? H^9 fofttfll Uttiwwitg pitatg BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Hcnrg W. Sage 1891 .CSr /aI/.^-A. I - Alt \i\u JinS'l^fi fanl9'48 •MAY 16 1956 HS, W^fTTTW^^^ — ^ Cornell University Library P 121.H98 Story of language. 3 1924 026 440 879 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026440879 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE THE STORY OF LANGUAGE BY CHARLES WOODWARD HUTSON AUTHOR OF "THE BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION" CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY 1897 A ■ I ^ G 5~2^ Copyright By a. C. McClurg and Co. A.D. 1897 CONTENTS. Page Introduction 7 Chapter I. What Language is 13 II. How Language was studied 25 III. The Philologist's Workshop .... 36 I V. UnearthiniljcheRoots ....... 46 ( V. How Language began 54 J^ VI. How it became Multiform~T r^". ." 62 VII. The Classification of Tongues ... 70 VIII. The Speech of One Syllable .... 93 IX. Agglutinative Speech 106 X. Holophrastic Speech 136 XI. Languages of the Bantu Tribes . . . 160 XII. Hamitic Speech 164 XIII. Semitic Speech 180 XIV. The Aryan Tongues 199 XV. Latin 226 XVI. Inflecj'ed English 245 XVII. French 260 XVIII. Inflected English after the Conquest 276 XIX. French Grafts on the English Stock . 297 6 CONTENTS. Chapter Page XX. Ultimate English 311 XXI. Summary 329 Appendix : — Bibliography of Authorities 347 The Languages of the Americans 349 The Mpongwe Language 355 The Oaths of Strasburg 359 The English of Chaucer 359 Borrowed Words in English 361 Present Tense of the Aryan Verb " to be " . . . 363 Head Measurement 364 Index 365 INTRODUCTION. My purpose is to give, in a series of papers and with as little use as may be of technical terms, some account of the rise of human speech from simple to more complex forms, and of the connection between the progress of language and the progress of the human race. There are many people to whom not only irreg- ular verbs and the bewildering mysteries of the subjunctive, but all discussion of mere words can be little else than a weariness to the spirit. Others, however, — and these, men of wit and wisdom, — • find as much food for the mind in matter of this kind as the sweet singer of Avon would have us find in stones and brooks. What says the genial Holmes ? " There is a fascination in the mere sound of articulated breath; of consonants that resist with the firmness of a maid of honor, or half or wholly yield to the wooing lips ; of vowels that flow and murmur, each after its kind ; the peremptory 3 and /, the brittle k, the vibrating r, the insinuating s, the feathery y; the velvety v, the bell-voiced m, the tranquil broad a, the penetrating e, the cooing u, the emotional o, and the beautiful combinations 8 INTRODUCTION. of alternate rock and stream, as it were, that they give to the rippling flow of speech, — there is a fascination in the skilful handling of these, which the great poets and even prose-writers have not disdained to acknowledge and use to recommend their thought." Surely there is truth in the words of the witty Autocrat. Are not the colors that the artist uses in themselves a delight to him? Does not the sculptor share the transport of the anatomist in fully apprehending the wondrous articulation of the human framework? And shall not the student of language meet with some sympathy from the user of it, when he strives to point out the curious adaptation of means to end in the spiritual body that we call speech? Have not the words we use in every tongue colors and fragrances of their own, tones and tissues that are perceptible to the inner sense, even when they cannot be heard or felt? So much for the interest of my subject. Now as to another point. Littr6, in his " History of the French Language," consisting really of fragment- ary but most suggestive essays, asks what we arc to understand by the history of a language, and answers the question somewhat on this wise : — History is the study of the law of change ; that is, of the regular succession of causes and effects by which human affairs undergo transformation. Only in the case of languages, instead of events and institutions, we concern ourselves with words, forms, and constructions. The language is not introduction: g considered as a study of lexicon or syntax; the rules of its grammar are not the direct object of our research ; there is no formal examination of its rhetoric ; there is no discussion of orthography and pronunciation : in a word, there is no strict analysis of the language intended. All this belongs to the grammarian or the rhetorician. The histo- rian of the language has a wholly different function to perform. He must, it is trUe, know somewhat of both its grammar and its rhetoric ; but it is not his business to dwell upon these. The study of the grammar is the study of a living body ; the study of the rhetoric is the study of that body in action and of the dress which best befits its several modes of activity ; the study of the language as a whole is the investigation of its past at every period. It is the study of its origin, of the modifications it has undergone, of their duration, and of the condi- tions which brought them about. It therefore in- volves a large consideration of the race that speaks it, and of those races which have had any share in modifying it. We find it also closely linked with the history of the literature which the race has produced. This is the view that Littr6 takes of the scope the historian of a language should keep before him; and in these words the reader will find, I trust, clearly set forth the general plan of my work. , My method of procedure will be to try to ascer- tain what language is, and how it came to be studied as a science. I shall then treat of how lO INTRODUCTION. it probably began, and how it became multiform. To this will naturally succeed an attempt at a scientific classification of tongues, and then the consideration of these classes in their order of progressive development. There will thus be chapters on the speech of one syllable, on the agglutinative tongues of the Turanian races, on the holophrastic tongues of America, on what we may venture to call the abnormally inflected tongues of the negro races, on the languages of the great civilizing races, Hamitic, Semitic, and Aryan. Having now reached the highest development of inflected speech, I shall give special attention to two strongly contrasted inflected languages, destined to places on the same family tree, — to Latin, the grandfather of our modern English, and to Inflected English, its mother. After these will fitly come for our consideration two analytic tongues : French, the father, and English, the daughter. In this way, the Story of Language will lead in regular historical progression upward from the crudest forms of human speech, through the most complex inflected forms, to the freest, richest, and most analytic. It will thus be not only the story of language in general, but at the same time the history of the evolution of English speech. I have avoided technical terms. Where the anthropologist says dolichocephaloiis, I have written longheaded. Some technicalities, such as agglu- tinative and holophrastic, I have had to use fre- INTRODUCTION. 1 1 quently; but I have in each instance tried to explain the meaning clearly. That a book intended for the general reader, and not for the scholar, should bristle with foot- notes seems hardly in accordance with good taste. As, however, interest in some part of the great field surveyed may lead a reader here and there to investigate the subject further, I have appended a list of some of the books read or consulted in the preparation of this work. A caution is needed here : these writings are not to be re- garded as safe authorities on all points they touch upon ; but they are all suggestive. THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. CHAPTER I. WHAT LANGUAGE IS. The study of language is a science. Language itself is an art, and it is the earliest of the arts. It necessarily antedated all human history ; for it is the instrument of thought, and without thought and the communication of thought be- tween man and man the formation of society even in its simplest forms would be impossible. But it is not only the oldest, it is also the new- est of arts. It is the newest of arts, because we see it daily in process of development before us in the mouths of little children in each succeeding generation ; the newest, because we see new words admitted into it continually, as well as changes going on in the pronunciation of the old words from time to time ; the newest, because we recognize through historic records the changes in construc- tion no less than in vocabulary which it undergoes from age to age. 14 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. It is a rich, beautiful, and exquisite art, capable, in the works of master spirits, of assuming forms that powerfully influence the whole history of a race, — capable, too, on the lips of eloquent speakers, or gifted actors, or sweet-voiced women, of infinite charm. When we come to analyze its essential nature, we have every right to describe it as a spiritual organism, for we can think in it without uttering a sound or putting it in any way into concrete shape. Yet it can and generally must be materialized, in consonance with the needs of man as a social animal; and one of the results of civilization is that it has been taught to reach other senses than that of hearing. The great majority of mankind still receive its impress through this sense alone, just as they can give it form and substance only through the voice. The comparatively small number of those who can read are reached by language through both ear and eye; while the still smaller number of the blind who have been taught to read receive it through the medium of the sense of touch. Primarily then, and in its most usual form, language is the utterance of thought in conven- tionally accepted sounds. Just as music may be described as the marriage of sound with feeling, so may language, in its general use, be called thejnarriag e of sound with^nngV-^- Each spoken 'tongue is, therefore, emphatically the expression of the whole nature of the race WHA T LANGUA GE IS. I 5 which speaks it, so far as that nature manifests it- self in mental, moral, and emotional activity, for language usually links itself with music, and thus aids in expressing the emotions also. Language has its historic significance in the fact that at every stage of its growth it reflects faithfully, and, one might almost say, unconsciously, the stage of psychic development reached by the race that thinks in it and utters its thought through it. Its contribution to the truth of history, then, is bound to be of immense value. Thus, the whole inflectional system of the older Aryan languages, from which sprang the tongues of the civilized races of Europe, complex and ingenious in structure as it seems, was an almost unconscious development, devised slowly and point by point, though instinctively, to meet immediate needs of mutual comprehension between man and man of the same tribe. Thus, too, from a careful study of the likenesses and the differences between one and another of the tribal dialects, philologists have been able to ascertain the precise stage of civilization reached by the Aryans before they began to separate into tribes that diverged in language as they wandered apart. Whether holding together in one tribe or migrat- ing and breaking into different tribes with growing difference in dialect, the longer they remained free from the fetters of literary form, the more sure was the process of development in language to continue its natural course. 1 6 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. But that more advanced civilization which gathers men into cities and creates a literature of any kind, be it only gnomic and juristic and handed down only by chanted song, always pre- vents the mature growth slowly attained in the semi-civilized stage. Thus it was that too early a civilization checked the growth of most of the Turanian languages, so that they never reached the stage of inflection. An inflected tongue, like that of our Aryan forefathers, must antedate civilization. A language ceases to grow when it has cased itself with a shell. Such was the history of the Chinese tongue. It is true that it would be difficult to prove that any one Chinese tongue ever existed, so numerous are the dialects in which the so-called Chinese language is at the present day spoken over that vast empire ruled by the Tatar dynasty estab- lished in Kambalu. These dialects, or their original mother, — which the literary dialect may be taken to represent, — stopped at the monosyllabic stage of growth, the race having precociously formed a civilization in its childhood. Such was also the history of the great Hamitic and Semitic tongues. Before civilization they had developed beyond the monosyllabic stage; but, having at the moment of civilization reached the agglutinative stage, with a mere beginning of inflec- tional forms, they stopped at that point and never reached true inflection. In these cases the civilizations themselves became stereotyped in character, because language, the WHAT LANGUAGE IS. 17 instrument of thought, became incapable of pro- gress and hence incapable of helping the race to reach higher forms of civilization. The races stood still. Active as bees or ants in pre-established habits, the people became mentally mere mummies, unable to originate new ideas or new processes of thought. Their form of civilization became to them a fetich. The slow development of our Aryan ancestors was, therefore, in the end a great blessing. They remained for many ages at the stage of hunter, herdsman, or small husbandman ; and during that long period of slow development the language of each branch of the great Aryan family became a highly inflected tongue. At this point the question arises. Why have not other branches of the human race, that have like- wise remained long without the higher civilization of cities and a literature, developed inflected languages, — the red races of America, for instance, and the black races of Africa? The only conceiv- able answer to this is that to reach the higher forms of development there must be an inherent power in the race, irrespective of mere stage of develop- ment, — a power superior even to environment. What has been said so far has been in illustration of the lessons that the study of language can give in regard to unwritten history, its aid in the study of ethnology. Let us pass now to other points. The study of language as a science has proved that in certain important respects a language is 1 8 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. possessed of an organic life of its own. So long as its life lasts, it is subject to constant change both in grammatical structure and in vocabulary, though to infinitely slower change when crystallized by civilization than in its state of unstable equilibrium as it exists among wandering tribes. It has a per- petual tendency to variation and to the formation of dialects. These, circumstances may at any time develop and raise to the dignity of new languages. Most writers have agreed in stating the stages in the development of language from lower to higher forms to be : — 1. Monosyllabic, where each sound stands apart by itself, and relations of word with word are ex- pressed by position and tone ; 2. Agglutinative, where simple sounds, combined by mere juxtaposition and utterance, together form a compound idea; 3. fiolophrastic, where the agglutinative plan is carried to the length of putting together in one utterance all the ideas it is intended to express ; 4. Inflectional, where the relations of words to one another are determined by some change in the form of the words ; 5. Analytic, where, the synthetic methods hav- ing done their full work, and a reaction against that system setting in, the relations of words to one an- other are expressed by small particles that serve as stepping-stones for thought. The third stage is called by different philologists intercalative , incorporative, and polysynthetic ; but WHAT LANGUAGE IS. 19 Humboldt's term, holophrastic, is the best of all. It is derived from two Greek words that mean "telling the whole." Of these various stages, the inflectional is the climax of synthesis. Then, by the clashing of diverse inflected tongues and by phonetic change and decay, language passes from the highly syn- thetic forms of inflected speech to easy and simple analytic forms. The modern speech, — English, French, and Persian, for instance, — in each case the resultant of many forces and of long historic action, reaction, and interaction, comes in many parts to resemble closely the early monosyllabic type. But the resemblance is, after all, like that which the aged Christian, chastened by many trials, bears, in simplicity and humility of faith, to the little child. For the apparent simplicity of these modern forms has really resulted from a complexity that has submitted to long use and elaborate polish. Thus coy was once the Latin qui^tum ; date was once the Greek ddktulon ; and round was once the Latin rotundum. The analytic modern tongues, indeed, preserve remnants of all the stages through which the language has passed. To the philologist every sentence contains beneath the surface fossil remains that point to many a dif- ferent age. So far our attention has been fixed on the spoken language. But a language that is merely spoken may be described as being in continual flux. The time must come for giving it perma- 20 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. nence ; and with all the higher races that time did come. The races whose inborn genius, helped by favorable environment, led them upward from the low stage of simple contentment with survival, went on improving their speech as they matured their civilization. They learned to materialize it and give it perpetuity by inventing symbols for it, and putting these symbols where they would stay for other generations to see them. They engraved them on rock or marble or brick; they painted them on papyrus or parchment ; they printed them on paper ; and at last in these later ages they have taken to indenting — not the symbols any longer, but the very sounds themselves — on a metallic roll so as to be capable of reproduction ages hence. This written speech was, first of all, a series of pictures, recalling to the mind the things spoken of. Then, for quickness and convenience, it be- came a conventional representation of the original pictures. To this method succeeded pure signs, or symbols. Signs of words, signs of syllables, signs to express the sounds of syllables, signs to express the sounds of letters, signs to mark a once existing letter, — such is the order of development in written speech. The method of giving it to the eye and the substance used in that process were even more Various than its form. In hard stone it was in- cised ; in soft stone it was often cut in relief; in wood it was carved ; in brick it was stamped into the soft clay ; on leaves or leather or parchment it WHAT LANGUAGE JS. 21 was painted with an inlced brush or written with pen or quill. The direction in which the writing has been done has also varied greatly. Some races have written from left to right and then from right to left. Others have written always in one direction, either constantly from left to right or constantly from right to left. Others have written in columns, from top to bottom. Fortunately for the races that were to develop the highest types of language, they did not ac- quire the use of written speech until they had freely developed language in independence of the races who had invented the earlier civilizations. For, laws have governed the progress of devel- opment in language, which made it impossible for the earlier civilizations to carry the languages spoken by the races developing them beyond a certain stage of growth. The same laws gave a more powerful impulse to the races that matured later ; shaped each changing gradation toxyard the highest refinement, the widest comprehension, and the nicest adaptation of word, phrase, and con- struction ; and made their speech apt for subtle discernment and consecutive reasoning. These laws will be found, on careful study, to be as fixed, as definite, and as well understood as the laws of any other science. Yet we must beware of making language alone a test of race and seeking to reconstruct prehistoric ages by no other witness than that of language. 22 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. There are instances in which the deductions phil- ologists might draw would certainly mislead. In the case of the Weddas of Ceylon, a race of exceedingly low type who speak a debased form of Sanskrit, it is more than likely that the evidence of language is not to be relied on. For we have abundance of testimony to show that subject races in many lands have in process of time learned to use the language of their masters. In Ireland and Scotland Erse and Gaelic have given place to EngHsh. In southern Europe the Keltic dialects died out in the presence of over- mastering Latin. The Gypsy speaks — besides his own Romany, which in his native India he may have learned from Aryan masters — the tongue of every land in which he wanders. The Jew has likewise learned to use the speech of every land in which he dwells, and it is but seldom that he can even read the Hebrew of his fathers. The Negro in English settlements speaks a broken English; in French colonies, like Louisiana and Martinique, and even in lands like Hayti that have ceased to be in any other respect than language French, he speaks a broken French ; in Mexico and the other colonies of Spain, he speaks a broken Spanish; in Brazil, a broken Portuguese; among the Boers of South Africa, a broken Dutch ; under the tutelage of Arabian traders and the missiona- ries of Islam, a broken Arabic. But in all these cases, even were the physical WHAT LANGUAGE IS. 23 evidence not palpably contradictory to the infer- ence we might feel ourselves entitled to draw from language, recorded history interposes to prevent mistake as to race. Yet, even in these cases, the changes made in the language learned by the race to whom it was originally foreign are all of such a sort that the laws of language are capable of tracing them and accounting for them on principles of ethnic vocal- ization. The danger of error is really confined to races and languages very remote in time and desti- tute of a literature of any kind. We should never forget — and yet it has been forgotten by learned theorists — that when we speak of the language of gestures, the language of the emotions, and the language of cries and ejacula- tions, we are only speaking figuratively. Not one of these modes of communicating with our fellow- men or with the animals about us is in strictness language. Language is primarily the vocal expression of thought; secondarily, it is its written expression. It is essentially a human function. All men speak : every race found on the globe has a language of its own. But no human being is born with speech ; he is born only with the faculty for speaking, and must learn to do so from those around him. The child of English parents, growing up amongst Chinamen, will acquire the Chinese lan- guage. Speech, then, is not innate, but acquired ; it is a social acquirement. The child that grows 24 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. up among wild beasts will not learn to speak any language, though doubtless there will be some means of communication other than language be- tween him and the animals that have fostered him. Besides the many legends that witness to this, well founded probably in fact, we have direct and modern evidence of the truth of this statement, which will be adduced in another place. CHAPTER II. HOW LANGUAGE WAS STUDIED. The study of language is a science. It is a science of observation and induction. It is a science based upon the careful comparison of all the known languages of mankind. Certain general laws being ascertained by this comparison, languages are classified into families containing groups of recognized kinship. The careful study of each language reveals its stage of development ; and from a comparison of each stage in the whole series we reach by induc- tion the law of development and are able to de- scribe the history of the growth of language. But the vast differences among the many tongues spoken by the human family long pre- vented students of language from finding a starting- point for intelligent progress. It was necessary to have such a starting-point in order to gather mate- rial capable of being put together as a nucleus for classification. At last, however, the needed starting-point was found. The study by European scholars of San- skrit, the ancient language of the Hindoos, first 26 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. awakened their minds to a recognition of the kin- ship of certain tongues of Asia with the languages spoken by the chief races of European history, both ancient and modern. These races, on the witness of language as to their original identity, scholars were finally able to group together as Indo-European, or Aryan. The name Aryan, more convenient in several respects than the other, was assigned to the primitive race and language, because Arya was the ancient Persian name of the old Persian land. This was believed to have been the original fosterland for all the Aryan races, from those who found their way ultimately as far south as the island of Ceylon to those who reached in the north the Orkneys and the isle of Erin. This study, and the earliest generalization it helped them to make, taught philologists the true method of investigation. Leibnitz, perhaps the most original thinker of his time, had already caused scholars to reject the old notion that Hebrew was the mother tongue of the human race, and to give up the fruitless task of trying to derive from it all known languages. In response to his appeals, missionaries and travellers began to collect vocabularies and to study the structure of languages among innumer- able races of barbarians. Hervas, a Jesuit mission- ary, in the year 1800 published in the Spanish tongue a catalogue of languages, containing speci- mens of more than three hundred. This was fol- lowed by the " Mithridates " of Adelung, an emi- HOW LANGUAGE WAS STUDIED. 2"] nent German philologist, who called his book so in memory of the great King of Pontus, famous in his day for the number of languages he could speak. In this work, gathering from the cata- logue of Hervas and from the collections made by the Russian government, Adelung brought to- gether a vast store of linguistic facts as material for inductive reasoning. But there was and there could be no fixed prin- ciple for scientific classification until the discovery of the relationship of Sanskrit to Latin, Greek, and the tongues of Kelt, German, and Slav led to the grouping together of the Aryan tongues. This valuable generalization was the work, in the first place, of Englishmen in the East, — Sir William Jones, Colebrooke, and other members of the Asiatic Society, founded in Calcutta in 1784. Their labors were speedily corroborated by the industry and acumen of German students in the libraries of Europe, especially Frederick Schlegel and Jacob Grimm. The Danish scholar and traveller, Rask, was a worthy compeer of such men. To their ranks were soon added the Ger- mans, Bopp, Pott, Lassen, and Rosen, and the French savant, Eugene Burnouf William von Humboldt broadened their generalizations and founded a philosophy of language. His work was ably supplemented by the researches and generalizing genius of Steinthal and Schleicher in Germany; their countryman, Max Muller, in England; Garnett, Donaldson, Latham, Farrar, 28 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. and Sayce, also in England; and in France, Littr6, Renan, and Pictet. While there are many able linguists in this country, — a Greek scholar like Gildersleeve, a Semitic scholar like Toy, a close student of American tongues like Brinton, — there have not as yet been many writers of note on the science of language. The names of March, Marsh, and Whitney almost exhaust the Hst. In this task of grouping the languages according to their degree of kinship, it has been found that the principle of likeness in grammatical structure is a far safer guide than that of similarity in vocab- ulary. It will not do to mistake identity of sound, even when accompanied by some similarity in meaning, for identity in origin. For instance, in the English word crawfish or crayfish — for both spellings are recognized — we might seem to have a fish found frequently in the craws of birds. But we happen to know that the word came into the language from the French icrevisse, and that the creature is not a fish, but a crustacean. Many amusing mistakes have been made in this way. Indeed, it is a frequent source of the blunders of schoolboys. The writer had a class once, read- ing Cssar, who translated milites cohortandi, " the soldiers had to be drawn up in cohorts," their senses being deceived by that very similarity of look and sound, and by the seeming good sense of their version. Yet there are some languages so bare of gram- ffOW LANGUAGE tVAS STUDIED. 29 matical structure that their classification into fami- lies is exceedingly difficult. lo such cases great help is had from those likenesses in mere vocab- ulary which, indeed, first gave the clew even in the case of the inflected tongues. The chief and the most persistent of these con- necting links is to be found in the numerals ; for instance, the German seeks and the Latin sex are manifestly identical. That the relation in this matter between kindred languages may be clearly evident, I invite you to look into the table here given, in a number of Aryan tongues, of the num- erals 2, 3, and 7: — Dutch twee drie zeven Icelandic tvo thriu sio Moeso- Gothic twa thri sibun German zwei drei sieben Lithuanic du tri septyni Slavic dwa tri sedmi Keltic dau tri secht Latin duo tres septem Greek duo treis hepta Persian dwa thri hapta Sanskrit dwa tri sapta Italian due tre sette French deux trois sept Spanish dos tres siete Portuguese dous tres sete Anglo-Saxon twd thrdo seofon English two three seven These are all recognizable as sprung from the same original Aryan words, especially when 30 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. brought to the test of Grimm's law for the inter- change of consonants. But now let us take a few non-Aryan lan- guages, and see how these words look and sound in them : — Arabic ithn thalath sab' Turkish iki iich yedi Hungarian ket harom het Japanese ni san nah-natz Eskimo hipah \ {Alaskan) or > pingish- talemamal- malho ) ute ronik It will readily be perceived that these last are wholly unlike the corresponding Aryan numerals. A like comparison of pronouns, and of the names of those familiar relations and objects that belong to the very beginnings of organized society, reveals the same kinship or non-kinship among languages. But it has happened that languages sprung from the same source would sometimes develop differ- ent names for the original idea and thus obscure the historic identity. Thus, while Greek, German, and English agreed in keeping nearly the same word for the girl child, Thiigater, Tochter, and Daughter, Latin lost the word and had to use Filia, the feminine of Filius, its word for Son. On the other hand, while Latin kept a word for father's brother, Patruus, and another for mother's brother. Avunculus, English has kept only the ambiguous word, Uncle. HOW LANGUAGE WAS STUDIED. 