redemi, ne quis in sinu illius manus tergeret; mille denarios pro capite
solvi; sevir gratis factus sum; spero, sic moriar, ut mortuus non
erubescam."

(d) This short inscription from Pompeii shows some of the peculiarities
of popular pronunciation. In ortu we see the same difficulty in knowing
when to sound the aspirate which the cockney Englishman has. The silence
of the final -m, and the reduction of ae to e are also interesting. Presta
mi sinceru (=sincerum): si te amet que (=quae) custodit ortu (=hortum)
Venus.

(e) Here follow some of the vulgar forms against which a grammarian,
probably of the fourth century, warns his readers. We notice that the
popular "mistakes" to which he calls attention are in (1) syncopation and
assimilation, in (2) the use of the diminutive for the primitive, and
pronouncing au as o, in (3) the same reduction of ct to t (or tt) which we
find in such Romance forms as Ottobre, in (4) the aspirate falsely added,
in (5) syncopation and the confusion of v and b, and in (6) the silence of
final -m.

(1) frigida non fricda
(2) auris non oricla
(3) auctoritas non autoritas
(4) ostiae non hostiae
(5) vapulo non baplo
(6) passim non passi

(f) The following passages are taken from Brunot's "Histoire de la
langue Fraçaise," p. 144. In the third column the opening sentence of the
famous Oath of Strasburg of 842 A.D. is given. In the other columns the