nd^ which is our Engish no. Nein is compounded of ni-ein^ just as non in Latin was from ne tcmim^ neniim is quoted by Nonius Marcellus from Lucillius and Varro, and it occurs in Lucretius'^^ v/ithout the final on. Grimm supposes unum to have been ^^ oenum^ and compares poe7ia^ pcenio — mania — munio — pomcerium — mums. Vossius ad- mits this derivation of non^ but conjectures that nenum may be from vr — ov^ He then derives from nenum the French nenil and the Dutch neenl In Latin this compound non ^ The verb jahan or jehan exists in Switzerland still, exactly in the sense of aio ^'•^di^jehterV wsls spricht er 9 (Simmenthal,) Stalders, Schweizerisches Idiotikon, Vol. II. p. 72. ^ III. p. 711. 746. See Von der Hagen's Glossary to the Nibelungen lied in v. en or ne. ^^ III. 200, IV. 71G. Scaliger would read, " nenu eapetei for '•'nemo expetet^^ Ter. Eunuch, i. 1. 7. ad Varron. p. 222. ^^ See Hesychius, olviX^^iv* to fiovdX^civ Kara. y(jo(T<Tav.