31 The surest test of affinity in language lies not, then, in words of any kind ; in the case of some tribes wandering far from the original home and coming under strong alien influences, the greater part of the primal vocabulary is wholly lost, and is replaced by that of other races. But with the way of thinking characteristic of the tribe, the structural form of its language, the result is wholly different. If it has ever possessed a tongue highly enough developed to have case, number, and tense, — those forms that express the relations of words to one another or to the whole sentence, — these will be sure to crop out even through a wholly new vocabulary. They will cling so closely to the spoken language as to make it show some traces of its early mode of formation and so re- veal its true place in the genealogical table of inflected tongues. It was Home Tooke who first made the acute guess that the endings of nouns, adjectives, and verbs in the inflected languages are fragments of words that once had an independent life of their own. The students of Sanskrit were able to con- firm this splendid guess. Indeed, the peculiar genius of the Hindoos for grammatical study had preserved in their literature a complete analysis of the structure of Sanskrit ; and so it came about that the history of that eldest of the Aryan sister- hood of tongues became a recognized guide for tracing out the unwritten history of the other daughters of the house. The nature of inflection 32 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. was at the same time clearly and triumphantly- elucidated. This fruitful discovery, however, in spite of the prophetic insight of Home Tooke into the true nature of flexions, was made only after long and careful investigation. Even Schlegel and Grimm were in ignorance of what later philologists suc- ceeded in demonstrating as to the origin of inflec- tions. It took the continuous work of scores of scholars to bring the new science into broad daylight. When at last the discovery was made of the true nature of inflections, it proved, as I have said, wonderfully fruitful. It threw a flood of light into the inflected languages, and enabled scholars to take them to pieces, as it were, and work back to the earlier forms, laying their hands upon the primal roots which it is to be supposed the first Aryans invented. It enabled scholars to see ex- actly how the inflected languages, after reaching richly complex forms that seem to the modern eye and ear strangely artificial, crumbled down into loosely crystallized masses to emerge finally by the chemistry of inherent life as the analytic tongues of the modern world. It led them also steadily on to the discovery of the processes by which language passes successively through the different stages of development: the evolution from the monosyllabic to the agglutinative'lype, from the agglutinative to the inflectional, — ^forTKe holophrastic is regarded as a curious variant of now LANGUAGE WAS STUDIES. 33 the agglutinative, — and from the inflectional to the analytic. Nor was the discovery of the true nature of in- flection the key to linguistic secrets only. By lay- ing bare the old Aryan roots, it enabled scholars to see what ideas were common to all the Aryans before any of the children of the ancient home began their great series of migrations. We are thus able to gauge the exact dimen- sions attained by that early civilization of our forefathers. Recent study of the myths, the superstitions, the whole body of legendary lore scattered among the Aryans, however widely dis- tributed their nations, tribes, and clans, has added fresh gains to the constantly increasing store of material for reconstructing mentally the life of the original race in the old Aryan home. Close scrutiny has been applied to the Sanskrit Vedas, the Rimiyana, and the Mahabharata ; to the Zend-Avesta of the ancient Bactrians; to the Hellenic Iliad, Odyssey, and Works and Days; to the Latin legends preserved in Livy's prose and in Ovid's and Vergil's poetry; to the Teutonic Gudrun, Nibelungenlied, and Eddas of the Norse- men; to the Keltic Mabinogion; to the countless traditions, fairy tales, beast fables, and nursery rhymes that belong to Aryans, east and west, north and south; and many myths have been found to be only variants of some simpler original form told to their children by Aryan mothers on 3 34 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. the banks of the Oxus three thousand years be- fore the birth of Christ. Indeed, on comparison with the folk-lore of other races, it has been found that many myths are common to the great body of mankind, — a fact that is explicable, apparently, only in one of two ways : either, man in contact with nature receives impressions which give rise to the same set of stories universally; or, the lower races capa- ble of originating civilization have communicated to the higher races inheriting their civilization by conquest all or almost all of these widely spread myths. The former alternative is adopted by Nadaillac and Andrew Lang. There are, how- ever, strong reasons for preferring the latter. There are some facts that seem to point definitely toward the reception by the higher of the notions as to cosmogony held by the lower races. There certainly is evidence of a submerged mythology, and of compromise in the resultant faith, in every land to which history penetrates. When in south- ern Europe we find the old Saturnian gods dis- placed by the Jovian, and in northern Europe the Vana gods displaced by those of the Asi line, we are forced to recognize the superposition of an Aryan race upon a Hamitic or a Turanian that possessed the land first, and, in spite of conquest, remained important enough to impress upon Hel- lene, Italian, or Teuton a part of its religious belief Such have been some of the results of the dis- HOW LANGUAGE WAS STUDIED. 35 covery of the true nature of inflection. Immensely in advance of any other science, it opened the way to expanded views not only of language, but also of races and of man's place in nature. It made possible a more comprehensive and a more accu- rate ethnology and anthropology. Using the methods of the experimental sciences, the students of language were rewarded by "finds" far beyond their wildest imaginings. Like every other study of nature, it has proved rich in re- wards in the shape of surprises ; and it has illus- trated abundantly the processes revealed by the science of biology, — " such," to use the language of Frederic W. Farrar, " as the struggle for exist- ence, the importance of intermediate types, the perpetuation of accidental divergences, the power- ful effect of infinitesimal changes long continued, — above all, the beautiful law of analogy, the law which shows that there is perpetual unity in per- petual variety." CHAPTER III. THE philologist's WORKSHOP. Let us now draw a little closer to the workshop of the scholar, and examine his manner of com- paring and analyzing these languages that he tells us are sprung from a common stock. When we take two tongues that are as near in historic fellowship as are English and French, and compare them, it is in general easy to discern the fact of kinship from the mere sound or the spell- ing of words. Sound the k in knife, as the early English did, and you recognize the French canif as the same word. Poule you recognize as the word from which poultry is formed. Prononcer, imiter, avancer, commencer, compter, if not recog- nizable by the English ear, are certainly plain enough to the English eye. Indeed, there are in the two languages many thousands of words almost identical in either form or sound. The same thing is true when we come to com- pare English and German, both being of Teutonic descent. The old nursery rhyme, " Bread and Butter and Cheese Are very good English and very good Friese," THE PHILOLOGIST'S WORKSHOP. 37 applies very nearly as well to German as it does to the speech of Frieseland. Brod, Butter, and Kdse are quite near enough to the English words to be readily understood by one who has never studied German. Apfel and apple, Kuh and cow, Henne and he7i, Ochs and ox, Katze and cat, Ratte and rat, Garten and garden, Haus and house, Feld and Jie/d, Bruder and brother. Mutter and mother, are only a few instances among many thousands of words nearly the same in the two languages. Yet, as you have been cautioned before, you will see that when we have passed a little way beyond languages placed so near one another in time and space, we shall find likeness in vocabulary to be but a poor and often a most delusive guide. Not unfrequently do we find in the same language words identical in form and sound, but of totally different origin, and hence of course different in meaning. Thus in French we have souris, a " mouse," and souris, a " smile," — the former com- ing from the Latin sorex, the latter from the Latin surrisus. In English we have arch, meaning " wag- gish," and arch, meaning a " curve " in masonry, — the former coming from Teutonic origins and meaning originally "wicked," the latter coming through the French from Latin arcus, a " bow." There are very many such in modern tongues, and punsters find them very convenient. Even identity in words, then, is clearly no argu- ment in favor of identity of origin. And when there is mere similarity, and that between words in 38 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. languages far removed from one another in time and space, we should beware of drawing any infer- ence from the mere coincidence. Thus, there is a striking likeness between the Indian name of the Potomac River and the Greek word for river, potamos. Yet it is certain that they are in no way related, for the Indian etymology of Potomac is well known. The genuine keys which unlock the seemingly complicated wards of diverse and yet related tongues are similarity in grammatical structure and — as a consequence of this — fundamental identity of roots. Let us first try to catch what is meant by simi- larity in grammatical structure. The older Aryan tongues are rich in inflected forms. The later have to a great extent exchanged these forms for connecting words by which the relations among the main ideas are expressed. Yet, few as are the traces of inflection still remaining in English and in the Romance languages, such as are left are all formed after the same method as the inflected forms in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit ; and they can all be traced back to the same source. But there are two kinds of inflection, and they must be carefully distinguished the one from the other. One of these is the method of expressing a change in meaning by a change of vowel within the word, as, for example, tooth, teeth; bleed, bled ; know, knew; fill, full; fell, fall. In the first THE PHILOLOGIST'S WORKSHOP. 39 instance we have change in number; in the second and third, change in time ; in the fourth, change from verb to adjective ; in the fifth, change from transitive verb to intransitive, This form of inflection the Semitic languages have in common with the Aryan. It is indeed one of the characteristic features of the Semitic tongues, such as Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, and Assyrian, the internal inflection being carried to a great ex- treme. In them the triliteral roots that constitute the verbal backbone of the language are con- sonants, while to the vowel sounds are given the functions of the nervous centres. We have in English, as in German, many examples of this interior inflection. Take a few more, in addition to those already given, in order that you may fairly recognize it as an established form of inflection: sing, sang, sung; swim, swam, swum ; drink, drank, drunk ; ride, rode, ridden ; fly, flew, flown ; foot, feet; man, men; mouse, mice. In German it is still more frequent. Not only is there a long list of verbs in which the change of time is marked by the change of vowel ; but there are also large classes of words that regularly modify the vowel on becoming plural, or on taking the diminutive form, or on expressing that depend- ent relation of the verb which we call the sub- junctive mood, or on passing from the first to the second and third person, in the indicative present. Let these examples be sufficient to indicate what 40 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. is meant: ringe, rang, gerungen ; werfe, warf, geworfen; werde, ward, geworden ; Blatt, Blatter ; Baum, Bdume ; Hand, Hdnde ; Blume, Blumchen ; Frau, Frdiilein ; war, ware ; hatte, hdtte ; fange, fdngst, fdngt ; lese, liesest, liest ; nchme, nimmst, nimnit. The other kind of inflection, and much the more important kind in the Aryan languages, is the change, in shade -of meaning or in relation to other words in the sentence, expressed by differ- ent suffixes or prefixes, or both. For verbs this change in form marks a change of meaning in time, mode of action, and person acting or acted upon. For nouns and adjectives it marks a change in their relations to the other words in the sentence. These outlying modifiers have been ascertained by the students of language to be the crushed remains of words that were once sounded with full utterance. Of these fragmentary roots that have lost their integrity and have come thus to exercise a merely relational function, it is the suffixes that are much the more numerous and important in the Aryan tongues. We shall come by-and-by to languages in which the prefixes play the most important part. To the progressive races this seems a sort of left-handed inflection; yet it is unquestion- ably an advance upon mere agglutination. To return to the subject of inflection by suf- fixes. Until students of language proved by care- ful analysis that these endings were once living THE PHILOLOGIST'S WORKSHOP. 41 words, they were conceived to be purely conven- tional, — deliberate contrivances of the fathers of the race for the purpose of hooking words on to one another in different ways expressive of differ- ent relations. That they were, on the contrary, parts of compound words built on the agglutina- tive type, and that their gradual merger into symbolic functions was a wholly unconscious development on the part of the race that used them, are now well-ascertained facts. As has been often said by those familiar with both the inflected languages and the simpler types, whether monosyllabic or agglutinative, these linguistic symbols "incredibly facilitate the operations of thought," helping the thinker just as algebraic symbols help the mathematician, just as bills of exchange help the merchant. The interior system of inflection has been de- scribed as giving to the vowels the value that the nervous centres have in the anatomy of verte- brates. The system of external inflection may similarly be likened to the muscles that surround the bony levers and give them motion and direc- tion. Perhaps the analogy may be carried further and applied to the different character and destiny of the Semitic races, who fell naturally into the use of the one kind of inflection, and of the Aryan races, who preferred the other kind. To illustrate the nature of this kind of inflec- tion, peculiar in the main to the Aryan tongues, let us take the case-endings of the Latin word for 42 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. leader, which later gave rise to the title, duke. The root due expresses the idea of leading, and we find the personal leader marked in the naming case by dues, spelled in Latin dux. In the case that denotes direct action received, the form is dticem, the c having always, be it remembered, the sound of k. In the case of indirect action, the form is duci. In the case that expresses with- drawal from or action proceeding from, it is duce. In the case of origin from or ownership of, it is ducts. But when more leaders than one are under consideration, the endings change again, the nomi- native case for the plural becoming duces; the accusative, the same ; the dative, ducibus ; the ab- lative, the same; and the genitive, ducum. The vocative, the case of address, is in this declension the same in form with the nominative in both numbers. Observe the limitation, " in this declension," which forces on our attention the fact that in all the inflected languages the endings of nouns vary so greatly as to have made it necessary for the grammarian to distribute nouns into various classes called " declensions," each being made up of nouns that use the same inflection. The same system of endings was applied to pronouns, adjec- tives, and verbs ; and in the verbs the various orders of inflection were called by the gramma- rian who classified them " conjugations." Now let us see how this device of inflection worked practically. It left the speaker perfectly THE PHILOLOGIST'S WORKSHOP. 43 free, in theory at least, to arrange his words as he pleased, and therefore greatly enhanced his power of emphasis and the facility with which he could put them into euphonious combinations. For, wherever put, dux would always be the subject of the sentence, — wherever he sat was the head of the table. Ducem would always be the direct object of the verb, if not used as the object of some preposition. Ducis and ducum would always have the function of limitation on something, either expressed or understood. Duci would always express the dative relation, whether to adjective or verb, and duce the ablative relation, whether to adjective, verb, or preposition. It is evident then that, wherever in the sentence these were placed, there would be no difficulty in under- standing their relations to the other words in the sentence. This, however, was not the case with all the forms, as duces might be either subject or object, and ducibus might be sustaining either a dative or an ablative relation. In some of the other declensions this ambiguity was extended to other cases, so that there were a number of noun forms that had not this ideal perfection in the definite expression of relations, though sometimes they could be given it by the form of the adjective joined to each of them. To keep these ambiguous forms from obscuring the sense, it was necessary to restrict their range of position in the sentence. In this way, even in the inflected languages position plays an important part. 44 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. But inflection was still strong enough and exten- sive enough to give great freedom in the arrange- ment of words, and to allow thought to be expressed with great terseness and conciseness. In English we have few traces left of this kind of inflection. The pronouns, it is true, are all inflected ; and with all nouns we may use the possessive ending in 's, though the use of this form is far less frequent than seems likely at first thought. There is also the d or ed for expressing the change of the verb from present to past time ; and there is the s for marking the form of the verb for the third person singular. These are almost the only English inflections of the external kind. But very many English words — an immense proportion of them — contain in a fossil condition inflections that were current powers, full of life and vigor, in the languages from which English got them. Take to pieces, for example, the English word inaccessibility, the meaning of which is clear enough to any reader, especially when put into a sentence like this : " No one cared to live on that island, on account of its inaccessibility." When taken to pieces, it is found to have for its core the syllable cess, on which very properly the accent falls; and this syllable has a cluster of modifiers around it. Cess comes from the Latin cessi, the perfect tense of cMere, " to move." Access is the euphonic form of adcess, " move to." In, the Latin syllable of negation in compound THE PHILOLOGIST'S WORKSHOP. 45 words, makes inaccess mean " not move to." The bil is from the Latin hdbilis, " able," which follows some roots in the form abil, others in the form ibil, others in the form able, and others yet again in the form ible. Examples of these variants are amiability, flexibility, habitable, fallible. The ty is the French termination t^ from the Latin ending tas, the mark of an abstract noun. Hence the whole word means " not having the condition of being able to be moved to," — a conception which is easily grasped when presented by the one word, inaccessibility, with the saving of much time and circumlocution. But these affixes and all of their class are almost as much entitled to be considered instances of agglutination as of inflection. Carefully analyzed, they offer good examples of how continually the agglutinative and the inflecting types were inter- woven in the practical working of the Aryan languages. CHAPTER IV. UNEARTHING THE ROOTS. I HAVE gone somewhat far afield in the attempt to make as clear as possible the similarity in gram- matical structure possessed by the languages of the Aryan family. But, besides this likeness in ultimate structure, there is a fundamental identity of roots. The roots — the primal roots — are really few in num- ber, much fewer than the uninformed would im- agine them to be. There are some roots, even among those directly taken from the Latin ancestor of English, for in- stance, that have an immense variety of deriva- tives. To illustrate this fact, Whitney takes the Latin verb pono, with its form for the perfect tense, fosiii, and runs out a list, far from com- plete, of English words derived from it. He cites pose, poser, position, post, posture, positive, apposite, apposition, component, compostire, composer, composi- tions, composing, compost, c6mpound, cotnpoiind, de- ponent, deposed, depositions, depository, deposits, depot, exponent, expose, exposed, exposition, exposure, impos- ing, imposts, impostor, imposition, impound, dis- UNEARTHING THE ROOTS. ■ 47 posable, disposed, indisposed, disposes, ' disposition, opponent, oppose, opposite, opposition, interposition, proposed, proposition, propounded, repose, purpose, supposes, supposition, supposititious. The roots that are common to almost all the branches of the Aryan family are those on which are formed the numerals, the pronouns, the verbs of most necessary use, the words descriptive of the body and of relationships, the names of domestic animals, and those of the commonest metals. It is in the Sanskrit, the eldest daughter of the Aryan family of tongues, that these roots are gen- erally found. Thus, man, "to think," is believed to have given in Sanskrit manu, " man," emphati- cally the " thinker." In Latin the same root gave both hominem, " man," with its adjective form humanum, " manlike," and memini, " remember." Similarly, ar, " to be strong," gave in Greek aret^, " virtue," or man's " strength ; " Ares, the god of martial " vigor," and dristos, " best," that is, primarily, " strongest." Again from tan, " to stretch," we have in Sanskrit tanu, " thin ; " in Greek tei7io and tanuo, both meaning to " stretch," with many compounds of tan, all having the sense of " stretched ; " in Latin tendo, " stretch," and tener, " tender," originally " stretched thin." All the ultimate roots are monosyllabic. But it must not be inferred from this fact that the mono- syllables of our modern speech were necessarily or even probably among the primitive roots. We 48 • THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. have a great number of monosyllables that research has proved to be of polysyllabic origin. Such, for instance, are, — preach, from YjaiYO. predicare, priest, from Grt&k presbuteros, blame, from Greek blasphemein, alms, from Greek eleemosiine, debt, from Latin debitum, the supine of dibeo, that is, dehabeo. Rare, however, as it is to find modern mono- syllables that have not at one time been com- pounds, philologists have traced words apparently the most intractable when subjected to the simpler forms of analysis, back to primitive roots of one syllable, utterly denuded of any grammatical function and in no sense parts of speech, but ready to be made so by combination, coll'ocation, and intonation. For, in our eager scrutiny into the secrets of in- flection, we must not forget the fact that in every stage of its growth language has used the help o position ahd accent. Whenever, it is true, inflec- tion has largely accomplished its purpose of mark- ing relations between one word and another, the place of a word in the sentence has become a matter of little importance. The determination of relations by form makes it needless to determine them by place. Yet as, in point of fact, inflection never did be- come a perfect instrument, the machinery of posi- UNEARTHING THE ROOTS. 49 tion has always proved useful. The same thing must have always been true of accent also. Even in a monosyllabic language like the Chinese, it plays an immense part in the form of tone or tune, the tone in which a word is sounded, as well as its position in the sentence, indicating the spe- cial sense in which it is to be taken. The original roots found by philologists are of the simplest phonetic structure, and no doubt must have passed through the stage of agglutination be- fore they began to develop the more fruitful forms of inflection, these being the result of attrition and phonetic change and decay through the principle of unconscious economy of effort in utterance. But the Aryans seem to have had a genius for passing rapidly into the more complex stage of language. When they did so, they developed both forms of inflection, that by terminations as well as that by vowel-change. The Semitic races, on the other hand, when they passed beyond the agglutinative stage, clung to the internal method of inflection and emphasized it by basing upon it the whole structure of their languages. It is true that the main cause of the good for- tune of the Aryans in reaching so high a stage of linguistic development lay in the fact that they were slow in establishing a compact civilization with its accompanying literature, and that they thus escaped that crystallization which the condi- tions of such a civilization invariably bring about in a language. 4 50 HE STORY OF LANGUAGE. But some credit is due to the innate genius of a race for this result, as for all else that falls- to its lot. The Aryans were destined^ by their origi- nal race-character, irrespective of environment, to form subtle, flexible, precise, and thoroughly ca- pable tongues. From the first they were found worthy of their high destiny as the ultimate mas- ters of other races and of the forces of nature. We see, then, that the speech of the primitive Aryans, like that of all other races, was, however briefly, in 'the beginning monosyllabic. Yet it is very evident that, in the case of the Aryans, if not in that of any of the other races, there was an early advance to words of two sylla- bles. This came about from two tendencies, not really inflectional at all. These tendencies are still noticeable in many young children just learning to emit vocal sounds. One is the tendency to rhyth- mic repetition, familiar to us in words like mamma, biibba, sissy, bambam, moomoo, pashpash. This natural delight in repetition of the same sounds was utilized, later on, to express repetition of the same act. It gave rise to that grammatical artifice for marking the past tense called " redupli- cation." The Greek verb uses the reduplicated perfect as a regular part of its formation. The Latin verb preserves some traces of Jts former existence, in forms like cdcidi from cado, pephidi from pendo, pdperi from pdrio, tethidi from tendo, and momordi from mSrdeo. The other tendency to which reference has been UNEARTHING THE ROOTS. 51 made is the proneness among children and rustics — the analogues of a primitive people — to drawl the vowel so as practically to repeat it, and thus convert a word of one syllable into one of two. The reader must surely have known children to whom this was so natural that it was difficult to break them of the trick, — children who would say wa-all, bo-oard, cha-air, sko-oe, fa-an, flo-oor, leaning heavily on the last syllable. Is it not likely that this tendency existed also among some of the early Aryans? Would not this account for the many words among the Germans that still keep the double vowel, both vowels having been formerly pronounced as well as written, though now no longer separately sounded? Meer, See, Staat, Loos, and Boot are instances of what is meant. In certain English dialects still in use, these prolonged vowels are sounded, though no longer invariably written. Let a verse of Tennyson's " Northern Farmer (Old Style) " illustrate this singular survival of a trait in the childhood of language : — " Wheer 'asta bean saw long and mea liggin' 'ere aloan ? Noorse ? thoort nowt o' a noorse : whoy, doctor 's abean an' agoan : Says that I moant a' naw moor yaale : but I beant a fool : Git ma my yaale, for I beant a-gooin' to break my rule.'' Traced up thus, by the two guiding marks of similarity in grammatical structure and identity of roots, to a common origin in language, the Hindoos, 52 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Afghans, Persians, Medes, Armenians, Slavs, Teu- tons, Kelts, Greeks, and Romans, were proved by the students of language to have sprung from the same original race. This was the first great step in the study of language. One broad generalization had been made. One important classification was established. It is true, as has been said before, that in historic periods when races are acting and reacting on one another, community of language is by no means necessarily a proof of community of race. In the British Isles, English is spoken by descendants of Euskarians, Kelts, Romans, Angles, Jutes, Friesians, Danes, Normans, Flemings, Aquitanians, Spanish Jews, Romany folk, Dutch, Hanoverians, Hugue- not-French, and, I doubt not, Greek and Phoeni- cian traders, — the Greeks from Marseilles and the Phoenicians from Cadiz. In this country it is spoken by descendants of all nationalities that come as immigrants daily, in addition to the de- scendants of the white, red, and black races that, from Alaska to Key West, have been here for generations. But race is persistent through long historic periods and can be traced up to the dawn of his- tory. In that prehistoric period whither the clew of language leads us, the causes that produced the overlapping of race by race and the consequent obscuring of language were not operative. When a race begins a career of conquest, it establishes a civilization or becomes heir to one already existing, UNEARTHING THE ROOTS. 53 and civilization inaugurates history, and history- keeps us from blundering about race through the apparent witness of language. When the students of language had mastered the relations to one another in the highest group of languages, it was a comparatively easy task to group and classify the tongues that had reached the lower stages of inflection. Below these, again, they found no great difficulty in placing the tongues of the agglutinative type, though still more diverse than the inflected. Last of all, they were able with great pains to reconstruct, from what may be lik- ened to fossil remains, some of the tongues of the past, — tongues that have wholly perished from among men. These also they were able to give a place in their system. As to the monosyllabic dialects of China, they have long been partly known to scholars; and it was a simple matter to give them their logical place as representing the childhood of language. CHAPTER V. HOW LANGUAGE BEGAN. However man may have originated, however remote may have been his " first appearance on any stage," there must undoubtedly have been a time when that higher form of humanity, through whose efforts civihzation has been evolved, made a new epoch for the race and lifted it to a loftier plane than that occupied by the brutes. In many outlying parts of the earth are still to be found, in the persons of their descendants, the perfect analogues of those savage races that be- longed to the period we call prehistoric. They were incapable^of^^rogress thousands upon thou- sands of years ago ; they are in^apaHe of progress to-day. When the civilization of the higher races reaches them, they vanish. Yet even these unprogressive races, which have been incapable of making history and have been for the most part " as the beasts that perish," have, probably from their earliest dawn as conscious human races, made pictures for the ear by articu- lating sounds of continuous meaning, and were, in the words of Homer, " articulate-speaking men." Indeed, it must have been so, for in no other way HOW LANGUAGE BEGAN. 55 than by social combination could these creatures without natural defences sustain life against the other forces of nature ; and effective social combi- nation would for them have been impossible with- out the power of communicating thoughts and organizing plans. Just how they invented this ma rvellou s art of speech, the key~to their successful survival, it would be sheer waste of time to, attempt to divine. This problem has always been a nut too hard for the shrewdest philologist or biologist to crack. Before closing this part of my subject, I shall present in outHne one of the latest attempts to __bridge the chasm between homo damans and homo loqiiens ; but I cannot think it wholly satisfactory. J[t_is enough to recogni ze the fact that even the rudest and lowest tribes of the human raee possess This art, the first proof and the most tremendous proof of the majesty of the human brain. It is__ enough to note that the voice wh ich G od had_fitted for song and speech was early able to compass both, and through~them to correlate phenomena of the external world, to express inward emotions by the figurative use of the objects of perception, and to utter that variety of rhythmic sounds which seems to be the putting of wings to speech. It would be a mistake to suppose that speech could ever arise without the stimulus and the help of the associative principle and the electric impulse of sympathy. Even in that singular story which 56 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Herodotus heard from the Egyptian priests, the experiment was made upon two children, instead of upon one solitary child. The story runs thus : — Psarametichus, to find out which was the oldest human race, "took two children of the common sort, and gave them over to a herdsman to bring up at his folds, strictly charging him to let no one utter a word in their presence, but to keep them in a sequestered cottage, and from time to time to introduce goats to their apartment, see that they got their fiU of milk, and in all other respects look after them. His object herein was to know, after the indistinct babblings of infancy were over, what word they would first articulate. " It happened as he anticipated. The herdsman obeyed his orders for two years, and at the end of that time, on his one day opening the door of their room and going in, the children both ran up to him with outstretched arms, and distinctly said Bikos. " When this first happened, the herdsman took no notice, but afterwards when he obsenred, upon coming often to see them, that the word was constantly in their mouths, he informed his master, and by his command brought the children into his presence. Psammedchus then himself heard them say the word, upon which he then proceeded to make inquiry what people there were who called anything b'ekos ; and hereupon he learnt that bikos was the Phrygian name for ' bread.' In considera- tion of this circumstance the Egyptians yielded their claims, and admitted the greater antiquity of the Phrygians." But the children on whom this experiment was made were not likely to utter any word not sug- HOW LANGUAGE BEGAN. 57 gested to them by sounds external to themselves. It seems evident that they were imitating the sounds made by the goats that supplied them with milk. Children do form words for them- selves, and have been known to invent little languages in which they conversed apart from the households around them. But no case has been known in which wild children, caught and cared for, have had a language. "An instance recently occurred," says Alice Boding- ton, in the " American Naturalist," writing on this subject, "on Mount Pindus in Thessaly. The warden of the king's forest on Mount Pindus was strolling up to a shepherd's hut while on a shooting expedition, to pro- cure a drink of milk. He heard a rustling in the bushes, and was raising his gun when the shepherd called out to him not to shoot. He saw a naked creature in the form of a man running in front of him, sometimes on its feet, more often on all fours. It reached the hut and began eagerly sucking up the buttermilk out of a trough into which cheeses had been pressed. The shepherd said the child was a Wallachian by birth. His father died, and his mother, distributing her children among her neighbors, went back to her own country. This boy had escaped into the woods and had kept himself alive there for four years. In the summer he drank butter- milk daily and ' lived well ; ' in the winter he took shelter in the caves and ate herbs and roots. The warden, pitying the child, bade the shepherd catch and bind him with a rope, and then took him to his home at Trikala. Here he fed and clothed his little Orson, and placed him with a person who endeavored to teach him to talk, or kept the child, when possible, under his own 58 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. charge. But the boy has never learned to speak a word, though he imitates the voices of many wild creatures." This story is vouched for by the " Spectator " of Jan. 9, 1892. Nor is this an exceptional instance, as Alice Bodington goes on to show: — " The same inability to speak has been shown in the cases of other ' wild ' children found in India, collected by Colonel Sleeman, the able officer who helped to sup- press thuggism. In a district near the Goomtee River, in the Province of Oude, wolves are never killed by the villagers from a fear of the ill luck which their death might bring upon the village, and wolves consequently abound. A native trooper saw a large she- wolf leave her den, followed by three whelps and a little boy, all on their way to the river to drink. When chased by the trooper they all escaped to their den, the boy running on all fours as fast as the young wolves. The whole party was dug out ; the wolves were dug out and bolted ; the boy was caught, bound with a rope, and after four days sent to an English officer. Captain Nicholetts. He was kindly treated, but he never learned to speak ; he would fly at children and try to bite them, and ran to eat his food on all fours. But he was friendly with a pariah dog, and would let him share his food. He would suck up a whole pitcher of milk. He never laughed or smiled, destroyed all his clothes, and in two years and a half ended his short life of piteous degrada- tion, speaking once or twice, as he lay dying, the words for water and aching head." After citing t^o more Indian instances, Alice Bodington sums up the evidence as follows : — Missing Page Missing Page HOW LANGUAGE BEGAN. 6 1 JSH^^JiBi These have developed respectively into human gesture, human word, and human emphasis. -' ■ — —-^ As a general rule all of these co-exist in spoken language ; one only is to be found in written lan- guage, except where the artifices of italics and spacing in printing and underscoring in writing enforce an occasional emphasis. In the Chinese spoken language intonation plays as important a part as mere sound. M i mjcryjs_jjn^uestionaW^ which all these three modes of lang uage ar e-^formed, though very~ maify'of'the existing words in all languages were formed on the secondary basis of association of ideas and were at first used as meta- phors. The diversity of languages is due to two causes, — diversity of environment and diversityjn anatomicaF structure. Language, then, springing from the mimicry of nature, consists ultimately of these six important elements : — 1. Emotional exclamations or gesture-sounds; 2. Imitative sounds; fio3- Conventional symbolic sounds; -felTo Varied combinations of these into articulate the on^. tribe sprafcative use of concrete terms to express sounds hear^: and Hence there is a al connectives, these last belonging of the origin of gelopment removed by many ages sense in what haHen language began. CHAPTER VI. HOW IT BECAME MULTIFORM. The passage in the Bible that tells the story of the confusion of tongues, like many other pas- sages once regarded as historical, has come to be considered as the figurative use of some ancient tradition. It cannot be explained by any of the known facts in the development of language, so as to be accepted as the literal record of an historical event. The law of differentiation in language is simply this: separation of races produces variation in language; for separation of races brings about at once diversity of environment, and the diversity of environment in process of time develops diversity in anatomical structure. It is well know n tha t there are races that are physically incompetentJ:o pronounce some sounds that are easy and habitual to other races. In any widespread barbarian race, the more barbarous the race, the more numerous will be the tribal units of society, and the greater therefore the number of varieties of speech. The variation from trow IT BECAME MULTIFORM. 63 a commonjygejwilloften be grea t enough to con- stitOtrlioFmerely dialectiT but distinctJanguages._ When this is the case, however, we have a right to infer original diversity of race; for if the region the tribal units occupy has been populated from a single centre of linguistic dispersion, the varieties, different as they may be in mere vocabu- lary, will all be kindred dialects, following the same general type of formation. If it has been popu- lated from more than one centre, they will be dif- ferent groups of dialects. If from two of different race-type, they will be independent languages, though possibly influencing one another in con- sequence of contact. Unless thrown into definite form by embodiment in a literature of some kind, language is constantly changing. Even in an isolated group of the human race we might expect to find linguistic variation. But, historically, there is no such thing as an isolated human group. The different races have in all ages had, some sort of contact with one an- other, and have, in varying measure but always in some measure, affected the development of lan- guage in each race. Even in the origination of any existing language, there must have been a time when the tendency to separation among the tribal units gave way before some strong force impelHng them to unity ; and in the ulti mate janguage there must be left traces of the earlier time of separation. Such traces are easily found in the Aryan languages in the differ- 64 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. ent forms of the verb "to be," and in some of the other strong or irregular verbs. The languages of literature undergo change also, though of course in almost infinitely less degree than those that have never been subjected to the law of precedent in so powerful a manner. We all remember that knave and villain had once milder meanings in English than they now have. We are familiar, too, with those passages of Elizabethan English in the Bible which have to be explained to the unlearned reader of our own time, the " artillery " that means " bow and arrows," and the phrase " fetched a compass," in the story of St. Paul's shipwreck, and others of the kind. This change that is constantly going on in living languages is strikingly exemplified by a sentence of Martin Luther's, quoted by Peschel : {dass) " Gott thue nichts ah schkchtes, und das Evangelium set eine kindische Lehre," which would now be rendered to the German understanding : (that) " God does nothing but what is bad, and the Gospel is a childish doctrine." But in Luther's time schlecht meant something schlichtes, that is, " smooth, honest, upright," as in the idiom recht und schlecht, " upright and down- right;" and kindisch meant something kindliches, that is, "childlike." So we see how great is the tendency to change of meaning even in the words of a language that HOW IT BECAME MULTIFORM. 65 are retained without any change in their form. In the languages that had not yet been fettered by Hterary use, these changes in meaning must have been far more frequent, while at the same time there were also changes in form, until at last original identity would be wholly obscured. More than this, as the wandering tribes passed out of reach of one another into an altogether different environment for each, there would come at least two new causes of differentiation, the one purely physical, resulting from the changed vocal organs, the other psychic, involving a change in the mode of constructing sentences. There was still another factor in the process of differentiation. A frequent and early cause of variation in language, after the first splitting apart into separate tribes, was the operation of the law of exogamy. The unwillingness of a tribe of hunters and fighters to be burdened with the rearing of girl children, when they could supply themselves with wives by raids upon other tribes, was no doubt one cause of this very common law among barbarians that insisted upon marriage with a woman outside of the tribe. Another cause was, perhaps, the early perception of the evils resulting from perpetual breeding in-and-in. Still another cause may have been the desire to prevent feuds in the tribe, which would inevitably result if it were allowable for the fighting young men to rival one another in their desire to possess an attractive woman of their own tribe. 66 TJffE STORY OF LAN^GUAGE. Whatever its origin, this law of exogamy con- stantly brought in as wives and mothers women of other tribes. This produced, for a time at least, different dialects in the same household, and is probably the reason why in many races there should still exist masculine forms of speech used only by men and boys, and feminine forms used only by women and girls. The Burmese language has these distinctions. A story is told in Burmah, in which the fate of a boy beloved by a princess is determined by a mistake he makes in the use of a pronoun. Dis- guised as a girl, he was living in the apartments of the princess, and they were happy together, until on one occasion, going to the gate of the palace and challenged there by the guards, he said Chundaw la? "Are you speaking to me?" using the masculine pronoun, when, as a supposed girl, he ought to have said Chumma la ? This awakened suspicion, and he was drowned in the Irrawaddy. The poor princess pined away and died. Grammatical gender, as a matter of fact, in the historic languages is so largely dissociated from sex that grammarians have very generally refused to consider it as having had any such origin, and have taken pains to disabuse the minds of students of the idea that there is any necessary connection between sex and gender. But this view was taken before the researches of the ethnologists had re- vealed the wide extension of the law of exogamy. HOW IT BECAME MULTIFORM. 67 It is time now to revise the doctrine of the gram- marians and to consider whether there is not great probabihty that the large use in early ages of two languages in the same household, one mascu- line and the other feminine, did not necessarily produce in the resultant tongue spoken by both sexes all the phenomena of gender. The words that were definitely known to have been the old tribal words were considered masculine, those known to have been brought in by the mothers were considered feminine, while those of dubious origin, that could neither be fathered nor moth- ered, were considered neuter. But while I offer this as one of the sources of grammatical gender, I by no means consider it as the only source. Undoubtedly the tendency among wild races to personify all nature led to the formation of classes of words, the termination and the plan of inflection of which differentiated them as masculine, feminine, or neuter. Thus among the early Romans the indwelling spirit of a river was conceived of as a male deity ; that of a fruit-bearing tree, as a female. It has been already stated that another and a notable element in the variations of language is the great difference in the organs of speech among the races of mankind, due to long ages of residence in different climates, if not to original diversity of race. Sounds natural and easy to some races other races cannot utter at all. The Hawaiian, for in- stance, cannot catch the distinction between k and 68 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. t, g and d, I and r. The Mohawk had no p, b, m,f, V, or w: he never articulated with his lips. The Chinese have no d and no r. These facts have long been historic, irrespective of theories as to the unity or the diversity of ori- gin of races. Those who believe in the diversity of origin explain more readily the immense vari- ety of languages by declaring for an original diver- sity in the organic structure of the races. While dialectic variety implies original unity, there are many groups of languages which are so dissimilar in structure that it seems impossible on any theory to find a point of departure from which in common they could have been derived. The triliteral roots of the Semitic tongues, for instance, have nothing in common with the ancient Aryan roots. Yet both these groups of tongues belong to the white family of races. The difficulty of finding a com- mon origin is of course still greater when we come to compare the languages of the other races with those of the white races. There is another cause for variation in language worth noting. This is the delight taken in words by the unsophisticated mind, whether of childhood or of races at the child's stage of development, — a delight that leads readily to the formation of new words. While the possession of a literature, traditional or written, has a conservative tendency that resists change in language, in the absence of a literature there is in the childhood of races a passion for HOW IT BECAME MULTIFORM. 69 novelty that of itself prompts to constant changes in vocabulary. This tendency is seen in the child- hood of individuals in the midst of civilization, and offers the curious spectacle of the formation of artificial language, of which many instances have been given in recent publications. I suppose there are few imaginative boys of a linguistic turn of mind who have not at some time during their youth invented each a language for his own use. Sometimes these artificial structures are merely variations of our mother tongue, but more frequently they are efforts to form systematic tongues based upon impressions derived from the study of the inflected tongues of Greece and Rome. There are several historic instances of the same sort of efforts to create artificial languages made by maturer minds deluded by the dream of estab- lishing a universal language. These ambitious scholars seem to forget that language is a growth. But the natural tendency we have noted among children of linguistic taste accounts readily for the frequency with which wandering tribes change their entire vocabulary as they pass away from the neighborhood of the original stock. Even those who, like the Romany, have kept part of their ancient vocabulary for purposes of confederate fraud, own almost as scanty a vocabu- lary as the cant of thieves or the slang of the cow- boy can muster. CHAPTER VII. THE CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. Let me repeat a few of the more important points to which I have directed your attention. The starting-point of the science of language was the discovery made by philologists of the kinship of Sanskrit with Latin and Greek. This led to the classification of the Aryan family of tongues, and this again to the effort to place other languages in something like a definite class. As they could not be grouped by the genea- logical principle, it was found necessary to classify them by the principle of likeness and difference of structure. Further study, especially in the direc- tion of ascertaining the roots of the inflected tongues, brought philologists to the conviction that languages in the process of development pass through certain definite stages until they reach the highest synthetic type, and then by regular decom- position they become analytic. The order of development in language is in full harmony with the order of development in society. The steady growth of the synthetic type, from simple aggregation of the words furnished by the THE CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. yi monosyllabic stage into agglutinative forms, up to the highest form of inflection, is found in the speech of all the races that, from simple tribal aggregation up to the most complex political systems of the great civilized nations, organize society. At first in the organization of society the principle of corporate responsibility prevails, and in consonance with it prevails synthesis in lan- guage. The state is all in all, and must be armed at all points, let come what may to the individual. So the sentence must have its separate words mortised together and must move like a well- ordered battalion. When the principle of indi- vidual responsibility begins, and man becomes as important as the state, the analytic type of language comes into play. The characteristic feature of the monosyllabic tongues is that they use the simple root unchanged in form. The monosyllables still existing in Eng- lish, though the vast majority of them owe their present simplicity to the wear and tear of time, may serve very well as instances of what is meant. Thus one, from which are derived oneness, only, one- sided, and the like, is now a simple root, whatever it may once have been. The characteristic feature of the agglutinative tongues is that they use words consisting of two or more roots welded together into one word without change of form. Examples of this type can be found, on a small scale, in EngHsh. Such, for example, are railroad, cotton-press, nut-brown, 72 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. color-blind. German is still richer in such com- pounds, expressing, for example, our single word cotton by the double word, Baumwolle, that is, tree-wool, and our thimble by Fingerhiit, ox finger- hat. French has a few, such as essuie-mains, or wipe-hands, for towel ; and va-nu-pieds, or go-bare- feet, for vagabond. That variant of the agglutinative type, called variously by scholars intercalative, polysynthetic, and holophrastic, has words consisting of a great number of roots massed into one continuous utter- ance. Whitney illustrates this type by a sentence from the Cherokee language, the literal translation of which runs thus: — I-it-him-give, the bread, my son. The inflected languages use words consisting of a root modified by suffixes or prefixes or both, composed of fragmentary roots that have lost their ^integrity and have come to exercise a merely rela- tional function. Instances of this in English are : moon's, where the s was once a word, but is now a mere expression of the limiting relation of moon to some other word; happily, where the ly was once like ; loved, where the d was once did. The analytic languages discard inflections more or less wholly, and express grammatical relations by the use of prepositions, conjunctions, adjectives, and auxiliary verbs. Thus Latin /2i *- 1 s-s 'All the American •vl ^ -"S" tongues except 1 p.a Otomi N •Bo. ^ s '^ F ( r. Akkad 2. Sumir .&C 3. Ugrian 4. Samoyed _> J S. r^jfar tinat attac 6. Mongol 7. Tzmgusic •r«« ( Malay- °" t Polynesian gSa H O > > H O O H en ,?^" \ CHAPTER VIII. THE SPEECH OF ONE SYLLABLE. The Chinese are the chief people who use the speech of one syllable. It is therefore to them that we should look for light on this subject. We must always remember that China has for ages been the great giver of civilization to all eastern Asia. This fact and the infantile stage at which their language stopped growing are strong evidences of the immense antiquity of the civilization of the Chinese. It is true that authen- tic history in China dates only from the period in which the race of Chow flourished, and this can- not be carried back farther than about a thousand years before Christ. But the race must have been a peaceful agricultural people, with just enough lit- erature to give fixity to their language and with- out national organization, for many ages before this time. On the basis of an early-established ances- tral worship, their great lawgiver, Kung-fu-ts, built up for them a utilitarian philosophy that practically took the place of a religion. This philosopher lived in the sixth century before Christ. His moral and economic code has sufficed for vast numbers of 94 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. the race. Buddhism and Tauism, however, have both found their votaries among miUions of the Chinese. The area of China proper is nearly the same as that of the United States. It is divided into eigh- teen provinces, each having its own capital, a walled city. The empire includes many outlying provinces ; and in the time of Marco Polo's resi- dence at the court of the Great Mogul, its rulers were masters of the greater part of Asia. It was then known to the European world as Cathay. The population is immense and homogeneous, constituting about one third of the human race. The government has for many ages, even when in the hands of a foreign and conquering dy- nasty, been that of a patriarchal monarchy, the official system being regulated by competitive examinations. Except as regards the position of woman, the civilization of China is perhaps equal to that of Europe in the early years of the sixteenth century, and in some respects it is superior to it. The lit- erature is very extensive, covering the whole field of intellectual expression in written form, great attention being paid to style. The Chinese pre- ceded the Europeans in the use of paper, printing, gunpowder, macadamized streets, canals, silk, tea, the so-called India ink, spectacles, universal edu- cation, competitive examinations for the public service, game laws, and family names. The geographical isolation of the race, their low THE SPEECH OF ONE SYLLABLE. 95 Stage of linguistic development, their jealous ex- clusiveness, and perhaps that innate incapacity for continuous progress which we find generally asso- ciated with great precocity, — all combined to keep their civilization at a standstill for countless ages. Like the Indo-Chinese and the Tibetans, the Chinese have straight black hair, very little beard, skin of a leather yellow color, and eyes obliquely set. The height of the head is equal to its breadth or greater than the breadth. Students of crani- ology give the proportion of transverse to longi- tudinal diameter thus : — Medium 80 : 100. Long 75 : 100. Broad 85 : 100. Now while Eskimos and Negroes are long-skulled, typical Mongolians are broad-skulled. In character, the Chinese are industrious, frugal, crafty in trade, and law-abiding. Their traits emi- nently fitted them to begin a civilization. Where the ancestors of the Chinese came from is still unknown. But there is evidence that they migrated from the west into the province of Shan- se, which lies within the bend of the Yellow River, at a very remote period. There has been some attempt to connect them with the Akkad people of early Chaldaea, the area of whose influence was very wide; but no sure links of evidence along this hne of genealogy have as yet been established. 96 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. It is certain, at all events, that at a very early period they cultivated grain, raised flax, and wove it into garments, utilized the silkworm and the mul- berry, and engaged in trade. They had already, before their historic age, some knowledge of as- tronomy, and had put their language into written characters. The language must have ceased its development almost at birth. It is still in its childhood, simply because its fixation in a written form took place at so early a date. Every word is a root, and every root is a word. There is no trace of inflection ; there is not even agglutination. The written language is the uni- versal tongue of culture ; the spoken language varies with every province. The characters are very numerous, while the sounds they represent are comparatively few in number, one and the same sound often representing as many as a hundred distinct ideas. The characters, which originated in pictures and in a combination of lines, do not make up an alphabet, but a syllabary. Let me illustrate what is meant by a syllabary. Suppose we wished to make a syllabary for the English language. It would be a very difficult task, as English has a vast number of syllables. But the idea would be to choose a character to represent every separate syllable in the language. Thus, let .f stand for the syllable im, b for ag, y for ine ; and we should write the word imagine with the characters sby. THE SPEECH OF ONE SYLLABLE. 97 This is just wliat the Cherokee half-breed, Se- quo-yah, did with the comparatively few syllables of his own language, making use of the letters of our alphabet, sometimes erect, sometimes upside down, sometimes flat on their backs. His is per- haps the last syllabary ever invented, and it is still used by the Cherokee nation. The Chinese scholars divide their characters into six classes. The first they call Si-ang-hing. These represent the forms of the objects meant, and correspond to the ancient Egyptian hiero- glyphs. Each of these serves also, in combination with other characters, as a determinative or class term. The second they call Chi sze. These repre- sent ideas of relation. Thus, a line drawn under the character for " sun " indicates the meaning "dawn." The third they call Hwiiy. These represent an idea by the union of two or more characters. Thus, the character for " sincere " is made up of the two characters signifying " man " and "words." The fourth they call Chu-en-choo. These repre- sent, by change of form or sound, a variety of meanings. Thus, the character for " hand," being made to turn to the right, means " right." If turned to the left, it means " left." Or the same character may mean either " music " or " delight," according as it is sounded ; if sounded yo, it means "music;" if /^, it means "delight." 7 98 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. The fifth class they call Chia chieh. These represent metaphorical meanings. Thus, the char- acter for " arrow " means " direct," or " a word spoken to the point." The sixth class they call Chieh shing. These are phonetic characters, and are in number over twenty thousand. They are composed of two parts, the phonetic character proper and the deter- minative. The determinatives comprise such natu- ral objects as sun, moon, mountain, river, fire, water, head, heart, hand, foot, eye, sheep, cow, horse, dog ; such primary social relations as father, mother, son, daughter; such primary qualities as high, low, great, small, straight, crooked; such primary actions as to see, to speak, to walk, to run. Thus, the character for wood is a necessary deter- minative for anything made of wood, as table, chair, box. There are two hundred and fourteen of these determinatives. The likeness this system bears to the Egyptian and ChaldGsan systems of ideophonetics points us to the probability that the same Turanian genius lay at the foundation of early Egyptian, Chaldasan, and Chinese civilization. The Chinese characters have varied from time to time, there being six distinct styles of writing to be found in Chinese books. The sounds, as has been said, are far fewer than the characters, for there are only five hundred syl- labic sounds, while there are over thirty thousand characters. The number of characters in ordinary THE SPEECH OF ONE SYLLABLE. 99 use, however, is only about five thousand. Still, the discrepancy in number between the actual sounds and the written characters is enormous. It is evident that on an average about ten of these characters must be called by the same sound. We have a few instances of this identity of sound for different ideas in our own language. Thus write, rite, right, wright, all have different meanings, but the same sound. But the puzzle that is excep- tional in English is the rule in Chinese. To meet the difficulty of making these five hun- dred sounds represent in conversation the multitude of ideas for which so many characters were found necessary, three methods were devised. The first was to combine with the word intended another supplementing its meaning. Thus, with the word for hear is used the word perceive. The second was to use classifying words with the nouns. Thus, the word meaning grasp with the hand, when used with the word meaning sometimes knife, sometimes S7nall boot, and sometimes /7'«z^^, fixes upon it the meaning knife. The third was by the use of musical intonations. These are eight in number, making the spoken language a series of constantly varying inflections of the voice. The grammatical construction is expressed by the position and connection of the words in the sentence. The subject comes first, then the verb, then the direct followed by the indirect comple- ment. Every word that modifies or defines an- lOO THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. other invariably precedes it. Thus the same word by a change of position is changed in grammatical value. We know something of this principle of positional grammar in English. Thus, when we say, " The summer is warm,'' the word siunmer is a noun ; but when we say, " On a warm summer day they met the enemy," the word summer is an ad- jective. This change of place and of force is in Chinese accompanied by a change of tone also. There is sometimes a change of sound, while the character for the written word remains identical. In spite of all these expedients for indicating different values for a single root, there is of course much room for ambiguity. Custom alone clears up this ambiguity. There are many well-estab- lished and conventionally understood groups of roots. Thus, for difference of opinion they say, ni tung, wo si, " I east, thou west ; " for conversing, ni wen, wo ta, " I asking, thou answering." Weight is khing tschimg, " light-heavy ; " distance, ywan kin, " far-near." Like the rest of the Turanian languages, Chinese has no distinction of gender, all nouns as such being regarded as impersonal. Indeed, they are called by the grammarians " dead words," the verbs alone being " living words." Still sex is indicated by prefixes, the son being spoken of as man-child, the daughter as woman-child, the stal- lion as noble-horse, and the mare as mother-horse. Plurality is often indicated by repetition, a.sjin-jin, " the men." The nouns, as has been already said, THE SPEECH OF ONE SYLLABLE. lOI have no inflection ; and the relation expressed in other tongues by change of ending is given in Chinese by stringing the nouns along one after the other so as to make of them practically a com- pound word. Thus the porcelain mark that reads The- Ta - ming- dynasty - wan - leih -thh'd-year- manu- facture is intelligible enough even to us. To one familiar with Carlylese it would even seem natural and easy. There is, however, a particle that expresses "of" and is used to form the equivalent of our possessive. There are prepositions that define an ablative sense. The time-marks of the verb are all indicated by position and the use of particles. In the colloquial sentence, joo kin ta lai, " now he come," we have present time ; in ming neen ta lai, " next year he come," future time; in shang yu? ta lai, " last month he come," past time. Here the time meant is evident from the collocation. But generally, when no particle is used, present time is implied ; and a particle meaning want is put with the verb to indicate future time, while one meaning complete is put with it to indicate past time. In like manner, position and the use of particles point out the mood of the verb. It will be perceived from all that has been said, that monosyllabic languages have in reality no words at all, but only roots. Our monosyllables, it must be remembered, have become so by phonetic decay; and the resemblance between them and those of genuine monosyllabic languages is illusory. I02 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. There is, however, in Chinese an approach to word-making. Thus isz, " son," is used as a diminutive, so that from iau, " sword," is derived tau-tsz, " sword-son," or " knife." With so infantile a language, the Chinese have necessarily produced a feeble literature, bulky as it is. Yet poor as is the literature, it is more widely diffused among the people than is that of any other race in the land that gave it birth. The written or classical language speaks only to the eye. It is not used even by the learned for oral communication. Quotations from the Con- fucian classics are understood, because of the gen- eral familiarity of scholars with these works. But any new composition in the written character, when heard for the first time, is unintelligible. The spoken languages are fuller and more diffuse than the written language, using often two words for its one. They substitute a different and a compound word for the single one, or they put with each indefinite word of the written language another that defines its meaning. Thus the word inin^, " people," is defined for the eye by the char- acter that belongs to it, but would not be clear to the ear. Hence the colloquial form is quite differ- ent, being paA-sing-. The sound kimc;- might mean "just," or "a laborer," or "to attack," or "merit," or " respectful," or " to provide," or some one of several other meanings, all of which have precisely the same pronunciation and tone ; for the system of expression by intonation is far from complete. THE SPEECH OF ONE SYLLABLE. 1 03 But the colloquial forms define these meanings by- additions. To mean "just," kutig becomes kung- tao ; " a laborer," kung-tsiang ; " to attack," kungr kieli ; " merit," kung-lao ; " respectful," kung-kin ; " to provide," kung-yin. Just as Latin was understood during the middle ages in Europe and used universally by the learned long after the general use of the national languages that had sprung up from the German- ized soil of population, the written language of China is understood by the learned all over the empire. Indeed, it is used not only there, but also in Japan, Corea, the Loo-Choo Islands, Mantchu- ria, and Cochin-China. The spoken languages are as different from one another as Italian from Spanish or Spanish from Portuguese. They have different constructions, idioms, pronunciations, and tones. North of the great river Yi-ang-tz the variation is not so great ; but south of it there are many distinct dialects that might well be called so many different lan- guages. The Court dialect is used officially all over the empire, and is that which foreigners call Mandarin. The Chinese call it Kwan-hwa, " the language of officers." It has an extensive litera- ture of its own. "The principal excellences or advantages of the Chinese written language," says Nevius, " are its remark- able compactness and its power of expression. It is justly admired for the beauty and variety of its charac- ters, its copiousness, and the delicate shades of meaning 104 "^^^ STORY OF LANGUAGE. which it expresses. To show its fulness in some points, take the following illustrations : In the place of our one word ' to carry,' the Chinese use kih, ' to take or carry in the hand ; ' pao, ' to carry in the arms ; ' ^yiA, ' to carry under the arm ; ' pung, ' to carry extended in both arms ; ' ting, ' to carry on the head ; ' pe, ' to carry on the back ; ' tiao, ' to carry suspended from the ends of a stick resting on the shoulder ; ' fai, ' to carry sus- pended from the middle of a pole, or poles, resting on two men's shoulders.' " The language of the Bod-dschi or Tibetans is monosyllabic, like the Chinese, but it has prefixes in its written form. These, however, are not pro- nounced, so that the spoken tongue is purely monosyllabic. Allied to these tongues are the Kho language of Camboja and the M6n language of Pegu in Burmah. In Indo-China generally, the transition from the monosyllabic stage to the agglutinative, due to the presence of races of In- dian and of Malay descent, makes some of the languages difficult to classify. Yet the original Mongolian stock there undoubtedly cling to the monosyllabic type of speech. Siamese and Bur- mese surpass Chinese in the number of roots applied to the definition of meaning. In Siamese the auxiliary root precedes the principal root ; in Burmese it follows it. These tongues and the speech of Anam or Cochin-China are like Chinese in their use of tones for discriminating meaning. Cam- bojan, however, though monosyllabic, has no tones. The perpetuity of the Chinese language, as of the civilization, is largely due to the fact that the THE SPEECH OF ONE SYLLABLE. 105 country has always been conquered by kindred races, however barbaric they may have been. Whenever the original community that had de- veloped civilization was conquered by nomadic hordes from outside, the Mongol or Mantchu con- querors that founded dynasties and added terri- tories to the original state, being of the same stock, accepted the civilization they found and ex- tended it to a wider domain. The Roman em- pire spread the Latin tongue and Roman culture by conquests made by Roman arms ; the Chi- nese empire has always spread its tongue and its culture through the conquests made by barba- rian chiefs who had mastered it. The very cause that secured perpetuity prevented progress ; there was never any new blood. I must not neglect to mention that there is one monosyllabic tongue on the American continent. This is the speech of the Otomis, a rude tribe of Mexico that was once under Aztec rule. Prescott states that, besides those who penetrated into the valley, there were many dwelling in the country of Tula on the west, "where their language is well preserved." TONGUES OF ONE SYLLABLE. I. Chinese 2. Bod-dscki 3. Indo-Chinese 4- Oio-mi ^ (in many dialects) or Tibetan | (spoken in Mexico) a. b. c. d. e. /• g^ Bakheng, Barraa, M6n, T'hay, Kholiraen, Law, Anam, or or or or or or or speech Avanese Peguan, Siamese Cambojan speecli speech of spoken of of Arracan in Laos Tonquin Burmah and _ Cochin-China CHAPTER IX. AGGLUTINATIVE 'SPEECH. The earliest Turanian civilization was on the Persian Gulf at the mouths of the Tigris and the Euphrates, which then emptied their waters into the Gulf at some distance from each other; for alluvial deposits have in the course of ages made land at the expense of the Gulf. At Tel-loh, near the mouth of the Euphrates, inscriptions have been found, dating back to 4000 B. C. There were two races, the Akkadi and the Sumiri, who ruled in these parts, building there great cities and temples. The temples were in- tended for the worship of the heavenly bodies, were crowned by observatories for watching them, and were served by priesthoods of many ranks, using an established ritual and possessing a volu- minous sacred literature of liturgies, hymns, and magical invocations. These people were the inventors of the art of cuneiform writing, and the language they spoke and wrote was nearly related to the modern Fin- nish, Bulgarian, and Magyar, both in grammatical structure and in vocabulary. The very names, Akkadi, or moimtaineers, and Sumiri, or riverain AGGLUTINATIVE SPEECH. 107 people, remind one of the terms of like meaning in the Finnish tribal names, Akkarak and Suomi. Compare also the following table of words, and note the likeness in vocabulary between the Akkad, the Finnish, and the Magyar : — English Akkad Finnish Ma^ copper iron urud rauta country ^^ mada maa field [ sa space J sia complete, fill ) til full ) tele flesh uzu hus light 1 nab day J nap road mar mor nose ar orr I mu ma thou zu sa he na, ni ne we me me Finnish is one of the few ■ non-Aryan languages that are soft and melodious, possesses terse and picturesque idioms, and has produced a poetry true to nature. The Akkad syllabary shows by internal evidence that the race had once used papyrus, or parch- ment, or some similar material, to write upon, and hieroglyphs as its script. When the Akkadi came down into the plains, they exchanged the smoother I08 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. writing material for clay, and, instead of the hiero- glyphs, they used the wedge-shaped characters called by us moderns cuneiform. This wise and powerful race extended their sway from the mountains of Elam beyond the Tigris westward to the Mediterranean and even to the island of Cyprus. There is a growing disposition among archaeologists to believe in a far greater extension of the Akkad civilization than this. Some recent discoveries make it not unlikely that at a very early stage in its development it formed the basis of the wonderful civilization of Egypt; and there are traces of its extension eastward into the lands of the Dravida and of the Cambojans in the two Indian peninsulas, and possibly from an- cient Camboja across the ocean to the lands of the Quiches, the Mayas, and the Quichiias in America. There is a strong suspicion on the part of modern ethnologists that these Akkadi were the ancestors of the Chinese, who left the parent race before the language had reached the agglutinative stage. I think, too, that we may yet discover evidence that the Akkad civilization lay at the basis of the Etruscan in Italy, being intro- duced into Europe in the age that saw the conti- nent joined to Africa at many points. Indeed, there seems good reason to believe that there was an early universal civilization of the yellow race, that covered all habitable parts of the earth's surface, then very differently shaped from what they are now, and probably far less divided by AGGLUTINATIVE SPEECH. I Op wide stretches of sea. Later, blending in some regions witli tlie Hamitic race and mastered by it, the Akkadi made still greater advances. Still later, their conquest by the Semite in Asia and by the Aryan in Europe brought about the highest stage of civilization attainable by art as distin- guished from science. However visionary all this speculative history for the Akkadi may be, the cuneiform syllabary and the Chaldsean tongue were certainly long used from the Tigris to the Mediterranean. For all that primitive world, they were the only forms of culture. The people of Akkad were workers in metals, wood, and stone ; practised mining ; traded to the Red Sea, to Armenia and Media, to Syria and Tarsus. From the first they seem to have built upon terraces', both to remove their edifices above the low alluvial plain and to give them an impos- ing appearance. The great structures of Ur rose in terraces. Its brick walls were decorated with blue enamel, polished agates, alabaster, marble slabs, mosaics, copper nails, and gold plates. There was great splendor of adornment. Rafters of palm wood supported the roofs. The Akkadi were great inventors, and always from the practical point of view. The weight of the water of Euphrates gave the basis of the Chaldsean metric system, the Babylonian talent corresponding with a cubic foot of water taken from the river. The Akkadi gave us the division of the year into months and weeks and the divi- no THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. sion of the week into seven days. They divided the circle into three hundred and sixty degrees, and the degrees into sixty minutes. They in- vented the positional value of figures, and even had a mode of writing them equivalent to our mode of expressing decimal fractions. While the Aryan races were still in barbarism, and the Se- mitic tribes were wandering over the Syrian des- ert, these early Turanians were high in many kinds of culture. Ur of the Chaldees, from which Terah and his son Abram emigrated northward to Haran at the foot of the Armenian mountains, was one of their cities. Ur and Haran were both devoted to the worship of the Moon, and were both early pos- sessed of a large Semitic population that had come to trade, and ended by settling. The name Ur presents the Semitic • form of the Sumirian eri, " city." It was not very far from the great com- mercial city, Eridu, " the good city," which traded over the waters of the Persian Gulf In these ancient cities — Eridu, Ur, Erech (Uruki), and Larsa — were libraries containing man's earliest traditions. Where the mound of Tel-loh stands was Sirpurra, " the city of the great flame." Sayce thinks the monuments unearthed here may be dated as far back as about 4000 B. C. I shall give a rapid sketch of the results of the excavations made here by Ernest de Sarzec, both on account of the antiquity of the city and the comparative recentness of these discoveries. AGGLUTINATIVE SPEECH. Ill The palace of Gudea, " deliverer of judgment," one of the ancient priest-kings, was uncovered. It was constructed of large square bricks cemented together by bitumen, each brick bearing the in- scription of the priest-king. It contained an open court with fortress, palace, harem, and temple- tower, the plan of all royal buildings in the Mesopotamian region from that day to this. The statues found were not of colossal size. They were carved out of green diorite. This stone seems to have been imported from the Sinaitic peninsula by the water route around Arabia and through the Red Sea. This land of diorite and porphyry had been con- quered by Naram Sin and Sargon a thousand years before. A hundred years later than the time of these Chaldsean princes, Senefru, the father of Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid, accord- ing to Egyptian records, drove away "the foreign people" from these mines; but in Gudea's time the Chaldseans were in possession of them again. Still later, in the time of Abraham, the new Ela- mite dynasty in Chaldsea holds southern Palestine, while lower Egypt is in the hands of the Hyksos. The graduated scale in the lap of King Gudea, with which he has measured the building, the plan of which is also in his lap, has been subjected by Professor Flinders Petrie to a comparison with the Egyptian and the Babylonian standards, and found to be on the basis of the Egyptian cubit, and not of the Babylonian. This would indicate 112 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. a borrowing on the part of Egypt before the rise of Babylon to importance. The heads found in this city of Sirpurra are of distinctly Turanian type. The earlier Shamanis- tic type of Turanian belief had already developed into the worship of personal gods. Gudea records his expulsion of witches, spirit-seers, charmers, and magicians. The existence of slavery — a necessary institution in the beginnings of civiliza- tion — is brought out by the terms in which a Saturnalia is described. The equality of women with men is very clearly indicated. At Eridu a discovery was made that adds one more piece of evidence to prove identity of origin for the Chaldaean and the Egyptian civilizations. The son of the god Ea was worshipped there under the name Asari. The divine name of Osiris in Egypt is Ausar; and both these names are written with the signs eye and chair. The tongues of Akkad and Sumir are the oldest agglutinative tongues of which we possess any trace. There was another, however, of indefinite antiquity, but at a very early period established in great power between the Chaldaean and the Egyp- tian civilizations. This was the Hittite. The great Hittite race, that warred on equal terms so long with the Egyptians, who called them Khita, and with the Assyrians, who called them Khatti, was probably of the same stock as the Akkadi. They certainly used an agglutinative language. They wrote in hieroglyphs of their own, which have AGGLUTINATIVE SPEECH. 113 been identified as similar to tlie Kypriote char- acters. The bilingual inscription of Tarkondemos has been the key to the study of the Hittite syllabary. A large body of evidence goes to show that this Hittite civilization prevailed from the Mesopota- mian region on the east to the whole eastern coast of the Mediterranean on the west, including the island of Cyprus ; Sidon being the chief seaport, and Kadesh on the Orontes and Karchemish on the Euphrates being the successive capitals. The period of the Hittite power was the time of Abra- ham, and of the rule of the Hyksos in Egypt. Their greatness continued during the reigns of the warlike Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty, and until their power was crushed by Sargon, King of Assyria, by the capture and destruction of Karchemish, 717 B. c. I think that in their very names will be seen a likeness to the names of the Akkadi and the Sumiri, and even to those of the distant Etruscans. Compare, for instance, the Hittite names preserved in Egyptian records, Khita-sira, Maro-sira, Sapa- lala, Mautenara, and Ur-ma Nofirura, with the name of the Akkad city, Sirpurra, of King Gudea, of the city Larsa, of the goddess Nana, of King Satarona and his daughter, the Princess Kirgipa, and with names in the far-away Italian land like Rasena, Porsena, Tinia, Lala, Thania. Then, does not the boss of Tarkondemos remind us at once of Tarchon, the founder of Tarquinii? 114 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Next to these older agglutinative tongues come five large groups in the north of Asia and Europe. These are the languages of the Tungus, the true Mongols, the Turks, the Finns, and the Samoyeds. In these the root is never obscured, and the linguistic structure is strictly limited to the addi- tion of suffixes. The Yakut, a Turkish dialect, spoken on the icy sea of Siberia, may serve us with an illustration of the simplicity of construc- tion that marks the formation of words in these tongues. Thus, sit signifies one concerned with whatever the root specifies. Ati meaning "wares," ati-sit will mean a man concerned with wares, " a merchant." ^j/?' means " creation ; " «j/?-«V, "crea- tor." Again, the suffix ir signifies action. From tial, "wind," comes then tialir, "to blow." Yet these tongues have in reality no verb. What is perhaps their most striking characteristic is the euphonic harmony of vowels which prevails in them. In the Yakut tongue the plural suffix consists of the consonants / and r ; but what vowel is to come between them is determined by the vowel of the root. Thus we have achalar, " the fathers ; " ocholor, " the children ; " dsdlar, "the bears." The Mantchus, who conquered the Chinese em- pire in 1644, belong to the Tungii group. The Tungii tribes lie between the Yenisei and the Lena. They include Tungus proper, Orochus, Daurians, Birars, Golds, Manegrs, Sanagirs, Ngat- kons, Nigidals, Lamuts, Yu-pi-ta-tze (" fish-clad"), AGGLUTINATIVE SPEECH. 115 and Mantchus. Many of these tribes are nomi- nally Greek Christians. Their moral character is represented as far above that of other Asiatics. The Mongols, or Tatars, have four branches: East Mongols, or Tatars proper, Kalmucks, Bu- riats, and Hazara. The Tata, as the Chinese call them, are divided into two hordes, the Schara in the south, and the Kalka in the north. It was this race that founded the Mongol empire under Jenghiz Khan, which in the thirteenth century stretched from Silesia and Moravia in Europe over almost all Asia. Their Mongolian leaders brought the name Tatar to the west, and it became fixed upon tribes that were really Turkic, who happened to be serving under the Tatars proper. The Kalmucks call themselves Oliots, or Elliotts, or Durban airad, " the Four Allies." These four hordes are the Dzungar, the Turgut, the Chosod, and the Turbet. These are still nomadic, live in conical felt tents, and keep herds of horses, cattle, and sheep. They are Buddhists. Readers of De Quincey will remember his wonderfully vivid de- scription of the flight of the horde from Russia. The Buriats speak three different Mongol dia- lects. Like the Dzungar and the Turgut, they have accepted Buddhism, though keeping up their old Shamanist usages. The Hazara wander between Herat and Cabul. They came into Afghanistan with Timur during his conquests in the south of Asia. They are Il6 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Shiah Mohammedans. Some speak Persian; but a large proportion of them have retained their original Mongol dialect. The Turks comprise the Uigurs, Usbeks, Os- manlis, Yakuts, Turkomans, Noghaians, Basians, Kumuks, Karakalpaks, or "Black Caps," and Kirghiz. They stretch from the Siberian sea- coast down into central Asia, and westward into Europe. The Usbeks are the chief race in the Khanates of Khiva, Bokhara, and Khokand. The Seljuks and Osmanlis in succession con- quered western Asia, and finally the latter over- came the European Empire of the East. These last have mingled their blood with many other races, but still keep their original tongue. The dialects of all the members of the group are so similar that the Yakut of the icy sea is intelligible to the Turk of central Asia, and even to the Turk of Constantinople. The Turkish verb is mechanical and transparent in its various changes, which are brought about by the insertion of its inflections in the body of the first formation. Thus, sev, " loving ; " sevmek, " to love ; " sev- me-inek, " not to love ; " scvcjiiemek, " not to be able to love ; " sevdirmek, " to cause to love ; " sev- dirishniek, " to cause one another to love ; " sevil- mek, " to be loved ; " sevilememek, " not to be able to be loved ; " and so on through forty forms or voices. The vowels, as in most other Turanian AGGLUTINATIVE SPEECH. 117 tongues, are harmonic. Thus, sevmek, " to love," but bakniak, " to regard ; " solor, " the houses," but atlar, "the horses." The Kirghiz speak a dialect differing from Tatar only in the interchange of certain letters : j for y, b for /, zh for /, sh for tch, t for d, p for /, and d for /. They are divided into the Kara, or " Black," Kirghiz and the Kirghiz Kazaks, or " Riders." They are all nomads. The Turk, unlike the Arab, has destroyed wher- ever he has ruled. Ruined cities and desolate provinces mark his path of conquest. Constanti- nople, Athens, Antioch, Alexandria, Pergamus, no less than Bagdad, Edessa, Jerusalem, Damascus, and Cairo have ceased under his sway to be hghts to the world. Mesopotamia and Egypt, until he held them, were the most fertile lands in the world; they are now incapable of sustain- ing the great populations that once subsisted upon the produce of their soil. The Finns comprise the Ugrians, Bulgars, Per- mians, and true Finns. The Ugrians are divided into the Ostiaks, the Woguls, and the Magyars. The Danubian Bulgarians are of Slav blood and language, and differ from the Bulgars of the Volga, the Slavs in the region of the Danube having ab- sorbed the Bulgars that penetrated" into Europe during the mediaeval period. The true Finns live on the Baltic, and call their land Suomi. Allied to them are the Lapps. They Il8 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. have narrow slit eyes, set horizontally in the face, broad cheek-bones, wide mouth, short nose, and yellow skin. Their literary rank is high, for they created the " Kalevala," in many respects a remarkable epic. The Finnish declension shows the same mechan- ical and transparent structure already noted in the inflections of other agglutinative tongues. Thus, karhu, "bear; " karhun, "of the bear; " karhutta, "without bear;" karhusta, "out of the bear;" and so on through fifteen cases. The plural suffix, i, is inserted. Thus, karhuin, " of the bears ; " karhutta, " without bears ; " karhuista, " out of the bears ; " and so on. The Magyar language, retained by the mod- ern Hungarians, has produced a literature rich in quality no less than in quantity. Kisfaludy, Vordsmasty, Petdfi, and Arany are said to be poets of real merit. The Samoyeds speak a language nearly allied to that of the Finns. Agglutinative in speech also are the tribes of the polar region, of whom the Eskimo are the type. The Eskimo, " eaters of raw flesh," as they are called by the American tribes nearest them, call themselves In-nu-it, — that is, "men." They form their words by suffixes, but have no harmony of vowels. Their language is divided into many dialects. The Aleutians, Thlinkeets, and Haidahs resemble them in seamanship, physique, and language. AGGLUTINATIVE SPEECH. 119 The In-nu-it can form a complex sentence in a single word, like the Americans. Hence their tongue is a transitional one, and is on the way to the genuine holophrastic type. Thus the Green- lander says : Sanig-ik-sini-ariartok-asuar-omar-y- otit-tog-og, Hterally, " Knife-beautiful-to-buy-go- haste-will-likewise-thou-also-he-says," which means, " He says that you also are going to hasten to buy a beautiful knife." In the speech of the In-nu-it, nouns have three numbers, as in Greek, and six cases marked by affixes. The adjectives too are declined. There are diminutives and augmentatives. Substantives become verbs by taking an affix. The verb has numerous inflections. It seems to me that the true position of both the In-nu-it and the Basque tongues is determined by the settled fact in linguistic development, that races outside of the environment that permits the growth of civilization do yet make progress in language. Hence the double tendency, in the one direction, to the holophrastic type, — which can be paralleled in German, — and in the other, to abundant inflection of the agglutinative type. As, however, there is another language, that of the Australians, resembling these in abnormal growth apart from any advance in the life of the race, I shall not stop here to dwell upon the peculiarities of the Basque tongue, the speech of the Eskimo having come in our way just here solely on account of geographical proximity to 120 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. the Tungusic, Mongolia, Turkic, Finnic, and Sam- oyedic forms of agglutinative speech. After these five groups, originally northern, come the Japanese and the Corean tongues. The Japanese race is now believed to consist of two parts, — one coming from North Asia by way of Corea, the other from South Asia by way of the Riukiu Islands. Griffis thinks that the Ainos came from India, and that they form the basic stock of the Japanese race, which accords with the doctrine established by history everywhere else, that the highest developments are possible only where the race is mixed. The conquering tribe of Yamato came in all probabihty from Mantchuria, for the Japanese language has all the structural and syntactic peculiarities common to the Ural- Altaic group, and the race type is in the main that of the Mantchus. The skull is short and round, the eyes are oblique, the cheek-bones are promi- nent, and the beard is scant. There seems to have been also an infusion of Malay blood, and the national type closely resembles that of the Chinese and Malay-Chinese. The Japanese call their island country Dai Nip- pon, " Great Japan." Hondo, the largest island, is the nucleus of the empire. The imperial dynasty dates back to 660 B.C., when the Aryan races were just beginning to be conscious of something like history. The Ainos of the pure blood were driven out by the invading Yamato tribe from most of the islands ; and only a remnant of them AGGLUTINATIVE SPEECH. 121 are still to be found in Yesso and in the Kurile Islands. From Corea, about ten centuries after the foundation of the empire, Chinese civilization was introduced, and with it the religion of Buddha. Before this, Shinto, or worship of the emperor and of the heroes, prevailed, and it is still the faith of the masses. Buddhist enthusiasm, in process of time, made monks of the mikados and gave feudalism its opportunity. It was but the other day, as it were, that the country was rescued by a brief and almost bloodless revolution from the sort of armed anarchy that extreme feudalism produces. The Chinese syllabary was long the only written form of the Japanese language, until Kobo, a great scholar in Pali, Sanskrit, and Chinese, invented in the ninth century the Japanese syllabary of forty- seven characters, increased by diacritical points to seventy. The spoken language is one of the softest in the world ; and the literature is extensive and various. Nouns are not inflected, but are preceded or followed by particles that indicate their gender, number, or case. The prefix o or on marks the mascuHne; me or men, the feminine. But these are used only when there is a necessity for indi- cating sex. Plurality is not often expressed ; but when it is, it is marked by the addition of ra, gata, domo, tachi, or other particle. It is some- times expressed by repetition. Compound nouns 122 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. are formed by changing the first letter of the last component in accordance with a settled principle for the change of consonants, h and / becoming b or /; t, d ; ts, ds ; s, z ; sh and ch, j ; k, g. This change is called the nigori. The pronoun for the second person changes according to the rank of the person addressed, as in German. There are three modes of address : to superiors, to equals, and to inferiors. The verb is without number and person. There are two conjugations, in each of which there are four principal parts : the root, the base for nega- tive and future forms, the present indicative, and the base for conditional forms. To these, termi- nations are annexed, producing forms similar to the moods and tenses of European grammars. There are a few irregular verbs. The syntax is pecuhar. The subject comes first in the sentence, then the complement, and last of all the predicate, the adjective preceding the noun and the adverb the verb. Prepositions are put after the nouns to which they belong. Conjunc- tions and interrogative particles are thrown to the end of the clauses or sentences which they affect. The written language has forms differing greatly from those of the spoken. Alongside of the phonetic syllabary of native invention, the Chinese characters are still in use ; and Chinese literature is still studied by the cultivated classes. There are dialects ; but the speech of Yeddo is understood everywhere. AGGLUTINATIVE SPEECH. 123 In books the characters are in perpendicular lines, and are read downwards, beginning at the extreme right. The Japanese have not only astonished the Aryan world of the west by their great excellence in bronze and pottery and in a style of painting that is the perfection of decorative art, showing wonderful mastery of color and a grace that rav- ishes the eye ; but they have also been of late the wonder of nations for the facility with which they have emerged from the social and political status of our middle ages into the light of the nineteenth century, without losing through absorption in the arts of peace the energy that strikes in war. The Corean tongue is in structure very similar to the Japanese. Recent research has found in it traces indicating kinship to the tongues of the Dravida. Chinese is largely used in Corea to the neglect of the native speech. Far removed from all these in space, and until very recently one would have said, in blood, are the Dravida, the aborigines of India. These include some of the Pariah caste, but consist mainly of the wild hill tribes, called by the Hindoos Chandala, or the Impure. The hill tribes were driven from the more fertile regions of India by the Hindoos only after many centuries of struggle. They have never adopted the religion, language, or usages of any of the successive conquerors of their native land, whether Hindoo, Mogul, Turk, Afghan, or English, and 124 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. have always retained their original patriarchal government. They have no caste and no heredi- tary priesthood. Their physiognomy approaches more nearly the Mongol type than any other. The skin is dark, often black. The skull is long. The face is large and wide, and round rather than oval. The jaws are never prominent. The nose is broad and flat, with depressed bridge. The eyes are generally blue, the mouth large, the lips thick and protrud- ing, the upper lip long with small mustache upon it, the beard scant, the hair long, black, and shaggy. In character they are brave and truthful, and are free from the prejudices which make access to the Hindoo difficult for the foreigner. They live mainly in South India, where there are five Dravidian languages. These are Tulu, Malabar, or Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, or Gentoo, and Kan- nadi, or Canarese. Ten millions speak Tamil; fourteen millions, Telugu. Outside of this region are four other Dravidian languages, — Khond, G6nd, K6ta, and Toda. As in most other agglutinative tongues, the re- lations of the roots to one another in the Dravida speech are defined by suffixes, and there is a eupho- nic change of vowels, the defining syllable being dominant. Thus, katti, " knife," but kattulu, " knives." So also, puli, " tiger," but puhdu, " tigers." One trace of grammatical gender is the classifica- AGGLUTINATIVE SPEECH. 125 tion by " high and low caste," all names of men, deities, or spirits belonging to the former, while all names of animals and of most visible objects belong to the latter. There is, moreover, a distinction between mas- culine and feminine by suffixes. Thus, magan is "son;" magal, "daughter;" illAn, "master of house ; " illdl, " mistress." The Brahui of Beloochistan seem to be of this Dravida stock. From the Dravida we pass in geographical order to the Malays. They are: i. The true Malays, the people of the peninsula of Malacca and of the island of Sumatra, as also the Atchinese, Passumahs, Rejangs, and Lampongs. 2. The people of the Philippines, termed Tagals and Bisaya. 3. The Sundanese in western Java. 4. The Javans in eastern Java. 5. The Batta in Sumatra. 6. The Dyaks in Borneo. 7. The Macassars and Bugis in Celebes. 8. Scattered tribes in Formosa, Ceylon, and Madagascar. The Malays have always been great sailors. They peopled the isles from Madagascar on the west and the Hawaii group on the north to Easter Island on the extreme east. Mingling with the Papuans in many Pacific islands, they produced the hybrids called Micronesians; that is, dwellers in the small islands. They early established the institution of tadoo, by which persons or things touched by the chiefs were consecrated, so as to make it unlawful for others to meddle with them. 126 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. The Dyaks are said to be the purest represen- tatives of the old Malay type. The Malay skull varies in measure from 73 to 82. They are there- fore classed among the broad-headed. Yet they are surrounded by long-headed races. Their languages, though they contain polysyl- labic roots, resemble the monosyllabic in having no part of speech strictly differentiated. The same root or group of roots is therefore capable of per- forming any grammatical function. The personal pronouns have dual and plural numbers. There are no verbs, properly speaking: the prefix of a substantive denoting action conveys the verbal idea. Thus, in the Dyak language, the prefix ba, " along with," may be assumed to mean "to be affected by something." From tiroh, " sleep," is derived batiroh, " to sleep ; " from kahoont, " cover," bakahoont, " covered." Hence can be formed the sentence. Id batiroh bakahoont, " He sleeps covered," the words meaning literally, " He with sleep with cover." The Malays proper write in the Arabic char- acter, and are Mohammedans. The Malays of Java are also Mohammedans; those of Bali and Lombock are Brahmins. The Bugis and Macassars are Mohammedans; they use two different sys- tems of native characters in writing. The Taga- las are Christians, and speak Spanish as well as Tagala. The Moluccan Malays are Mohamme- dans, and speak languages that seem to be Bugis AGGLUTINATIVE SPEECH. 127 and Javanese mingled with the tongues of the savage tribes of the Moluccas. The color of all these tribes, civilized and un- civilized, is a light reddish-brown, sometimes of an olive tinge. The hair is invariably black, straight, and coarse in texture. The face is nearly destitute of beard, and the breast and limbs are free from hair. In height they are considerably below the average European. The body is robust ; the breast well developed; the feet small, thick, and short; the hands small and rather delicate. The face is of the Mongolian type, a little broad and inclined to be fat. The forehead is rather rounded, the brows low, the eyes black and very slightly oblique. The nose is rather small, not prominent, but straight and well shaped, the apex a little rounded, the nostrils broad and slightly exposed. The cheek-bones are rather prominent, the mouth large, the lips broad and well cut, but not protruding, the chin round and well formed. In character the Malay is impassive, reserved, diffident, and even bashful. He is undemonstra- tive in manner, slow and deliberate in speech, and circuitous in introducing the subject he has come expressly to discuss. Alone, he is taciturn, neither talking nor singing to himself Paddling a canoe with others, he joins them in chanting a monotonous and plaintive song. Averse to quar- rels and to practical jokes, the Malay is exceed- ingly sensitive to breaches of etiquette or to any interference with his personal liberty. The higher 128 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. classes are very polite and well bred; yet they are reckless of human life, and cruel when aroused to action. Their civilization seems to have been derived from the races to whom they owe respectively the Mohammedan and the Brahminical religions. The Papuans come next to the Malays geo- graphically, and have been much associated with them historically; but no two races could be more different in character. They inhabit the eastern islands of the Malay Archipelago, especially the great island of Papua, or New Guinea, as well as all the islands east- ward as far as the Fijis. The islands in which the Malays predominate originally belonged to the continent of Asia, while those in which the Pa- puans are the native type were once a part of a continent now submerged that was then con- nected with Australia. The fauna and flora in these two divisions are described by Wallace as wholly distinct. The name Papuan is said to be Malay, and to signify " frizzled hair," that feature being character- istic of the Papuans. They contrast strikingly with the Malays. The color of the body is a deep sooty-brown or black, never, however, quite the jet-black of some negro races. The hair is harsh, dry, and frizzly, growing in little tufts, which make in mature life a compact frizzled mop. In height the Papuan is superior to the average European, but the legs are long and thin. The hands and AGGLUTINATIVE SPEECH. 129 feet are larger than those of the Malays. The face is long, the forehead flattish, the brows very promi- nent. The nose is large, rather arched and high, the base thick, the nostrils broad, with the aper- ture hidden, owing to the tip of the nose being elongated. The mouth is large, and the lips are thick and protuberant. In speech and action, the Papuan is impulsive and demonstrative to a great degree. His emo- tions and passions express themselves in shouts and laughter, in yells and frantic leapings. Wallace, in his comparative estimate of the two races, gives them a higher rank than the Malays in intellectual endowment. In vital energy, he says, the Papuans are far superior to the Malays. The Papuan has, too, a marked feeling for art, decorating his canoe, his house, and almost every domestic utensil with elaborate carving. In the affections, he is inferior to the Malay, as he is violent with his children, while the Malay is gentle and kind. In the Papuan languages the verb has the sub- ject pronoun prefixed, and there are three num- bers, as in Greek. But there are no tense-forms, past time being marked by prefixing the word kwar, " already," and future time by suffixing the word nerri, " still." Some modifications of mean- ing are also expressed by prefixing i to the radical vowels a, 0, or ti; and others by affixing it to them. Still others are expressed by the affix ia, plural sia. 9 I30 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. It is doubtful whether the Australian languages should be classed among the agglutinative, or should be given a place among the inflected. The languages are said to be as numerous as the tribes, and are so different that they are mutually unintel- ligible. While no word exists for general terms, and there are very few numerals, in other respects these languages have advanced far on the upward grade of development. They are rich in inflec- tions, or what seem to be such to those who have learned something of them. There are no prefixes. The meaning of roots is defined by suffixes. The words are polysyllabic, begin with a consonant, and end with a vowel, like Italian. Nouns and adjectives have dual as well as plural number, and have ten case-terminations. The verbs have many tenses, three numbers, three genders for the third person, and separate forms for active, passive, reflexive, reciprocal, determi- native, and continuative modes of action. Outside of language, there are in the race few traces of invention. Life's energies are absorbed in the chase. The race is the most bestial of all human races. They are long-headed and progr nathous, black-brown in color, with hanging lower lip, prominent cheek-bones, high but narrow fore- head, flattened nose, and very long, coarse black hair, — their chief point of difference from the blacks of Africa. The body is covered with hair. The skull capacity of the race is from 59 to 86, being inferior to that of the Polyne- AGGLUTINATIVE SPEECH. 131 sians or the Papuans or the Negroes of Africa or the Malays. The advanced stage of language attained by this wretched people places them beside other outlying tribes, far remote from them geographi- cally, notably the In-nu-it of the frozen regions of the North, and the Basques of the Pyrenees. I have already given some description of the speech of the In-nu-it. It is in place now to call your attention to that of the Basques. The Basques are generally believed to be the descendants of those Iberians whom first the Kelts and after them other Aryan races drove into the mountains, where alone they could maintain their independence. They occupy in Spain the prov- inces of Vizcaya or Biscay, Guipuzcoa, and Alava, as well as a large part of Navarra ; and in France the provinces of Navarre and B^arn. At the time of the Roman conquest this region was held by the same people under the name of Vdscones, and it afterward became a part of His- pania Tarraconensis. Neither Visigothic kings nor the rulers of the Franks were ever able wholly to tame the spirit of these brave mountaineers. They long kept their ancient institutions. It is possible that they represent in blood both the old Hamitic and the old Turanian elements that once made up the population of this part of Europe. Their language is still spoken by over six hun- dred thousand persons. Its native name is Eusk- ara, the Eusk representing, it is supposed, the 132 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Vask in Vascones, the name by which the race was anciently known. In this tongue, the substantive has no distinction of gender; but by the use of many affixes performs the double functions of a noun with its declensions and of a verb with its conjugations. By its terminations the same word may thus express mood, tense, person, number, the case and number of the object, and the sex, rank, and number of the persons addressed. Ag- glutination has full sway in the formation of com- pound words and diminutives. The article has two forms, — a for the singular, ak for the plural ; and it is affixed to the substantive. The order of syntax is as follows : the noun with article affixed comes first in the sentence, then the adjective, then the adverb, then the verb, and lastly the object with the preposition affixed. It will be observed that in some respects this order resembles that of Japanese. A few case-formations will serve to illustrate the agglutinative character of the language. Thus : etche, house. etc he- tic, of the house. etche-tic-acoa, he who is of the house. seme, son. semea-ren, of the son. semea-ren-a, he who is of the son. It must be remarked that Basque is said to be spoken in not a few cases by descendants of fair- haired, blue-eyed Goths who settled in the Basque AGGLUTINATIVE SPEECH. 133 provinces. But the fair type of the white race is found at an early period on both sides of the Mediterranean, and the ancestors of these people may have been Berbers. Last in the Hst of agglutinative tongues, though really as of lowest type deserving to come first, are some of the languages of the pure Negroes of Africa. I take the Grebo, spoken at Cape Palmas, as an illustration of the type. The Grebo is harsh in sound, abrupt and in- distinct in enunciation, abounding in inarticulate nasal and guttural sounds, limited in vocabulary, almost destitute of inflections, and capable of ex- pressing only the simplest ideas. It is largely monosyllabic; and many of the words, small as is the vocabulary, are distinguish- able, as in Chinese, only by the intonation. Some of the nouns form a plural, but it is merely by the change of the final vowel. For instance, blli, bile, "cow," "cows; " hyah, hyeh, "child," "children." There are very few adjectives, and the want of them is supplied by a circumlocution, as Kanu ni nd, " Hunger works him," analogous to the German £s huftgert ihn. The verb has one form for what occurred to-day, another for what occurred yesterday, and a third for what occurred at any previous time. It has kindred forms for future time. All the changes are made on the final syllable of the verb. There are negro tribes whose languages are of a far higher type than this. 134 '^^lE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Among agglutinative languages must also be classed the kindred tongues of the San, or Bushmen, and the Khoi-Khoin, or Hottentots, who are, strictly speaking, not Negroes at all, but remnants of a race probably earlier on the African continent. Both these tongues resemble Chinese in the use of tones. They have the additional peculiarity of sounds that have been called " clicks." These are very various, and are classed as dental, palatal, cerebral, and lateral. The last is said to be like the quack of a duck. Besides its system of agglutinative suffixes, the language of the Khoi-KhoIn has three inflected numbers, like the Australian tongues, as well as grammatical genders. AGGLUTINATIVE SPEECH. 135 Akkadic Sumiric Hittite Etruscan Tungusic - Orochu Daurian Birar Gold Megengr Sanagir Ngatkon Nigidal Lamut Yupita-tze I. Mantchu Mongolic f Tatar J Kalmuck 1 Biiriat I, Hazara CO H O < P O < > I— I H < I— I H O < {Uigur Kiptchak Osmanh Finnic Samoyedic In-nu-it Basque Australian Japanese Corean Dravida — Finn Permian Bulgar TOstiak Ugrian -j Wogul L Magyar f Khond Gond Kota Toda Tamil Telugu Canarese Malayeiiam Tulu Malay Papuan Negro ■ Malay Javanese Macassar Bugis Tagala Dyak ( Mandingo Wolof \ Grebo I and \_many others South African { Khoi-Khoin CHAPTER X. HOLOPHRASTIC SPEECH. The holophrastic languages all belong to the American continent and to one race, though that race consists of very many tribes. The geologic and climatic conditions of Amer- ica at the time of the earliest existence of man on this continent forbid us to imagine the possibility of his migration from the Asiatic continent, or from the Eur-african continent by way of Atlantis. There is clear proof, however, of his existence on the continent, as a toolmaker and a user of fire, during the closing scenes of the Quaternary period. Clipped arrow-heads have been found in the Mis- souri valley beneath the vertebra of an elephant. In the Argentine Republic, bone and stone im- plements and the remains of hearths have been found, associated with the bones of the extinct horse and of other animals now extinct. This was long before either northern Asia or the eastern Polynesian islands were inhabited. Early American man did not, then, come from any lands to the westward. But how about the lands to the eastward? HOLOPHRASTIC SPEECH. 137 The ancient land-bridge across the Atlantic, stretching from the Canaries and the Azores to the Antilles, belonged to a geologic period long before the appearance of man on the earth. It is evident, then, that he did not come to America from the southern part of the continent that then stretched from Britain to the waters of the Sahara. But there was another land-bridge, — one that lasted down to the latest ages of the Tertiary period, separating the North Atlantic from the waters about the North Pole and modifying the cold both of Europe and North America. By this roadway early American man must have crossed from Europe to this continent. This is the argument of Dr. Daniel -G. Brinton, the dean among American ethnologists; and I accept it willingly for the origin of the race. But I cannot agree that it shuts us up to the supposi- tion that there was no subsequent influence from the other regions of the world upon the American race. It seems to me that there is weighty evidence in favor of the proposition that the civilizations of Mexico, Central America, Yucatan, and Peru were introduced from across the sea at a comparatively recent period. Yet though not, as Dr. Brinton believes them to be, wholly indigenous, those civilizations would seem to have been so affected by the psychic character of the race as to present • remarkable traits of similarity to one another and to the general tone of the uncivilized communities. 138 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. The holophrastic type of their languages, the Shamanistic character of their religions, the totem- istic basis of their social organizations, mark all the tribes as of common origin. They must have left Europe far too early to have received any benefit from the Turanian be- ginnings of civilization in Asia. For they knew nothing, when the Europeans of Aryan descent came among them, of wheat, rye, barley, oats, or rice, nothing of iron, nothing of the camel, the horse, the ass, the ox, the sheep, the hog, the dog, or the poultry of the other hemisphere. Anthropologists agree that the races found by Columbus and his followers on the American continent show greater uniformity than the races of the Old World. There are many reasons for believing in their general identity of origin. The tribes vary in color more than in physique. Amid the immense diversity in vocabulary that their languages show, they all agree in structure. The prehistoric river names of both Americas also go to show ultimate identity of race. As to the civilized races that in Mexico, Central America, and Peru built cities, practised agricul- ture, mining, and manufactures, and had some- thing of a literature, much that concerns their origin is still shrouded in darkness. But the probability is that substantially the same race, called Quichd in the northern continent, and Quichiia in the southern, either receiving from missionaries of a higher race, as their traditions HOLOPHRASTIC SPEECH. 139 tell the tale, the germs of their civilization, or themselves originating it, delivered it in various ways to the other capable races of the Pacific coast and the Gulf of Mexico. In Yucatan, the Mayas received it, but whether as a subject or a ruling race is uncertain. In Guatemala the Quiches themselves kept it at its height. In Mexico, the Toltecs, Chichimecs, and Aztecs received it, either by conquest or by simple con- tact with it. Still earlier, perhaps, under the name of Quichiias, a kindred form of the same civilization of the Sun-worshipers arose in the highlands of the southern continent, and was car- ried to its highest pitch in Peru and Ecuador, after the subjugation of the Aymards by the Incas. A less ambitious form of the same culture was es- tablished by the Mozcas around Bogota. In both continents these civilized races wor- shiped the Sun. Like all worshipers of the Sun, they built temples and pyramids in imitation of sun-rays, and on the altar that surmounted all the successive terraces offered up their victims in sac- rifice to the majesty of their gods. Among some of these races the victims were human beings, the Aztecs excelling in the fierceness of their rites all others. The political instinct of the more intelli- gent races of the continent seems to have moved them to the confederation of tribes and the prac- tice of communistic life. These forms of organiza- tion prevailed among the communities of Mexico, Central America, Yucatan, and Peru ; among the I40 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Pueblo tribes of New Mexico ; and among the Iro- quois or Six Nations of the Atlantic coast. This political union and consequent civilization seems to have taken place as late as about the twelfth century after Christ ; and the lateness of such de- velopment points conclusively to the origination of their culture from another continent. All the traditional myths have the same signifi- cance. They show us the coming of civilizers differing in race from the natives, white men with broad brows and flowing beards, — Quetzalcoatl for Mexico, Bohica for the Mozcas of Bogota, and Manco Capac with his sister-wife. Mama Oello, for Peru, all humanizing a people already possessed of some civilization and especially checking the prac- tice of human sacrifices. There are still some advocates of the solar-myth explanation of folk-lore, who would fain resolve all these traditional founders into personified Dawn, Lightning, and the like. But we have had abun- dant evidence that this method of explanation can be pushed too far, and its results have always been too vague to add anything to our real knowledge of early ethnic life. The effects produced by the advent of these strangers were not such as the solar- myth theory warrants us in expecting. They were such as Buddhist missionaries from Camboja or Christian monks from Ireland might have produced. Wherever they came from, it is evident that we must not look in the languages of those they taught for any trace of the teachers. They could HOLOPHRASTIC SPEECH. 141 have had no permanent influence upon any of the languages. It has been estimated that more than twelve hundred languages were spoken in the two Amer- icas. Some of these were mere dialects ; but even these differed widely from the parent tongue in vocabulary. The migration and separation of tribes, and the frequent adoption into tribes of refugees from other tribes, gave rise to constant intermingling and modification of vocabularies. This great multiplication of languages proves that the race has long been at a low stage of progress, and that there has at no time been any decided rise in the scale of civilization. The lan- guages themselves give evidence of no continu- ously progressive type of culture. The many tribes have changed their vocabularies; but the identical method of putting words together has survived without change. Still, like all races that have not had the devel- opment of their languages checked by too early a civilization, the American tribes show a state of considerable advancement in their languages. With the sole exception of the Otomi in the mountains northwest of the valley of Anahuac, they have all gone far beyond the monosyllabic stage, and even beyond that of simple agglutination. But they have none of them reached etymological inflection, still less the analytic stage. It must be remem- bered that the tongue of the In-nu-it is Asiatic and not truly American. 142 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. They are all of one common type, and that type is markedly distinct from the type of any race in the Old World, except perhaps the Basque. Yet they all differ wholly from one another in vocabu- lary ; and there is also structurally great diversity among them. One striking characteristic of them all is the frequency of long words. In most of them this results from the tendency to the holophrastic struc- ture of expression, — a long compound idea being bundled up, as it were, into one utterance. All the modifications and ramifications of a given thought are grouped together and launched into speech in a single word. Bancroft illustrates this peculiarity by the Aztec word for letter-postage, — amatlaciiilolitquitcatlaxtlahuilli, the literal mean- ing of which is " the payment received for carry- ing a paper on which something is written." Another principle of these languages is that of reduplication, or a repetition of the same syllable to express the plural. Still another is the large use of frequentatives and duals. Another, again, is the application of gender to the third person of the verb. To these peculiar usages must be added still another : the ready use of the substantive as a verb, and its conjugation as such. By comparison and classification of the count- less languages and dialects, they can be reduced to a few great groups. The In-nu-it, or Eskimo^ not being properly an American language, must be excluded. There then remain three great groups HOLOPHRASTIC SPEECH. 143 on the Pacific coast of North America, the Tinndh, the Aztec, and the Quichd-Maya. The Andes group in South America may be classed under the same name as the Quiche-Maya. All the remaining tongues of both Americas may be grouped under the general name Appalachian, unless we exclude the tribes south of the Amazon and east of the Andes, making of them a fifth group, called Amazonian. The Tinneh group covers the northern part of the Rocky Mountain range, sending its branches into Alaska, British Columbia, British America, Washington, Oregon, California, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. It includes the dialects spoken between Hudson's Bay and the Macken- zie River; those of the Kutchins and Kenai in Alaska and on the Pacific coast near Mt. St. Ehas; those of the Tacullies of New Caledonia, the Umpquas of Oregon, and the Hoopahs of California; and those of the Apaches of Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico. The Aztec group has its seat in Central Mexico, extends into Central America, and also has out- lying dialects that reach as far north as Oregon. This Nahuatl, Aztec, Chichimec, Toltec, or Mexi- can speech extends from the plateau of Anahuac eastward to the Gulf and westward to the Pacific. It also stretches southward into the interior of Nicaragua. The Tarascos, lying northwest of the valley of Mexico, though reputed to have accom- panied the Nahua race in their migration south- ward, spoke a totally different language. 144 ^-^-^ STORY OF LANGUAGE. The Maya, or Quich6 group, has its seat in Cen- tral America and Yucatan. In Guatemala the Quiche, and in Yucatan the Maya, represent the purest and highest type of this group. The Tzen- dal, the dialect spoken near the celebrated ruins of Palenque, is said to be the oldest form of all the languages in this region. I have ventured to class with these the languages of the Quichuas and the Aymaras in the Andes region. The generalization may be too wide, but it seems convenient. The Appalachian tribes include all those with which the English and the French first came in contact from the Atlantic to the basin of the Mis- sissippi, and also the tribes of the northern part of South America. They were, for the most part, nomadic, subsisting by hunting and fishing, and engaged in perpetual wars with one another. Their ability was almost wholly confined to war and the chase. A single instance of capacity for progress was the invention by the half-breed Cher- okee, George Guest, or Se-quo-yah, of a syllabary by which his tribe's language could be expressed in written form. Eloquence, the gift of a proud and free race, is also theirs. The only people of South America who resemble them in these features of indomit- able pride and fluent speech are the Arauca- nians, who from the time of the Spanish conquest until not very many years ago preserved their independence. The chief families of this Appalachian group H0L0PHR4.STIC SPEECH. 145 were the Algonkins, the Iroquois, the Dakotas, the Chahta-Muskokis, the Caddoes, the Kioways, and the Shoshonees. Under the general name, of Algonkins are embraced the Crees, the Micmacs, the Ottawas, of Canada ; the Passamaquoddies, the Pequots, the Mohegans, the Lenape, the Nanti* cokes, the Powhatans, of our own Atlantic coas'f;;" the Miamis, the Sacs, the Foxes, the Kickapoos, the Chippeways, and the Shawnees, who all once, belonged to the valleys of the Ohio, the Tennessee, and the Mississippi. Under the name of Iroquois are included also the Eries, the Hurons, the Cones- togas, and the Tuscaroras. They lived in Canada and in the Atlantic region of the United States. Under the name of Dakotas are included Assi- niboins, Crows, Winnebagoes, Omahas, Mandans, Otoes, Poncas, Osages, and Kansas. The Tuteloes and the Monacans of Virginia were also of this family. Their range was in the interior of what is now the United States. Under the name of Chahta-Muskokis fall the Creeks, the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, the Yemassees, and the Semi- noles. They occupied the Gulf States, and also Georgia and South Carolina. Under the name of Caddoes we must include also the Pawnees, the Arickarees, and the Wishitas. They covered the region lying southwest of the Mississippi. Under the name of Kioways and that of Shoshonees are to be classed a number of small tribes. The Utes and the Comanches of Shoshonee stock are the only ones worth mentioning. 146 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Along with these must be classed the Caribs, who were, at the time of their first contact -with the Europeans, masters of the northern coast of South America and of the Lesser Antilles. The original home of this race was south of the Amazon, the tongue of the Bakairi still resident in the highlands at the head of the Tapajoz River being a pure and archaic form of Carib speech. Under the same head, too, must be placed the Arawaks, who once held all the West Indies as well as Guiana. The tribes of the Amazon region, — a country as large as the United States east of the Missis- sippi, — wherever they originated, certainly came up from the south into the lands they now occupy. However diverse now, they are all supposed to be descended from the long-headed Tupis and Guaranis, having displaced an earlier and short- headed race whose skulls are found in the shell- heaps of the coast. Of the many hundred tribes, each has a different language. Even scattered members of the same tribe cannot understand one another. But the languages all have the same grammatical structure. They are all holophrastic, and all have an abun- dant vocabulary. The preposition follows the noun, and the verb ends the sentence in them all. These tribes speak with very little modula- tion of voice. In treating of the traditions of the civilized tribes and of the monumental remains that still HOLOPHRASTIC SPEECH. 147 attest their stage of culture, I shall touch upon many points that would seem to indicate the derivation of their civilization from the Old World. One clear proof of the origin of at least some part of this civilization from abroad is the fact that the banana was grown largely in America before the Spaniards came. When Pizarro landed on the coast of Peru, he was met by the natives with a present of bananas served in a lordly dish. In the tombs of the Incas, moreover, beds com- posed of banana leaves have been found. Now the bananas of America have never been found in the wild state. They are all seedless. The wild banana is a native of the Malay region, and produces seed. This seed-producing variety grows in Cochin-China, the Philippines, Ceylon, and Khasia. The seedless variety could have been transported to the New World only in the form of a root or sucker. The organization of so many of the tribes of the Ganowdnian Family (Bow and Arrow Family), as Morgan calls the Americans, into gentes, or clans, and phratries, or brotherhoods, is another link that connects them with the Old World. The physical structure of the American race is, however, unique. Agassiz, writing in the Amazonian valley, notes the great contrast be- tween their type and that of the Negro race. The Negro is slender, with long legs and arms, and a comparatively short body ; while the Ameri- can- is short-legged, short-armed, and long-bodied, 148 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. the trunk being rather heavy in build. The Negro has a narrow chest; the American, a short neck and great width of shoulders. The legs of the Negro have the knees bent in, and the hip as well as the knee-joint habitually flexed. The legs of the American, on the other hand, are remarkably straight. The Negro has crinkled and woolly hair ; that of the American is heavy, straight, and black. The American of the North Atlantic, whether of Algonkin, Iroquois, or Florida stock, has a round head ; large, salient, and aquiline nose ; eyes dark- brown and placed horizontally ; mouth large and straight; teeth nearly vertical; face triangular. His neck, unlike that of the Amazonian, is long. His chest is broad, though not deep. His body is muscular, but seldom fat. He is warlike, cruel, and revengeful in character, though possessed of some noble qualities. Even after his long con- tact with the white race, he has made but little progress. The Amazonian tribes have in general this type : brown skin, with yellowish tinge ; thick, straight, black hair ; black, horizontal eyes ; low, broad forehead ; no beard ; medium height ; broad muscular chest ; small hands and feet. Their dis- position is incurious, undemonstrative, and un- ambitious. They show little trace of a religious belief, and seem to have no idea of a future state of existence. Their customs vary greatly. Some, like the Mundurucus, practise tattooing on a great scale, as a mark of social distinction. Some, like HOLOPHRASTIC SPEECH. 149 the Araras, paint their chins red with anatto ; some, like the semi-civilized Ticunas, go clothed ; others, like the Parentintins, are entirely nude. Some, like the Muras, pierce the lips and wear peccary tusks in them in time of war. Some, like the Purupurus and the Piros, have but one wife ; others are polygamous. Many are, like the Mirdnhas, cannibals. Some, like the Caishdnas, kill their firstborn children. In all Amazonia, there is no trace of any ancient civilization. The civilization of South America was confined to the Andes. The tribes of the Andes are the Quichuas and the Aymards. They are the descendants of the numerous race ruled by the Incas and employed by them in building the wonderful works which attest their skill in architecture and engineering. The Quichiia type is : oblong head ; short and very slightly arched forehead ; prominent, long aquiline nose, with large nostrils; mouth large, but lips not thick ; teeth beautiful ; chin short, but not receding; cheek-bones not prominent; eyes horizontal and never large; eyebrows long; hair jet-black, thick, straight, coarse, yet soft; httle or no beard ; chest long, broad, deep, and highly arched ; small hands and feet ; height seldom reaching five feet ; color bronze ; and expression sad. The Aymaras are darker and have flatter noses. While the Peruvian skull is small, that of the Araucanian and that of the Carib are large. The 150 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. language of the Araucanian is akin to the tongues of the Pampas tribes, the Abipones, the Guaycurus. and the Lules. All these must be considered as wholly apart in race and language from the Ama- zonian tribes. The Patagonians are tall, handsome, and brave. They are dark olive-brown in color. The Fuegians, who call themselves Yacanna- cunhee, are low in stature, and have large heads, broad faces, small eyes, large chests, clumsy bodies, with large knees and ill-shaped legs. Their lan- guage is strongly holophrastic, and its vocabulary is rich in terms expressive of all that concerns their daily life spent amid constant damp and cold. The Aymara language is one of the most gut- tural in the world. The Quichua and several other South American languages have the peculiarity of using different words for the same relationship, as spoken by males and females. Thus, in Quichua, " brother" in the mouth of a male is Haiiauqui ; in that of a female, Turi. " Sister," spoken by a male, is Pdni ; by a female. Nana. Let us now consider more in detail the records of the historically civilized races. After a careful examination of the various myths of the civilized tribes, I have come to the conclu- sion that one and the same culture-hero is repre- sented by the Maya Zamna, or Cukulcan, the Tzendal Votan, the Quichd Gucumatz, and the Nahua Quetzalcoatl. Votan called himself of the race of the Serpents, and founded the ancient em- HOLOPHRASTIC SPEECH. 15 I pire of the Chanes, or Serpents in Chiapas, — both capital city and empire being called, in the tradi- tions of the later Quiches of Guatemala, Xibalba. Cukulcan, Gucumatz, and Quetzalcoatl all mean, in the several tongues of the Mayas, the Quiches, and the Nahua tribes. Plumed Serpent. The traditions of the Quiches preserved in the Popol Viih, or National Book, translated by the zealous and learned missionary of the sixteenth century, Father Sahagun, contain an account of the creation of the world and of early man that shows some wonderful points of resemblance to that of the Akkadi, preserved for us in the old cuneiform records. This evidence of antiquity, and the fact that Ordoflez claims the empire of Votan as an empire of the Quiches, force upon my mind the conviction that the Quiches preceded the Mayas in the establishment of a civilization, and that the Quich6 civilization in Guatemala was simply a later development by the same race. The Persians in the East furnish an instance of the like national resuscitation after long obscuration and dependence. Votan is said to have come by sea from the east with seven families, to have given laws and cul- ture to the native inhabitants, and to have built the city of Na-chan, or Place of Serpents, supposed, as I have said, to be the city called Xibalba in the traditions of the later Quiches of Guatemala. Votan is described as having made repeated voy- ages back to the land from which he came, and on 152 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. his return from one of these to have found seven other famihes settled in the land. These were Tzequils, whom he recognized as also of the ser- pent race. The Tzequils became the founders of the allied or subject kingdom, the capital of which was Tulha in Tulan. Na-chan is supposed to be identical with the ruins at Palenque, and Tulha with those at Copan. Two other allied kingdoms had their capi- tals respectively at Mayapan in Yucatan and at Chiquimula in Honduras. The Mayas make Zamna play in Yucatan the same part as Votan in Chiapas, and describe him as the founder of Mayapan. The Quiches make Gucumatz the conqueror of Xibalba (Na-chan), instead of its founder, and allot to him the part of founder of their Guatemalan empire. There was certainly a great empire in the region about Palenque before the foundation of the other empires ; and both Palenque and Copan, that is, Na-chan and Tulha, were in ruins long before the Spaniards came. Their glory had departed, nor do the civilized nations found in the land by the Spaniards seem to have had any knowledge of their existence. Marco Polo might just as fruit- fully have questioned the Great Khan about Nine- veh and Babylon, as any Castilian conquistador have asked the Aztecs or the Mayas about these remains of an earlier civilization. The traditions agree in representing Na-chan or Xibalba, the ruins of which now go by the name HOLOPHRASTIC SPEECH. 153 of Palenque, as having been overthrown by the rising empire of Tulan. But this empire, in its turn, was subjected to some influences, not now ascertainable, that caused a general migration of the population in three directions, — northward to Mexico, southward to Guatemala, and eastward to Yucatan. These races, later, became respectively the Nahua nations, the Guatemalan Quiches, and the Mayas. Tulha, the ancient capital of Tulan, fell into ruins, — the ruins that now go by the name of Copan. The Nahua nations include, among many others, the Toltecs, the Chichimecs, and the Aztecs, who successively ruled in the plateau of Anahuac. The Quiches and Mayas include the Cocomes, the Tutul Zius, the Itzas, the Tzendals, and the Cakchiquels. The ruins that bear witness to the most ancient as well as the highest civilization are those in the southern regions, at Palenque, Copan, Uxmal, Chichen-Itza, and many other places, long buried in the dense tropical forests. The most striking Nahua ruins are the pyramids of Cholula, Xochicalco, and Teotihuacan. The Toltecs are especially identified with Cholula ; and the Aztecs with Tenochtitlan, now Mexico. The adobe Casas Grandes of Chihuahua, the Casa Grande of the Gila in Arizona, the stone pueblos of New Mexico, and the structures of the cliff-dwellers in the great canons, furnish an fe architecture of a wholly different type from that 154 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. of Mexico, Central America, and Yucatan ; nor is there evidence of any connection in ancient times between the two civiHzations. The great structures of the mound-builders of the Mississippi valley, again, seem to have been wholly different from either of these ; and there is no trace of any connection with the civilizations of the West. They were an agricultural people, destroyed by the hunting tribes. So might the Chinese civilization have perished ages ago, had the Huns but come down with force enough to break through the Great Wall. Taking up first the most ancient ruins in the great civilized area, let us see the character of the culture reached by their builders. Those at Palenque, called by that name from a modern village near by, are situated in dense woods in the Piedmont region of Chiapas. As I have said, they are supposed to be the remains of Na-chan or Xibalba, Votan's capital. Here are pyramids, palaces, figures in relief, with strange head-dresses and receding brows, corridors, stairways, and, above all, the remarkable tablet of the cross, with its priestly figures and numerous hieroglyphs. These are all described and delineated in the travels of Stephens and Catherwood, and more recently in the work of Desir6 Charnay. Those at Copan, near the modern village of Oco- cingo, supposed to represent the ancient Tulha, the capital of Tulan, consist of temples of thick stone walls, pyramids, columnar statues, colossal heads, and mysterious hieroglyphs. HOLOPHRASTIC SPEECH. 155 In Yucatan there are over forty ruined cities in the forests, among them Uxmal, Kabah, Nohpat, Labna, Chichen-Itza, Mayapan, Izamel, Tuloom, • and Cozumel. As it is a streamless land, perhaps the most remarkable feature in the ancient civi- lization was the construction of innumerable jug- shaped cisterns at the bottom of paved ponds, as well as of great cisterns beneath the buildings. Some of these ponds still remain in use; and it was only in consequence of an unusually dry season that the secret of their long retention of water was discovered. There are also, in vast numbers, truncated pyramids, temples, massive stone houses of mysterious destination, long, low, narrow, and flat-roofed. To these remains must be added colossal images, and once more the in- scrutable hieroglyphs. When these are once de- ciphered and translated, we shall know something more definite about these vanished civilizations. The identity of the hieroglyphic characters at Palenque, Copan, and Uxmal proves a common origin for their civilizations. But Na-chan was probably older than the cities of Yucatan, for the Spaniards found the Mayas still occupying some at least of the Yucatan cities for purposes of worship, though not of residence. In Yucatan all the buildings rest upon artificial mounds. The inner walls are often painted. The human faces represented have the forehead flat- tened and receding. The rarity of idols contrasts strikingly with the multitude of them at Copan. 156 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. The carvings are certainly wonderful for a race that used only stone implements. That they had not even risen to the Copper age is evident, for even the swords in the pictures are wooden swords with sharp pieces of obsidian set into them, forming a species of tomahawk. These races, it is easy to see, were ruled by a powerful priesthood, who urged them on to mighty works and then regulated their lives by minute rules for conduct and the observance of a splendid ceremonial system. It seems to me that in this form of development we can recognize the instinct of the race that founded Chaldaean and Etruscan beginnings of civilization. Turning to Mexico, we find in the State of Oajaca the ruins of Mitla, a city of the Zapotecs, with stone palaces, the interiors ornamented with mosaics in varied and graceful patterns. In the State of Vera Cruz are many stone pyramids with steps or stairways. In the plateau of Anahuac the remains of the ancient civilization consist princi- pally of two remarkable pyramids. One is the famous pyramid of Cholula, more than twice as large at the base as that of Khufu near Gizeh in Egypt, though much less lofty than that mighty structure. The other is the pyramid of Xochicalco, built of granite, and having, sculptured on the sides, figures that are seated cross-legged. The pyramid of Cholula once had a temple on the top of it. To these must be added the Houses of the Sun and Moon, or the pyramids of Teotihuacan. In the HOLOPHRASTIC SPEECH. 1 57 city of Mexico — the ancient Tenochtitlan — were dug up in the Plaza Mayor the Aztec Calendar Stone, the so-called Sacrificial Stone, and the hideous idol, Teoyaomiqui, the goddess of death. The Aztec worship was exceedingly bloody and cruel. At the same time it must be remarked that the religious rites of this race were singularly like those of the Buddhists. They practised baptism, circumcision, religious blood-letting, fasting, con- fession, penances, incense-waving. They had priests of different ranks, vestal virgins, and various religious orders. Unlike the Buddhists, but like the worshippers of Moloch, they offered human sacrifices, thousands in a year, and had cannibal feasts in honor of their god of war. The remains of the civilized Peruvians at Cuzco and elsewhere on the plateau of the Andes are of great interest. But as there are no hieroglyphs to be found among them, these monuments do not concern us so nearly as those of Chiapas, Guatemala, and Yucatan. There are around Lake Titicaca massive mono- lithic monuments that are supposed by some to antedate the age of the Incas, showing the exist- ence of an earlier civilization, the antiquity of which it is impossible to ascertain. The Quichiia language prevailed over more than twenty degrees of latitude. It was, however, wholly a land empire that the Incas ruled, for the natives of the southern continent never invented any sailing- craft higher in structure than a simple raft. They, 158 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. on their continent, did the work of the Romans on the part of the eastern continent conquered by them. They constructed bridges, causeways, and exten- sive highways paved with stones and shaded by rows of trees. The Cara, one of the Quichiia tribes, manufactured artistic works in cast gold and also instruments of bronze. They observed, too, the beginning of the solstices on lofty pillars of stone. The Quichuas even succeeded in partly civilizing the Araucanians. The languages of the civilized races of America are more fully considered in the Appendix. HOLOPHRASTIC SPEECH. IS9 Blackfeet Cree Montagnai Micinac Ottawa Abenaki Passamaquoddy Peauot M Onega n Lenape Nanticoke Powhatan Miami Sac Fox Kickapoo Shawnee Seneca Cayuga Onondaga Oneida Mohawk Tuscarora Huron Assiniboln Sioux Crow Winnebago Omaha Man dan Oto Ponca Kansas Tutelo Cherokee Creek Choctaw Chickasaw Yemassee Seminole Caddo Pawnee Arickaree Wishita Ute Comanche Carib Arawak Chippeway Kutchin Kenai TacuUie Umpqua Hoopah Apache Navajo Lipan Toltec Aztec Chichimec Pipile Nicarao Alaguilac Itza Tzendal Quichd Cakchiquel Huasteca Ma^a Quichua Aymard -Algonkin "Iroquois -Dakota -Chahta-Muskoki -Caddo Kioway -Shoshonee -West Indian n M IS9 O CO fa Tupi Guarani Mundurucu Ardra Ticuua Parentintfn Miira Purupurd Piro Mirdnha Caishina > S > > o > O M CHAPTER XI. LANGUAGES OF THE BANTU TRIBES. The genuine Negro of Africa has been a hard nut to crack both for ethnologist and philologist. To what extent he has been influenced, in the long ages that are past, by the Hamitic Egyptian and Berber, by the half-Hamitic, half-Semitic Arab, or by the Aryan Portuguese, it is impossible to say. Of himself he has, we may be sure, originated no form of civilization. Something has been already said of the Grebo dialect, which was selected as one of the lowest type among the languages spoken by Negro tribes. The tongues spoken by the Bantu tribes, how- ever, are of much higher type, and are remarkable for their melody and for systematic formation of a very peculiar kind. The area covered by the tribes who speak these Bantu languages extends north and northeast into the Nile basin, encircling the whole of Lake • Victoria Nyanza. It stretches to the south as far as Cape Colony. It extends across the continent from ocean to ocean. The tribes are exceedingly LANGUAGES OF THE BANTU TRIBES. l6l numerous and very varied in type, and there are as many different dialects of the Bantu speech as there are tribes. These tribes possess linguistic unity, but differ greatly from one another not only in physical appearance, but in social usages as well. Most of the Bantus have a type unlike that of the Negro proper in complexion, features, shape of the skull, and bearing. They are supposed to represent a blending of the Himyarite Arab with the original Negro stock. But in the Congo basin no pure types are found, and there is every gradation from the higher Bantu to the lowest Negro type. This is the natural result of ages of intermixture caused by tribal migrations, slave-hunts, and the practice of exogamous marriage. Those in the extreme south of the continent differ widely from their immediate neighbors, the Khoi'-Khoifn (Hottentots) and the various pigmy tribes, the San (Bushmen) of South Africa, the Dokos of Kaffa, the Akka of the Welle River, and the Obongo of the Ogow6 basin. Among the leading Bantu tribes may be men- tioned the Wa-Sukuma and the Wa-Zinza of the Lake region ; the Tu-Shilonge, the Ba-Ngala, the Bu-Banghi, the Ba-Teke, the Wa-Buma, and the Ba- Fiot of the Congo region ; the Zulus, the Ba-Suto, the Be-Chuana, and the Ba-Kalahari of South Africa ; and the Wa-Sangara and the Wa-Pokomo of East Africa. Ba, Be, Wa, and other forms are the various prefixes for the tribal name. There l62 ■ THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. are very many others, besides those already named ; for instance, the Ba-Kisk, the Ba-Farami, the Ba- Kundu, the Ba-Mbuku, the Ba-Long, the Ba-Koko, the Ba-Noko, the Ba-Puko, the Ba-Kale, the Ba- Lolo, the Ba-Bemba, the Ba-Luba, the Mu-Fundu, the Wa-Ganda, who wear clothes, the Wa-Nyoro, who are at the same stage of civilization, and the Wa-Nanda. From time to time, kingdoms of considerable extent, though of no long duration, have been formed among these Bantu tribes. I have taken as the representative of the Bantu speech the tongue of the Mpongwe, who call themselves Ayogo, or the Wise. This language was spoken on the Gaboon at the time that the Rev. Dr. J. Leighton Wilson was missionary in that region. An article published by him in the " Southern Presbyterian Review" for January, 1863, gives an interesting account of this language, which he praises as remarkable for beauty and elegance, for its clear and distinct enunciations, for its com- plete classification and systematic and philosophic arrangement, its inflective power, and its capacity for expansion. The Gaboon empties into the Atlantic just under the equator. Mpongwe was at that time spoken along its banks and also along the seacoast to a distance of two hundred miles south of the equator and for about the same distance in the interior. A somewhat detailed account of the Mpongwe language will be found in the Appendix. With its LANGUAGES OF THE BANTU TRIBES. 163 general agglutinative and holophrastic type and its peculiar left-handed inflection, it may fairly be con- sidered as a stage between the tongues of the yel- low race and those of the white race. In these Bantu languages, as has already been said, Ba or Wa is the general prefix for the tribal names. The usual prefix for the individual mem- ber of the tribe is Ma, while Le is the prefix for the territory, Se for the language, and Uni for a river. Thus, the rivers on the eastern coast south of Delagoa Bay are Um-komanzi, Um-zuti, Um-kusi, Um-volosi, Um-hlutane, Um-lazi, Um-gababa, Um- kamazi, Um-tenta. CHAPTER XII. HAMITIC SPEECH. In the Quaternary period all of Africa north of the Sahara — which was then a sea connecting the Atlantic with the Indian Ocean — was a part of Europe. In this region, now divided by the Mediterranean Sea, arose the Hamitic race, the earhest branch of the great white family to inaugu- rate civilization. This race belongs, then, historically to the west- ern parts of Asia, the northern parts of Africa, and the southern parts of Europe, though early supplanted in the Mediterranean area of Europe by various Aryan races, with whose blood their own became mingled. There is evidence of the presence of a Hamitic race among the early civilizers of the Chaldsean empire. The southern Arabs and the Phoenicians of Sidon were also of Hamitic blood. It was this race that created the wonderful civilization of Egypt, though recent research points to the like- lihood of the derivation of the beginnings of Egyptian civilization from the land of Akkad. Under the name of Berber, or Libyan, it was a I/AMITIC SPEECH. l6$ Hamitic race that occupied all that part of Africa lying north of the great desert. The Guanches found in the Canary Islands by the Norman ad- venturer who conquered them under the patronage of Spain, were blond Hamites. Dr. Brinton says that he has seen quite as noble blonds among the Kabyles (the Arabic for "tribes") of the Djurjura as in Denmark. These are pure-blooded descend- ants of the ancient Hamitic lords of North Africa. To the Romans they were known as Numidians, Mauritanians, Getulians, and Libyans. The identity in form of the skulls of these Imazighen, or Berbers, — many of whose tribes are fair-haired and blue-eyed, with yellow beards, — with those of the Iberians of southwestern Europe proves that the latter were also Hamitic. The Spanish Biscayans, who no doubt retain some of the blood of the ancient Iberians of Spain and Portugal, are believed to have once spoken a Hamitic tongue. The language they now speak was imposed upon them by the French Basques, or rather the ancestors of the French Basques, who in some way acquired dominion over them. The Basque language is not Hamitic, but has its nearest affinities in the tongue of the ancient Akkadi of Chaldsea, and those of the modern tribes of the Ural-Altaic region. It is certainly a tongue of the yellow race, the earliest of all civilizers. Not only are the Iberians now classed as Hamitic, but the same view is held also of l66 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. those shadowy Pelasgians who once seemed so elusive an element in the classification of the early races of southern Europe. Comparative anthropology shows that the Pelasgic basis of both the Hellenic and the Italic stock was a Hamitic race. The probability is that they were in southern Europe before the Mediterranean existed and while what is now North Africa was still a part of Europe. Small is the evidence of any influence exerted directly by this Hamitic infusion into the blood of the Hellenic and the Italic Aryans upon the Greek and Latin tongues. Still, as the ultimate coloring of thought must have owed something to these Hamites, it is well to look a little more closely into the series of race migrations in the early history of Europe. The earliest inhabitants of Europe, the people of the Rough Stone Age, left no traces behind them upon which any conjecture as to their race can be based. The skulls found at Olmo, at Isola del Liri, at Mentone in the Genoese Riviera, and in some of the caves of Sicily, once supposed to be of this race, are now believed to be of the people of the Polished Stone Age. These skulls are long. The human bones found in the refuse heaps are so broken for the purpose of extracting the marrow as to lead to the belief that the race was addicted to cannibalism. Their chief food, however, consisted of the small wild horses which then roamed over the continent in imrjiense herds. HAMITIC SPEECH. 167 This race was probably Turanian, and may have been related to the French Basques lying to their westward, and to the Lapps and Finns now con- fined to the extreme north. But nothing positive can as yet be asserted in regard to their ethnic affinities. It was the next race in the order of time that was Hamitic, — the race commonly called by the historic Greeks Pelasgic. In the early period, before the coming of the Aryans, their dress con- sisted of skins stitched together with needles of bone. They ornamented themselves with brace- lets of shells, and used red oxide of iron for paint- ing or tattooing their bodies. They were white, but for the most part swarthy, with olive complex- ions and black curly hair. They were straight- jawed, with vertical profile and large facial angle. Their nasal bones were narrow, and their skulls very long. In stature they were short. It may be that they were somewhat mingled in blood with the race that had preceded them. Their de- scendants may still be recognized all over western Europe, from Donegal, Galway, and Kerry in Ireland, and from the Hebrides, Yorkshire, Wales, and Somerset in Great Britain, to the south of France, Italy, Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia. The Spanish Biscayans and the Berbers of North Africa perhaps show us the race unmixed. In Italy, they built the walls of Cortona and Rusellae; in Greece, those of Mykense and Tiryns. They formed at least. an element in the make-up of the l68 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Etruscan race, — a race, it is probable, chiefly of blood akin to the Akkadi and possibly to the tribes of the Low German stock. In some parts of Europe the Pelasgians were followed by a round-headed race of short stature, Lapps and Finns in the north, Ligurians in the south. These were of the yellow race, a race that burst so often into Europe from the great Asian plateau. In southeastern Europe the Pelasgians were followed by Aryans, the Italo-Greek tribes. These southern Aryans were tall. Their skulls had the vertical index between 70 and 75. Their life was at first pastoral. They owned the dog, the ox, and the sheep. They had invented the canoe and the ox-wagon. They lived sometimes in caves, sometimes in clay-plastered huts ; and they soon acquired the use of bronze, probably from their trading neighbors, the Phoenicians. They became the lords of the Pelasgic Hamites, without rooting them out, just as many ages later the Normans mastered the Sassenach of Great Britain. That somewhat brilliant civilization of kings and nobles, described in Homer's lays and attested by the remains unearthed by Dr. Schlie- mann, does not seem to have been of indigenous growth, but to have come from Hittite, Phoenician, and Egyptian sources in Crete, Cyprus, and Asia Minor. Difficult as it is to see as yet what impress the Hamitic population made upon the speech of their Achaian masters in the one peninsula and HAMITIC SPEECH. 169 of their Italic masters in the other, they must have influenced to some extent the formation of historic Greek and Latin. It is probable that, in the western lands overrun by the Kelts, Pelasgic speech also modified the Keltic tongues. Before they were merged into these historic races, we have glimpses of them in the records on Egyptian monuments ; for, though of the same blood, they invaded Egypt again and again. In the reign of Seti I. we find the seafaring Pelasgians making a combined descent upon Egypt. The Shardana, or people of Sardinia, and the Tuirsha, or Etruscans, were the chief of these invading tribes. They formed an alliance with the Libyans, Hamites like themselves. But the young Ramessu, who reigned as his father's colleague, defeated them utterly. The curious sequel of the battle is that he enrolled the captive Shardana in his royal guards. It is probable that when, later on, Ramessu made war on the Khita, or Hittites, those Mysians, Lycians, Dardans, and Trojans from Asia Minor, who are named as allies in the confederated array of the Khita, were all largely Hamitic in blood. These Levantine enemies of Egypt were beaten at Kadesh on the Orontes. Thus Ramessu rescued the fruitful land of the Nile from all danger of being overrun by the more barbarous kindred of its rulers. In the reign of Meneptah, Ramessu's son, the Pelasgians, again in alliance with the Libyans, invaded Egypt once more. The aUies of the I/O THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Libyans on this occasion were the Shardana, or Sardinians, the Shakalasha, or Sikels, the Leku, or Lycians, the Tuirsha, or Etruscans, and the Akaiusha, or Achaians — as will be observed, mingled Pelasgians and Hellenes. The Egyptian name for the Libyans themselves was Rebu. The allies were defeated in a great battle in the Delta. In the time of Ramessu III., another raid was made on Egypt by the maritime tribes of Europe and Asia Minor. These were Taanau, Takkaru, Tuirsha, Washasha, Shakalasha, Leka, and Pe- lesta. This time the raiders attacked both by land and sea. These names are supposed to an- swer to the historic names of the Danaoi, Teukroi, Etruscans, Oscans, Sikels, Lukoi, and Philistines, again a mixture of Hamites and Aryans. The Egyptian army and fleet defeated- them. There was still another invasion of the kind, which hke- wise failed. Before leaving the subject of these Hamites of Europe, whose civilization has been so overlaid by that of the Aryans in even historic times as to be almost wholly obscured, the reader's attention must be called to a hopeful circumstance in regard to the Etruscan mystery. Until the discovery, lately made in Egypt by Professor Krall, of an ancient Etruscan book on linen wound about the mummy of a woman, short lines of inscriptions in Etruscan characters consti- tuted all that was known of their language. When this book has been deciphered, something definite HAMITIC SPEECH. 171 may be ascertained about both people and lan- guage, even if the book should turn out to be only a ritual like the Egyptian " Book of the Dead." Up to this time every attempt to compare Etrus- can with known languages has failed of success, mainly on account of paucity of material. Words like klan, " son," seM, " daughter," puta, " wife," and avz/, "year," have no known analogues in other tongues, in spite of the, provoking sugges- tiveness in the likeness to the English " clan," de- rived from Gaelic c/an7i, " children," and to the English " sex," derived from the Latin sexus, " the distinction between male and female," while ptita suggests the punalUa system of intermarriage of the Hawaiians, which also prevailed among the ancient Britons. Tinia, the Etruscan Jupiter, may have been primarily the god of tin (in Latin, stan- num) ; and Cupra, their Juno, the goddess of copper (in Latin, cuprum'), — the metals that made the civilization of the Bronze Age possible. But both these words they may have got from the Phoenicians, the chief traders in these metals. All the names for copper in the Mediterranean area certainly came from the island of Cyprus, whether the metal gave name to the island or the island to the metal. The great Hamitic civilization was that of Egypt, long considered the earliest of all the civilizations. Its history is so well known that I need only speak of its probable origin and of the wide sweep of its area of influence when at its height. 1/2 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Egypt was at first settled by separate clans ruled by their chiefs, called in after time Horshesu, or followers of Hor. These chiefs were already builders of temples to local gods, around which the towns grouped themselves. Mena was the first Pharaoh. He welded together the separate clans into a homogeneous monarchy. His city was Teni in upper Egypt, near the modern Girgeh ; but later he went northward^ and founded Memphis, at no great distance from the modern Cairo, only on the other side of the Nile. By throwing up a great dyke, he also turned the course of the mighty river so as to put his capital between the river and the desert. It is evident from this great engineer- ing feat that the race was already organized for civilization. The next great name in Egyptian history is that of Khufu, of the fourth dynasty, famous as the builder of the Great Pyramid. This vast mass of stone covers twice the area of the largest building in the modern world. It faces the points of the compass; and the measurements of all its parts show wonderful justness of proportion. The builder of the second pyramid at Gizeh was Khafra, the successor of Khufu. The third pyramid in the cluster was built by Menkera. The respective heights of these three pyramids are 480 feet, 447 feet, and 218 feet. Six hundred years later, Pepi Merira, of the sixth dynasty, emerges from the general obscurity of the intervening Pharaohs. It is possible that HAMITIC SPEECH. 1 73 there were many breaks in the continuity of this Hamitic civilization on the Nile, such as that well- known and prolonged one caused by the invasion of the " Shepherd Kings." These were a mingled host of allies, apparently of various races ; and it has been plausibly conjectured that they were Hittites. They poured down from the regions of the East into the rich valley of the Nile, and suc- ceeded in mastering the Delta. Their capital was at San or Zoan, though their princes lived also at Bubastis. In process of time they were driven out by the Theban princes. Meantime they had wel- comed and settled in the eastern lands of Egypt the Semitic house of Israel. It has been lately discovered that the Pharaoh who exalted Joseph to the post of prime minister was named Ra-ian. Under the rule of Thothmes III., and again, under that of Ramessu II., the sway of Egypt ex- tended over the eastern Mediterranean, over all of Asia west of the Euphrates, and probably over all of eastern Africa lying above the Great Lakes. The range of that type of speech of which the Egyptian was the model must therefore at one time have been very great. The son of Ramessu II. was Meneptah. He is believed to have been the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Gradually decaying, the Egyptian empire still lasted for some seven centuries after the time of Ramessu II., though ruled during a part of that time by kings of an Ethiopian dynasty, and also by kings who were tributary to the mighty rulers of Assyria. 1/4 ^^-^ STORY OF LANGUAGE. At last the Persian. Cambyses overthrew even this pretence of independent nationality. When the Macedonian Alexander was on his march to master the Persian empire, he visited Egypt, and received its acknowledgment of subjection ; and it was under the rule of the Greek Ptolemies that those inscriptions were recorded which have en- abled us to read the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. When the French expedition under Napoleon Bonaparte was in Egypt, there was found in the Delta of the Nile a slab of basalt, covered with three inscriptions, one in Greek, one in the ancient hieroglyphs, and one in the current script called enchorial or demotic. Being found near Rosetta, it has always since borne the name of the Rosetta Stone. This threefold inscription was at once laid siege to by the scholars of Europe. Silvestre de Sacy suggested that the most assailable points must be looked for in the proper names. If these were once captured, it would not be hard to master the rest. Of course the Greek text helped to point out where the proper names would be likely to come in the Egyptian texts. It was found, too, that the proper names in the hieroglyphic text were fenced round by what the French scholars called a cartouche. Akerblad made some progress in deciphering the proper names. Dr. Thomas Young discovered the deri- vation of the enchorial from the sacred characters. He also divined the phonetic principle in the HAMITIC SPEECH. 175 hieroglyphs, and at last laid the foundations of a hieroglyphic syllabary. This he based upon his study of the cartouches of Ptolemy and Berenike. But he erred in the values assigned to some of the characters. At this point Champollion, who had been puzzling like a dog that has lost the scent, took up the work again with the aid of Young's suggestions, extended Young's discoveries, and read so many of the inscriptions that he has borne off the credit of having been the first to " lift the mystic veil of Isis." The Egyptians, like the other Hamitic races, were of the Caucasian type. The face was oval ; the forehead small and retiring, but well shaped ; the eyes large, long, and as a rule black ; the nose rather long and with a slight bridge ; the mouth expressive, with full lips and white and regular teeth ; the chin small and round ; the cheek- bones a little prominent; the hair long, full, crisp, and usually black. The skin of the men was dark- brown ; that of the women varied from olive to pink flesh-color in different persons. They believed in one God, though worshipping many; the Hamitic ruling class having brought with them the first conception, and the Turanian or Nigritian masses retaining their original polythe- ism or rather worship of local fetiches. Later, Ra, the Sungod, became the centre of the popular mythological system. The language was undoubtedly, in the main, that of the modern Kopts, which has itself ceased 1/6 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. to be spoken for more than two centuries. Indeed, it was by means of the Koptic tongue, preserved in the records of Koptic Christianity, that the old inscriptions were translated. Many roots are common to this and the Semitic languages. Between the Hamitic and Semitic tongues there is not only identity in the case of a few words like those for " water," " month," and some of the numerals, but there are also some resemblances in grammar. For instance, the for- mation of the feminine by means of a ^ prefixed or affixed is one of these. Another is the forma- tion of the causative by means of s. Another is the similarity in the prefixes and suffixes of the tenses and in the personal pronoun. If it be true, as modern research daily makes more probable, that both Hamitic Chaldaea and Hamitic Arabia were closely connected in pre- historic times with the rise of civilization in Egypt, this will account largely for the likeness in lan- guage between the Hamitic and Semitic stocks of this part of the world. Strikingly diff"erent as the two races were in their tendencies, the Hamitic being early prone to settled life in cities with agricultural energies prompt to support their young communities, and the Semitic long ad- dicted to the nomadic and pastoral life, they yet lived for many ages in close proximity in all the regions of southwestern Asia, and no doubt much of their linguistic development was practically identical. It is, indeed, so hard to separate them HAMITIC SPEECH. 177 at a certain stage of their growth, that I find it convenient to treat of the civilization and language of southern Arabia in the chapter on Semitic Tongues, although I am greatly inclined to believe that these were in the main Hamitic. There are some striking differences between the language of the hieroglyphs and that of the Kopts. The old Egyptian adds the possessive pronominal characters to the nouns (as do also the Syro-Arabic tongues), while the Koptic prefixes them. Thus : Egyptian English Koptic Shere-i my son P-a-shere Shere-k thy (ra.) son P-ek-shere Shere-t thy (f.)son P-et-shere Shere-ph his son P-eph-shere Shere-s her son P-es-shere Shere-n our son P-en-shere Shere-tn your son P-eten-shere Shere-sn their son P-on-shere The P in the Koptic is the article the. So, also, in the verb the old Egyptian adds the pronominal personal characters, while Koptic pre- fixes them. Thus : — Egyptian English Koptic T-ei I give Ei-t T-k (or) t thou givest K-t T-f he gives Ph-t T-s she gives S-t T-n we give N-t T-tn ye give Tetn-t T-sn they give On-t (or) Se-t 178 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. The spoken language of ancient Egypt seems to have originally consisted of monosyllables. These were in process of time aggregated into biliteral and triliteral roots. There were two main dialects, that of Upper and that of Lower Egypt. Many Semitic words were introduced during the nineteenth dynasty, the kings of this dynasty having made many political marriages with Semitic princesses. An extensive Egyptian literature has come down to us, carved on the walls of temples and tombs, and written upon papyrus rolls coffined with the mummies. But it is not continuous; and, while it is eminentl}"- interesting on account of the great mass of information we derive from it, there is no such artistic merit about it as that which we find in any of the great literatures of the world produced by races gifted with distinction in style. The best-known separate works are " The Book of the Dead," a wonderfully elaborate ritual, and " The Poem of Pentaur," describing the victory won by Ramessu II. at Kadesh on the Orontes over the Khita. Both of these works are largely drawn on byEbers in his delightful romance of " Uarda," de- picting life in ancient Egypt under the conquering Pharaohs. No mention has as yet been made of the great peculiarity of the langi:age. This consists in the fact that, as in the case of the Turanian tongues, the root of the word remains unchanged. The HAMITIC SPEECH. I'jg dual and plural are formed by affixes. The cases of nouns are discriminated by prepositions; the tenses of verbs, by prefixing forms of the abstract auxiliary verbs that mean " to be," or by affixing to the verbal roots the pronouns a, k, t, f, s, nen, ten, sen, preceded by prepositions. It will thus be seen that the speech of the an- cient Egyptians stands curiously related to very different tongues. Its monosyllabic character al- lies it to the tongues of China and Indo-China. The fixity of its roots reminds us of the tongues of Siberia, central Asia, and southern India. Its grammar and its vocabulary both have points of affinity with the Semitic tongues of Arabia and Syria. Evidently it was arrested at an early period in its development by the conservative forces of civilization. It has already been said that the Minsean tongue, spoken in southern Arabia before the Sabsean, was in all likelihood Hamitic. The Gallas, who call themselves Or6mo, speak in five dialects a tongue that has been classed pro- visionally as Hamitic. It has many points of re- semblance to neighboring Semitic tongues, and there are traces of grammatical likeness to Basque. HAMITIC TONGUES. Sidonian, Egyptian, Berber, Iberian, Pelasffian Minsean Galla or or or (probably) (probably) (probably) Rotu Libyan Biscayan Koptic CHAPTER XIII. SEMITIC SPEECH. At the beginning of this century we knew little more of Semitic literature than what was con- tained in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures and in that body of Arabic literature which grew up after the era of Mohammed. A vast mass of inscriptions, dug up and deci- phered, has added greatly to our knowledge. Botta and Layard brought to view from buried Nineveh many remains of Assyrian documents. Arnaud, Halevy, and others brought away copies of the Himyaritic inscriptions in Yemen. Barthelemy and Renan studied the Phoenician inscriptions of Tyre and Sidon and of the Lebanon. Renan em- bodied these in that noble monument of his schol- arship, the " Corpus Semiticarum Inscriptionum." The Semitic languages comprise: i. The an- cient Chaldaean or Babylonian, spoken in the kingdom on the Persian Gulf founded by the Akkadi, even before Akkad and Sumir were mas- tered by the Arabs of the Syrian and Arabian deserts: a tongue akin to Arabic; 2. The Assyr- ian, spoken by that branch of the same Semitic race which at an early period settled the upper SEMITIC SPEECH. i8l part of the Mesopotamian valley and founded Nineveh, Kalah, and Asshur; 3. The Aramaic, spoken as the popular dialect all over Mesopo- tamia and Syria and, at a later period, in Palestine : it includes the Jewish-Aramaic, Syriac, Nabataean, and Palmyrite; 4. The Hebrew, which includes, besides the Hebrew proper spoken by the people of Israel, the Phoenician, Canaanite, Edomite, Mo- abite, and Punic, or Carthaginian, and was in early days the tongue current throughout the Palestinian region, being the Semitic coast-dialect; 5. The Arabic, spoken at first in Arabia only, but by the conquests of the Saracens and the trade-routes of the Arabs extended over a large part of Asia and Africa, as well as for more than seven cen- turies over Spain ; 6. The Sabsean, itself preceded by an earlier dialect, the Minsean, spoken in pre- historic times in southern Arabia : the Minsan was probably Hamitic ; 7. The Ethiopic, or Geez, carried by Sabaean conquest into Abyssinia and still spoken there. Related to this last, but per- haps equally related to Hamitic tongues, is the Amharic, also spoken in Abyssinia. The Semitic races first appear historically in the great desert region covering Arabia and extending to the border of the Mesopotamian river valleys. The Arab Bedouins of the desert and the Arab pirates of the Persian Gulf by gradual encroach- ments, in the very dawn of history, mastered the civilization which the Turanian people of Akkad had established at the mouths of the Tigris and 1 82 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. the Euphrates. How long they ruled in the Chal- dsean land, it is not yet possible to say ; but they had been rulers over Ur of the Chaldees for some generations when Abram obeyed the call of Je- hovah to come out of that land, at least 2000 B. C. They had long since made their language that of the people, of the court, and of literature, so that the old Turanian tongue of the people of Sumir and Akkad had become a dead language, culti- vated by the priests alone. The Semitic tongues are different dialects rather than related languages. They have these charac- teristic marks : the predominance of triconsonantal roots, a similarity in the formation of noun and verb stems, resemblance in the forms of the perso- nal pronouns and in their use, resemblance in their note of time in the verbs and in their system fqr the interchange of vowels, and likeness in the order and construction of sentences, as well as in the mere vocabulary. They may be divided conveniently into two groups, the northern and the southern, the mem- bers of each having a closer affinity to one another than to any of the other group. The northern group will comprise the Canaanite, or Hebrew- Phoenician, the Aramaic, and the Chaldsan, or Assyrian; the southern will comprise the Arabic, the Sabsean, and the Ethiopic. The Chaldaean was but the southern and older form of the Assyrian. Remains of both are found in the cuneiform inscriptions. These inscriptions were SEMITIC SPEECH. 1 83 made by marking the clay of the bricks while moist with a stick or bit of metal, sinking the im- plement deeply at one end and leaving the mark narrower and fainter at the other. This wedge- shape is expressed by the word " cuneiform," from Latin cimeus, " a wedge," zx^A forma, " shape." The translation of the cuneiform signs in modern times was made possible by the fact that, when the Persians conquered Assyria and Babylonia, they adopted this mode of writing. A vase, now in the Louvre at Paris, containing a Persian and an Egyptian inscription side by side, confirmed cer- tain guesses at certain combinations as the names of Darius and Xerxes. Thus was furnished a key to the cuneiform syllabary. But far greater progress was made when the examination of the rock inscription at Behistun — the ancient Bagistana in Media — in Persian, Median, and Assyrian enabled scholars to compare the three languages in the same symbolic forms. The tongue of the Chaldaeans of Semitic race was more nearly related to Hebrew than to Ara- maic. It was almost free, however, from gutturals, and had but slight traces of the ancient perfect tense. In one particular its agreement was rather with a tongue of the southern group than with its sister tongues of the north. Like the Ethiopic, it had no article. The Hebrew-Phoenician group and the Arabic agreed in having a prefixed definite article. The Sabsean, spoken in the extreme south- west of the Arabian peninsula, expressed the arti- 1 84 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. cle by means of a suffixed n ; the Aramaic, spoken in Mesopotamia and Syria, also used a suffix for the article, but instead of n it was a. The best authorities agree that the primal seat of the Arab race, which seems to have been the basis of all the Semitic family, was on the extreme southwestern point of the Arabian peninsula near Aden. From this point it spread northward and westward over Yemen, Hadramaut, and Oman. This section of the race had close affinities with the Hamitic races of Africa. Indeed, it may have been in blood rather Hamitic than Semitic, and its re- lation to the genuine Semitic Arab may have been merely the fact of its imparting to him the germs of civilization. The Semitic Arab has always claimed descent from Ishmael, and therefore from the Abrahamic stock that dwelt among the Chaldees. Those tribes that swept still farther northward and first settled in the civilized land of the Akkadi, to colonize Assyria, later, on the extreme north, and the shores of the Levant on the west, kept their Semitic blood purer than the Arab of the south. Long before the age of Mohammed, there was a culture, seemingly indigenous, in the land of Yemen, the ancient name of which was Saba, or Sheba. Though the inscriptions called Himyaritic date only from the time of Christ, far older Sabsean inscriptions have been found, comparatively a short time ago ; and one dialect of the Sab^an tongue, SEMITIC SPEECH. 185 the Minaean, is now believed to belong to a period more ancient still than the time of Sabaean great- ness, the MinjEans having in fact ruled all Arabia, until superseded by the Sabaeans. The Minaean inscriptions are found chiefly in Hadramaut, east of Yemen. Researches made by Doughty, Euting, Huber, and Glaser prove the great antiquity of the Minaean kingdom. The Sabaean kingdom was flourishing in the eighth century before Christ, when Sargon ruled Assyria. The visit of its queen to Solomon takes us back still farther; that interesting event goes back to the tenth century before Christ. It was long before this that Ma'in, the land of the Minaeans, was a great power in the south. It has been ascertained that priest-kings preceded the secular rulers of Saba. Such was Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses. Such was Melchizedek, the friend of Abraham. Miiller found the names of thirty-three kings of Ma'in in inscriptions copied from the neighborhood of Teima in northern Arabia, on the road to Damascus. The Min^an alphabet is older than the Phoenician, and it is now believed to be demonstrable that the Phoeni- cian was derived from it. The civilization of Yemen had its basis in the trade with India and Ceylon on the east and with Syria and Mesopotamia on the north. Doubtless there was also an early trade with the eastern coast of Africa. When the Minaeans were overthrown by the Sabaeans, the kingdom of Sheba became 1 86 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. perhaps even greater than its predecessor had ever been. It held sway over an extensive domain in Africa as well as in Asia. It lasted from about the tenth century before Christ — perhaps from a much earlier period — to within a century of the Christian era, when it was superseded by the rule of the Homerites of Himyar, whose kingdom lasted to the sixth century after Christ, shortly after which time the genius of Mohammed gave a still wider sway to the Arabian race. The inscriptions give the names of more than forty-five Sabaean kings. Abyssinia was peopled from the Sabaean land, and Aksum seems at one time to have been adopted as the Sabaean capital. In the reign of the Roman emperor Constantius, at the beginning of the fourth century, the king of Aksiim was also king of the Homerites of Yemen, of the Ethio- pians, of the Sabarites, and of the Bonzaites, or Blemmyes. His name, in the Greek form in which we find it, was Aeizanas. He was addressed by Constantius with an urgent request not to harbor Athanasius, whom the Roman emperor was then persecuting. In the sixth century the Himyarite king, apparently ruling then only in Arabia, was overthrown by Dhu-Nu'as, king of Aksum ; and Yemen became subject for a time to Abyssinia. But before the close of the century this power was in its turn overthrown by Persian adventurers. About the middle of the nineteenth century the explorer Arnaud discovered the ancient Mariab, SEMITIC SPEECH. 187 the royal city of the Sabseans, and copied fifty-six inscriptions. Subsequent explorers, chief among whom was Joseph Hal6vy, obtained copies of many more. The alphabet of these inscriptions is akin to the Ethiopic. The language is South Semitic, forming a linl< between the North Arabic and the Ethiopic. Both the Minaean and the Sabaean are closely related to the Arabic, but are evidently more primitive. The Ethiopic, Abyssinian, or Geez was the lan- guage of the ancient kingdom of Aksum, known to the Greek geographers as Auxume. Its early condition is to be gathered almost exclusively from inscriptions. Later, it was used in the Geez version of the Bible and in theological translations from the Greek. It ceased to be spoken about one thousand years ago. As used in the manu- . scripts, though related to the Sabsean, it is more modern in its development than the Arabic. It has lost some inflections of the earlier Semitic type, and has also lost the passive voice. It changes aspirated dentals into sibilants. It has no definite article, but is very rich in particles. It resembles the Aramaic in its freedom as to the order of words in the sentence, and in the ease with which it joins sentences together. The Tigr6 dialect seems to be a modern de- scendant of Geez. Another dialect spoken in that region, Tigrina, is the Tigrd modified by Amharic. The Ethiopic word saba, meaning 1 88 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. " men," is an evidence of the Sabsean descent of the race. Amharic has diverged widely from the general Semitic type. Its vocabulary is largely alien, probably Hamitic. The order of words is some- times just the reverse of the Semitic order. The verb comes after the subject ; the genitive comes before the noun it limits ; the attributive relative clause comes before its substantive. The language has the air of having been once a Semitic tongue and having undergone transformation by its adop- tion as the speech of Hamitic tribes. It ranks next to Arabic in the number of persons who speak it. It has been only very recently put to literary use. Passing now to the northern part of Arabia, we come to the great literary tongue of the Arab race, so widely diffused by conquest and religious zeal. The purest Arabic is spoken in Nejd ; but it differs little from that used in any of the lands to which the arms of the Saracens penetrated. Metrical poems, embelHshed with rhyme as well as paying strict attention to quantity, exist in great numbers, dating back to two centuries before Mohammed. Of course those still recited by the popular minstrels conform largely to the pronun- ciation of the region in which they find their audience. Besides the romances of war and adventure, like those of " 'Antar " (Sereet 'Antar), there are count- SEMITIC SPEECH. 1 89 less odes, love-songs, elegies, and ethical poems. The regularity of the metre and rhymes in the poems is a proof that the same language in the main was spoken all over the Arabian area from a very early period. In the tenth century appeared "The Book of Songs " by Abu-Faraj of Ispahan, an anthology of Arab poets with brief biographies of the authors. Prose literature begins with the Koran, and has always retained the florid, half-rhythmical style in which that legacy of Mohammed's to the race and the language is couched. The Koran made the language sacred as well as classic. In it, as time went on, and as the race came in contact with the literatures of other races, were composed voluminous chronicles and works of science and philosophy. Among the greatest of these last were the works of Avicenna in the East and those of Averroes in the West. At a time when western Europe had no modern literature and had become ignorant of the treasures of the ancient literatures of Greece and Rome, when even the schools of Constantinople had a taste only for theological discussions, there was high intellec- tual culture among the Moslems from Cordova to Ispahan. About the eleventh century that incom- parable treasure-house of tales, " The Thousand Nights and a Night" (Elf Leyleh wa-Leyleh), was produced. The Arabic language is rich in vocabulary, though perhaps some deduction should be made 1 90 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. from the estimate generally formed of its copious- ness, from the fact that many of its words are but poetical and periphrastic descriptions rather than names. We might just as well take the expres- sions " whale's path " and " swan-road," used in the poetry of Inflected English for the " sea," as separate synonyms. Arabic is also rich in grammatical forms. Posi- tional grammar, however, plays so large a part in the construction of sentences, that the case- endings are comparatively unimportant. Subject and object occupy, in general, fixed positions ; and the genitive always follows the noun it limits. In the language of the people, the ancient termina- tions, though written, are not necessarily pro- nounced. In this respect it resembles Modern French. There are now many varying dialects. Passing still farther northward, we come to the great Canaanite family, best known to us by the Hebrew Bible, its greatest literary production, constituting in reality a library of very varied liter- ature. This tongue, however, whether we choose to call it Hebrew or Phoenician, Canaanite or Edomite, was spoken by all the Palestinian peoples. Phoenician, Philistine, Amalekite, and Israelite, all spoke varieties of the same seacoast dialect. The Phoenicians carried the same tongue to Tar- shish and Kittim, that is, to Cilician Tarsus and to Cyprus, and westward to their Sicilian and Spanish and African settlements. The Hebrew race, too, we must remember, included, besides Israel, Moab, SEMITIC SPEECH. 19 1 Edom, Ammon, and even the Bedouin tribes sprung from Ishmael, though these last, mingling with the other Arabs, became more definitely differentiated from Israel in process of time. But from a very early period this speech threat- ened to give way before the encroachments of the Aramaic of Syria and Mesopotamia. The estab- lishment of the kingdom of Israel and Judah, and the growth of the sacred literature in these lands, alone prevented an earlier yielding of the Hebrew tongue to these encroachments. The downfall of the kingdom of Israel brought with it that of the Hebrew tongue as a spoken language in the whole region beyond the little kingdom of Judah. The Galilseans were the earliest in these parts to adopt the Aramaic. Professor Murray, whose Semitic learning illumined the lecture-rooms of the Johns- Hopkins University only too briefly, quotes the Talmud to show that the difference amounted mainly to a certain slovenliness of pronunciation. " It was impossible to understand a certain Galilean who came to the Jerusalem market to purchase something, whether he desired to have hamdr, ' an ass,' hamar, ' wine,' amar, ' some wool,' or immar, ' a lamb,' all pronounced precisely the same in his patois. It is this thick pronunciation, almost a brogue, which is the point in the betrayal of Peter by his speech." As a spoken dialect the Hebrew became extinct, outside of Judah, in the seventh century before the Christian era; and in the second century before Christ it became extinct even in Judaea. 192 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Like Latin, it was used as a purely literary- tongue for many centuries after it ceased to be spoken. The precise similarity of the grammati- cal form, running through writings that cover a period of more than two thousand years, is fully accounted for by the fact that we do not have the Hebrew sacred books in their original form. They come to us, as Semitic scholars tell us, in the liturgical shape into which for purposes of worship they were cast by certain professors in the University of Tiberias in Galilee about the sixth century of our era. The particular form of the lan- guage of the Old Testament is thus more modern than that of the Greek of the New Testament. The Bible does not give us the pronunciation of ancient Hebrew, the vowel points having been in- serted by the Jewish Rabbis to show how the text should be read in the solemn chant of the synagogue. After the fall of Jerusalem, Hebrew was revived in their schools by the Rabbis. This Hebrew of the schools, as related to that of the Bible, bears somewhat the character of the Latin of the Schoolmen compared with that of the Roman empire. The later Hebrew shows the likeness to this artificial Latin still more strongly than the language of the Mishna. The syntax of Hebrew is very primitive. Sen- tences are generally linked together simply by the conjunction " and." The fact that in the verb the note of time is confined to past and present makes it difficult for the thought to be expressed with SEMITIC SPEECH. 193 definiteness. The language was inadequate to the expression of scientific fact or philosophic speculation with any degree of precision. The vocabulary was very limited, far inferior to that of the Arabic, even when we take into account the fact that we know the Hebrew only by its literature, while Arabic is still a living tongue. Some points of difference from Aryan tongues may be mentioned here, as helping to fix in our minds the proper place of this group : — 1. The verbal inflection distinguishes gender. 2. There is a coalescence of article and prepo- sition with the noun, which constitutes a sort of initial inflection that forms a perfect contrast to the terminal inflection of the Aryan tongues. Thus, hoshekh means " darkness ; " w' hoshekh, "and darkness;" ha-hoshekh, "the darkness;" w la-hoshekh, " and to the darkness." Originally there was terminal inflection for cases in Hebrew, as well as in Assyrian and Arabic ; but this has been lost in Hebrew. The three cases in Assyrian and Arabic are thus illustrated by Dr. Harper : — Assyrian. Assyrian. 1^ madattu, "tribute." matu, " country." G. madatti, " of tribute." mati, " of country." A. madatta, " tribute." mata, " country." Arabic. Arabic. N. al-kitabu, "the book." kitabun, "a book." G. al-kitabi, "of thebook." kitabin, " of a book." A. al-kitaba, " the book." kitaban, "a book." '3 194 "^^^^ STORY OF LANGUAGE. But for gender and number there is terminal inflection in Hebrew; and, like Greek, Hebrew has three numbers, singular, dual, and plural. There is also a coalescence of verb and pro- nominal object, which reminds one of the same usage in Italian. It is really a sort of aggluti- nation. 3. In the genitive relation, it is the word limited and not the limiting word, as in Greek, Latin, and German, that suffers change, though in Hebrew this change is produced simply by a shortening of the vowels of the word limited. Thus, Hebrew says " faces-of abyss," not " faces of-abyss." 4. Most words, as in French, are accented on the last syllable. Phoenician, or Punic, the maritime sister of He- brew, is known only through inscriptions. The great colonies of Sidon, Tyre, and Arvad, espe- cially Kadesh on the Ocean, — the Gades of the classics, the Cadiz of the moderns, — Tarshish, the Sicilian Sela, Motya, and Panormos of the Golden Shell, the African Carthage, Hippo, and Utica, like their parent cities, have left no litera- ture. The grammar of the dialect is nearly that of Hebrew, and the consonants are the same as those of Hebrew. The vocabulary, too, is almost iden- tical. One noteworthy fact is pointed out by comparative philologists : many of the Phoenician words are those which in Hebrew are peculiar to poetry. But it must be remembered that the Ian- SEMITIC SPEECH. 195 guage of inscriptions, as well as that of poetry, is apt to be archaic. To these two dialects, Hebrew and Phoenician, Aramaic is nearly related. As has been said, it was from time immemorial the language of Sem- ites in Mesopotamia and Syria, and at a later period it displaced Hebrew in Palestine. In the Persian period it was the official language of the provinces west of the Euphrates. The chief men of Judah used it to communicate with the Assy- rians, or rather wished to do so. For when Tar- tan, Rabsaris, and Rabshakeh were sent by the King of Assyria against King Hezekiah, Rab- shakeh gave his master's message to the servants of the King of Judah in " the Jews' language." " Then said Eliakini the son of Hilkiah, and Shebna, and Joah, unto Rabshakeh, Speak, I pray thee, to thy servants in the Syrian language ; for we understand it : and talk not with us in the Jews' language in the ears of the people that are on the wall." But this ill suited the policy of the Assyrian envoy ; and " Rabshakeh stood and cried with a loiid voice in the Jews' language," so that the people might hear and understand the haughty message of his master. The earlier remains of this Syrian or Aramaic tongue consist of inscriptions on seals and gems. Those books in the Bible in which it is used show its state among the Jews of Palestine. Some forms then found in it afterward disappeared ; for in- 196 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. stance, the formation of the passive by internal vowel-change, and the causative with ha instead of with a. The inscriptions of Palmyra and on the Nabatsean coins show that the same tongue was spoken in Damascus and in Palmyra. The Nabatsans, although they spoke Aramaic, were true Arabs. They belonged to the border- land between Syria and Arabia, stretching from the Euphrates to the Red Sea. They were pow- erful about the fourth century before Christ, at which time Petra, the former capital of the Edom- ites, became their chief stronghold. In earHer ages they had been nomadic, and had traded in myrrh and spices from Yemen, and in bitumen from the Dead Sea, the latter article being in great demand for use in the preparation of mum- mies in Egypt. They succeeded to the commerce of Edom, and were masters of Damascus in the time of Christ, having long since become to a great extent settled and agricultural. But eventu- ally their power was destroyed by Trajan's cap- ture of Petra. Among the Jews, after the Babylonian Captivity, the reading of the Bible was always followed by an oral targum, or " translation," in the nature of a paraphrase, into Aramaic, that being the language of the masses. These targums were afterward, in Babylonia, reduced to writing. The Babylo- nian and the Mandsean dialects varied somewhat from those of Palestine. At Edessa, both the Old Testament and the SEMITIC SPEECH. 197 New were translated into the Aramaic-, and the dialect thus given literary form came to be called Syriac. An extensive literature was produced in it, and it became very popular among the Syrians of the Persian Empire. When the Moslems con- quered the lands in which they were spoken, all the Aramaic dialects were ultimately supplanted by Arabic. Aramaic dialects, however, still sur- vived in the mountain regions of Mesopotamia and Kurdistan among Christians and Jews. They have become somewhat analytic in structure, and have adopted into their vocabularies many Arabic, Kurdish, and Turkish words. The Samaritan translation of the Pentateuch shows the Aramaic in one of its numerous local dialects. Aramaic is poorer in vowels than Hebrew. It is superior to it, however, in its power of linking sentences together, as it has many conjunctions and adverbs to express slight modifications of meaning. It has also greater freedom as regards the order of words in a sentence. The Semitic tongues have had a great influ- ence on Aryan tongues as far removed from one another as the modern Persian in the East and the Spanish in the West. The vocabulary of both these languages is largely drawn from Arabic. Many Hebrew idioms, too, as well as Hebrew words, have taken root in all the tongues of modern Europe. 198 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. SEMITIC LANGUAGES. 1% =-3 el wo <:3 ■si E •a CHAPTER XIV. THE ARYAN TONGUES. The primal race from which the Hindoo and the Englishman alike are sprung, the race that midway in its career of expansion produced both Persians and Greeks, the race that has mastered Europe and America, and rules all the coasts of Africa and Australia, as well as the north and the south of Asia, was until recently believed by ethnologists to have had its home in the fertile Bactrian land just north of the great moun- tain range of the Hindoo-Koosh. The trend of opinion amongst anthropologists now strongly favors the view that the Aryans originated in Europe. As, however, the evidence derived from language still supports the older theory, I shall hold to it, as the more tenable from my point of view, and trace their migrations from that central focus, as has heretofore been customary. Protected by the mountain wall at their back, the desert on the west, the Pamir plateau on the east, and on the north by the river Oxus, proba- bly in early ages a vastly stronger and swifter stream than it is now, these early Aryans led 200 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. both a pastoral and an agricultural ffie for many- generations. For a long lapse of ages, they had no incentive to build cities, and no motive for issuing forth to engage in the conquest of other races. Had they taken any of those steps which hasten the arrival of civilization, their language could never have developed into the complex system of inflections which it manifestly reached before the parting of the different branches 'of the family. The climate of the ancient Aryan land is, and probably has always been, mild in summer and severe in winter. A vigorous race, finding the alluvial lands fruitful under culture, would be likely to prosper beneath such a sky just enough to labor and be content. Here they lingered, then, long enough to de- velop their language to a stage beyond the reach of fatal stagnation through the prestige of literary expression. In the case of many other races, as we have seen, this cessation of development had been the invariable result of too early centralization, too rapid an evolution of national life. The Chinese and the races of the Indo-Chinese peninsula, all of Mongolian type, had founded civilizations that were possibly hoary with age when the Aryans were still wandering toward their future homes. But the languages of these prematurely active races have for many centuries been at the same stage of arrested development which their preco- SEMITIC SPEECH. 20I cious civilization necessarily brought about. They are still almost wholly monosyllabic. The like lesson is taught us elsewhere. The empires founded by mingled races at the head of the Persian Gulf, on the eastern shores of the Levant, and on the lower waters of the Nile, were most likely the outcome of prolonged race- struggles that gave both race and language some needed discipline and culture before the final con- summation. As human nature is constituted, war is no less necessary than peace to the progress of a race, and consequently to the progress of man- kind. At all events, we find the prominent type of language among the Chaldseans of both Akkad and Semitic empires, among the Hittites or Canaanites and their near kindred, the Sidonian Phoenicians, and among the Egyptians, mainly agglutinative, with an increasingly large share of internal inflection as the races improved in culture and came in contact with other races. But had their advance to civiHzation been post- poned for some centuries, they would no doubt have entered upon it with a language of still greater capacity. The Hebrews, Arabs, and Syrians, for instance, who were later in develop- ment than the Akkadi, the Hittites, and the Egyp- tians, present in their tongue a marked advance upon the speech of the older civilizations in the percentage of inflectional element. In the midland of Asia, then, grew up into the heritage of a powerful enginery of thought that 202 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Aryan race from whose loins were to spring the great teachers of the world in politics, art, litera- ture, and science, and the most active missionaries of that diviner culture — religious truth — which they were themselves to learn from Semitic masters. There, in those Asian highlands, was moulded the genius that was to produce in far distant lands the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Vedas of India and the Shah-nameh of Persia, the Eddas of the Norse- men, the Gudrun, the Lay of the Nibelungs, the Beowulf, the Romaunt of Roland, the Arthurian tales, and the Keltic Mabinogion. There was be- gun that speech which in varying forms throbbed new thoughts into life, creating the works of Pheid- ias as well as those of Sophocles, the paved way of Appius Claudius no less than the song of Vergil, the Gothic cathedrals of Christian Europe and the lays of Dante, the printing-press, the railway, the steamship, the telegraph, the telephone, the elec- tric light, along with the plays of Shakespeare and the republic of the United States of America. One group of the Aryan family conquered and civilized India and Ceylon. The tongue they spoke in the day of their greatness was Sanskrit ; and we have already seen how much we owe to it in the name of language and etymology. Another group did not stray very far from the Bactrian home, and in process of time founded the great Persian empire on the ruins of the Assyrian, the Mede, the Lydian, and the later Babylonian. Civilization owes much to this people, for they THE ARYAN TONGUES. 203 consolidated many barbarian tribes under their wise rule; and their empire stood as a bulwark between the fierce nomads of east and north and the civilizing races around the Mediterranean. At a later day, it is true, they were a formidable threat to the rising civiHzation of the Hellenic race, and hence to the development of the prin- ciples of civil liberty. When the Macedonian Alexander conquered them, their work for that age was done ; and the distinctive mission of the Hellenic race began to be accompHshed at the very moment when its freedom as a series of sepa- rate political organizations' came definitely to an end. In both these branches of the Aryan race, how- ever, we see wonderful vitality. Twice has history been called upon to note the regeneration of the Persian people, and both times the result was brought about by the preaching of a national religion. In the third century, after six centuries of bondage, the Persians overthrew the Parthian dynasty then ruling over them, restored the Ma- gian religion, and set up Ardeshir as their native king, the first of the Sassanid dynasty. In the fif- teenth century again, after eight hundred years of Arabian rule, Shiah Mohammedanism made a suc- cessful revolt, and Ishmael established the inde- pendence of the Persians once more. While Ara- bic remained the tongue of religion and science, the Persian language and literature revived for full expression in poetry, history, and polite inter- 204 ^-^-^ STORY OF LANGUAGE. course. Under the patronage of the Ghaznevid prince Mahmoud, Ferdousi sang the old tales of his land ; and, when Hindostan was conquered, it was a Persian literature that it received along with the Arabian religion. As to the Hellenic race, it can hardly be said that its tongue and the culture its literature em- bodied have ever long lain dormant. Eagerly studied by the Romans after their conquest of Greece, Greek and Greek arts ended by resuming complete possession of the old lands in the east of Europe and in the west of Asia ; and when in 1453 the last Palaiologos fell, sword in hand, they fled to western Europe and brought about there the great Revival of Arts and Learning. The Greek race itself, after less than four centuries of subjection to the Turk, rose and recovered its in- dependence. When the Turk is finally driven out of Europe and Asia Minor, all the precedents of history demand that Greece shall recover her old heritage. It is the true solution of the long-de- bated Eastern question. Intellectually the bright- est race that the world has known, it has been in the past of immense service to the human family. It gave to the lands of the Levant a fit language in which to formulate the great doctrines of Chris- tianity, and with it that community of interests which so greatly facilitated the preaching of the gospel. To its own stern conquerors, the Roman consolidators of civilization, it gave a taste for mental culture and for art. THE ARYAN TONGUES. 205 The Romans, in their turn, organized law and order through the whole vast area of their rule, and, in spite of frequent persecution in the name of imperial sanctity, really made ready the harvest for those Christian apostles to reap against whose faith their persecutions were so vainly aimed. The Aryan group that travelled farthest — the Kelts — seem to have mingled with the Euska- rians too readily, in many parts of Europe, to re- tain their individuality as a race, though they shrewdly tried Roman courage and patience before they yielded to Roman law. They certainly gave their language and race-name to those Euskarians of Ireland and of the Hebrides who are now called " dark Kelts " and to the mixed race of Keltibe- rians in the Spanish peninsula. The Iberians of Britain were conquered by the Goidelic Kelts, whose tongue still survives in the different forms of Erse, ManXj and Gaelic. The next wave of Keltic migration was that of the Brythonic Kelts, who conquered as far as Corn- wall and Wales. After them came a wave of Belgic Kelts, who had reached the line of the Severn by the time the Romans came into Britain. From that British branch of the race which fled from the face of the conquering Sassenach into Bretagne, — their traditions and their language point to their descent from the Brythonic Kelts, — all mediaeval Europe learned the rich store of legends that gathered around the name of Arthur Pendragon. 206 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Another body of the same British stock, the remnant that so long, in the mountains of Wales, held at bay the English race, even when it was reinforced by Norman energy, enriched the litera- ture of the world with those wild but lustrous tales called the Mabinogion. The Scots carried away with them from Ireland into the Caledonian land afterward named for them a group of lays attributed to Ossian, frag- ments of which long survived, to form some basis at least for the literary imposture of Macpherson, which once had such vogue in Europe. The Teutonic group pressing on the footsteps of the Kelts and occupying northern and middle Europe, after having forced the Kelts forward to the western coasts, were only for a time kept back from the Mediterranean area by the for- tress-studded frontier line of the Romans. They finally swept over every land of western Europe and northern Africa, founded new kingdoms, and inherited some part of the civilization still pos- sessed by the Roman empire in its decline. They learned the Latin tongue with such changes as their vocal organs and mental preferences forced upon it, and, in process of time, by the clash of their own system of inflections with that of the Latin, broke it to pieces, and left it to the genera- tions of the tenth and eleventh centuries a dis- membered and chaotic mass, destined in time to crystallize unconsciously into new forms. Some of these Teutonic tribes settled in the THE ARYAN TONGUES. 20/ midland of Europe, and never acquired more than a slight tincture of Latin culture. What little they got was gained from the monastic es- tablishments within their borders and from inter- course with the Lombard cities and the Provencal troubadours. Others passed over to the most remote of the old Roman possessions, made themselves a home there, and in later days, after wholesome mixture with the blood of other Aryan races, built new empires in America, Africa, Australia, and India, — the India that their Sanskrit-speaking cousins had conquered so many ages ago, but had lost to other races again and again because, alone among Aryans, the Hindoos made no political progress. Last of all from the Bactrian hive, came the Benjamin of the family, the Slav, Serb, or Wend. For ages he held the east of Europe, with his bitter brother, the German, on one side, and Ta- tar hordes everywhere else around him. It is only lately that his day has begun to come. He is striving to supplant the intruding Turk in south- eastern Europe, and in Asia he is pressing back upon his ancient Hne of march. There he has already reached the old Bactrian home, is facing China on the east and England's colonies on the south, and seems to be ready to claim Asia as rightfully his. Such are the races that, as soon as they were equipped with an elastic language, an instrument of thought really adequate to the high uses they 208 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. were destined to make of it, went out from the Bactrian home of the Aryans southward and west- ward in search of adventures. Their growth was slow but solid ; their race- character was formed under favorable auspices for the development of simple and noble traits; the environment helped the evolution of healthy- minds and bodies, and the production of flexible, free, and expressive languages. Now, when and why did they leave the father- land? The when and why must be wholly matter of conjecture ; but there is at least a relative when. Language itself gives evidence that the western Aryans remained together for a time after part- ing with their eastern brethren. After the Kelts, who first of the Aryans passed over the European area, and in doing so left the rivers with what are substantially names of their bestowal, there came into Eur-ope two great divisions of the Aryan family. One of these settled in the north of Europe, differentiating at a later period into Letts, Slavs, and Teutons. The other settled in the south, inclusive probably of Asia Minor, dif- ferentiating in process of time into Illyrians, Hellenes, and Italians. All of these westward- migrating Aryans are proved, by the identity of certain words common to them, but not to the eastern Aryans, to have practised agriculture somewhere on their westward route before their separation, but after parting with the Aryans of the East. Hence it is clear that they reached THE ARYAN TONGUES. 209 Europe far advanced beyond the savage state. It must be remembered, too, that we have evidence of the aUiance of the Akaiusha, or Achaians, the leading Hellenic race of the Heroic Age, with European races of the Hamitic stock in a mari- time descent on Egypt during the reign of Menep- tah, the son of the great conqueror, Ramessu II. They may therefore be safely said to have been well established in Hellas before 1300 B.C. The later raid, made in the time of Ramessu III., gives us the names of Danaans, Teukrians, and Lykians, all of which are familiar to us in the works of Homer. If the Medes of Susa were Aryans, as Rawlinson thinks the evidence of language indi- cates, at a date which must be fixed somewhere before 2286 B.C., they were already as far south as the Chaldean region. We may be sure, then, that the western Aryans had already parted from their eastern brethren ; and we have a period of nine centuries to allow for their gradual migration westward, and the establishment of a part of their bands in southern Europe. It is certain that they must have moved away from northern Asia before the Assyrian kings became powerful. The Kelts, whether through admixture of some of them with Euskarians on the west or with Teutons on the east, or with Wends, who ac- companied them on their march, developed two distinct and well-marked types of race and lan- guage, the Gadhelic and Kymric. That branch of the former which survived as Erse was spoken 14 2IO THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. in Ireland, and with variations, among the High; land clans of Scotland, and in the Isle of Man. The Kymric belonged to Wales, Cornwall, and Bretagne. The Kelts of Galatia in Asia Minor, still a fair-haired and fair-faced race among races of very different type ; the Gauls of northern Italy and of the Gallia conquered by Caesar; the Bel- gians of Gallia ; and the Helvetians of the land we now call Switzerland, — are all believed, from the evidence of such traces of their languages as exist, to have spoken tongues akin to the Kymric of Wales and Cornwall. Wherever their blood has mingled with that of the later-settling Teuton, it has imparted to his slower nature a fervid glow of feeling, a fire and impetuosity in action, and a generous ardor of spirit, which have had much to do with the making of that noble history which Spain, France, and England have contributed to form since the ruin of the old Roman world. But of Keltic literature there are only the few traces already mentioned ; and many Keltic dia- lects have wholly ceased to be spoken. The wit, humor, and eloquence of the race, however, have found ample expression in English, French, and Spanish literatures. As to the Hellenic share in the education of the world, we all know something of the immense debt which the whole framework of our civilization owes to that wonderful race. The art of a race that taught the world the value of just proportion, THE ARYAN TONGUES. 211 the beauty of form, and the exquisite perfection of temperance ; the literature that has summed up in itself the best in every kind ; the political experi- ence which exhausted all that could be tested in states so small, — were all of them but so many different expressions of a thought drilled to clean strength and utmost suppleness by the richest language that the world has ever known. The richest language — this is the verdict of all com- petent scholars. In subtlety, in suggestiveness, in compass, in dialectic variety with allowed literary uses, in many-sided grace and versatility, it excels all tongues. Its exquisite flexibility as compared with the rigidity of its sister idiom, Latin, has always struck even the merest tyro. It is adapted to all styles and subjects, to philosophic abstrac- tions and to lyric rhapsody, to the eloquence of Demosthenes and to the unaffected narrative of Xenophon, to the idealistic rhetoric of Plato and to the satiric humor of Aristophanes and Luciari, to Homer's grand line and to the gossiping tone of Herodotus. The dithyrambic of Pindar and the sweet simplicity of Theocritus are alike at home in the bosom of this elastic speech. In its best age, it was of all literary tongues the purest, being almost wholly unadulterated by words drawn from barbaric tongues. It possessed per- fect phonetic harmony, avoiding as it did the predominance of consonants so characteristic of Latin. Richness and variety of sound were se- cured by its abundance of diphthongs. Its system 212 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. of accent, distinct from quantity and yet harmo- nizing with it, gave a varied modulation to the rhythm of the sentence and yet avoided the sing- song of those languages in which the system of tones is predominant. Its freedom from positional grammar added to this capacity for rhythmic cadence. The completeness of the verbal inflec- tion made the expression of various shades of meaning possible, so that both precision and terse- ness were at the command of a good writer. A peculiar delicacy was imparted to the sense by the nice use of particles, to this day so untranslatable. Thus, aside from the excellence of the language as an unparalleled medium for thought and for social intercourse, it has special claims upon the regard of the philologist. Its delicate refinements of inflection, its light grace in the trying test of elaborate composition of words, its prolonged period of active life, and its preservation of various dialects in literary form, are considerations which must needs give it great value in the eyes of a student of language. That Pelasgic element, which was once supposed to have been the earliest deposit of Aryan blood in the two eastern peninsulas of the Mediterranean, I have already pronounced to have been Hamitic. That great inland sea was a Hamitic lake before it became Phoenician, Greek, Carthaginian, or Roman. It is possible that the Illyrian tribes may have been the later representative of this Hamitic population, after the Hellenic and Italic THE ARYAN TONGUES. 213 races had absorbed their brethren in the two pen- insulas. But, provisionally at least, the ancient lUyrians are ranked as akin to the Hellenes on the east and the ItaHans on the west, and as there- fore of Aryan blood. The modern representative of this ancient lUy- rian stock is the Albanian race, whose language is called the Skipetar. The Italic family, comprising the Oscan, Um- brian, and Latin races, and ultimately absorbing the Etruscans, the Kelts about the Po, and the Greeks of the south, grew, under the final domina- tion of Rome, to be the unifying element of the world. Practical qualities of a high order, the gifts of indomitable energy and of admirable military or- ganization, the genius for rule, the masterly grasp of all those principles that control the conservation of law and system, secured for this race not only the empire of the world for many centuries, but, in addition to that, an imperishable influence on society even after the fall of the empire that it had reared. The language was a fit instrument for the race. Farrar justly says : — " The language of the Italic family cannot boast of the subtle grace, harmony, and finish of Greek, any more than its ancient literature can be placed in com- parison with that of the Hellenes. The Latin verb, as an instrument for the expression of accurate thought, is immensely inferior to the Greek. It bears the stamp 214 l'^^ STORY OF LANGUAGE. of such obvious defects as a loss of the aorist, and of the perfect participle active. The absence of an article is another mark of inferiority ; and, perhaps from the rude contact of some aboriginal language, Latin lost more and more its original flexibility.'' Macaulay speaks with even greater emphasis of its defects : — " VVe cannot but think that its vocabulary is miserably poor, and its mechanism deficient both in power and precision. The want of a definite article, and of a distinction between the preterite and the aorist tenses, are two defects which are alone sufficient to place it below any other language with which we are acquainted. In its most flourishing era it was re- proached with poverty of expression. Cicero, indeed, ■was induced by his patriotic feelings to deny the charge. But the perpetual recurrence of Greek words in his most hurried and familiar letters, and the frequent use which he is compelled to make of them, in spite of all his exertions to avoid them in his philosophical works, fully prove that even this great master of the Latin tongue felt the evil which he labored to conceal from others." But, with all these defects, the Latin tongue was pre-eminently the language of law; and in its influence upon the legislation of lands that no Roman ever saw, as well as in the formative prin- ciples that it furnished to the modern Romance languages, Latin has had a vast deal to do with the modern progress of the world. Add to the forces which it has set and kept in motion the fact that its rule of the nations made a great linguistic THE ARYAN TONGUES. 215 highway for the first preaching of Christianity, and we are able to form some conception of the immense weight of the language as a factor in the world's history. From the Latin of the later empire, as already noted, through the efforts of the German invaders to articulate the words of the tongue of civili- zation, grew into life gradually Provengal, Old French, Catalan, Castilian, Portuguese, Italian, the dialect of the Grisons, and Wallachian. Pro- vengal and Old French, both of which had a trace of inflection in the form of two distinct cases for nouns, were superseded, in the whole area of what ultimately became the kingdom of France, by the French tongue. Catalan and Castilian merged into Spanish. Wallachian, spoken by that body of descendants of Roman soldiers settled in Dacia who still call themselves Romans, is divided into two dialects by the river Danube. Romansch, spoken in the Swiss canton of the Grisons, is also divided into two dialects, one of which — that used in the Engadine — is called by those who speak it Ladin. The Teutons, Letts, and Slavs held together for a time in their migration into northern, central, and eastern Europe, just as the Kelts had kept for a time with those Aryans who finally settled in the south of Europe ; just as the Italians, Illyrians, and Hellenes, after the passage of the Kelts westward, long remained together in their slow westward movement. 2l6 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. The Teutons, pressing directly on the heels of the Kelts, became severed, after their arrival in Europe, into two clearly marked divisions, — the northern or seaboard and the southern or inland races. The northern inhabited at an early period the Scandinavian peninsula, Denmark, and the islands and shores of the Baltic and the North Sea. They spoke dialects that have since been classi- fied as Piatt Dentsch, or Low German. Whether before or after their residence in these northern regions, it is not 'easy to say; but the Goths, who were certainly of the Low German kindred and are found historically in the region of the Baltic as well as in that of the Danube, were the first to have their language thrown into literary form. Before their speech was wholly lost to history in the south of Europe by the passing of the east and west Goths into the Italian and Spanish pen- insulas, it was preserved for the use of philolo- gists in our time by its use in the Bible of Vulfila, best known by the Latinized form of his name, Ulfilas. This manuscript, written in silver letters on a gold ground, is now in the University of Upsala. The Goths were the earliest of the Teutonic tribes to come in contact with the Roman Empire at the time of its decay, to overrun it, and to be- come absorbed in the populations over whom they established kingdoms. The other Low German tribes, among them the THE ARYAN TONGUES. 217 Goths of Scandinavia, spoke a similar language to the Moeso-Gothic of Vulfila. That spoken in Scan- dinavia has come down to us as the Old Norse, being preserved by its use in the Eddas compiled by the colony in Iceland. From this tongue in the course of centuries sprang modern Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian. German, even as now written and spoken, has many points of close resemblance to Greek in grammatical structure. But the Gothic branch of the German tongue was in this respect still closer to Greek, inasmuch as it retained the dual number, the middle voice for verbs, and the reduplication of the perfect tense. Gothic, as a spoken language, perished, only serving in its last moments the purpose of affecting the development of the Italian, Spanish, Provencal, and Portuguese tongues ; but the German spoken by such of the other German tribes as did not penetrate into the Roman Empire was not affected by Roman influences until much later in its history. The High German, spoken by the inland tribes, became in the course of time distinctively German, as the tongue of the German nation. The Low German, in consequence of the mixture of the sea- board races with other races, differentiated into English, Dutch, Friesian, and other languages. High German is the speech of the German Empire and of the ruling race in the Austro- Hungarian Empire, Luther's Bible having in the sixteenth century made the speech of cultivated 2l8 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. circles in the North Germany of his time the accepted type for later generations. At an earlier period the Suabian dialect had been the language of literature and of the courts. Low German became divided into Friesian and Saxon, the former being still the popular speech of the seaboard cities and the Pomeranian coast. Saxon developed into three distinct branches, — the Old Saxon of the continent, the Inflected English of the tribes that conquered Britain, and the speech of those Hollanders whom, for a few generations back, we have been calling Dutch, thus reserving for them the name that really belongs to the whole German family, ourselves included. The races that use these languages have not only originated new forms of civilization, produced splendid literatures, colonized the farthest corners of the earth, extended' in every direction the domain of science and the triumph of mind over the forces of nature, but they also represent an energy more valuable than all others : they have rescued Christian truth from the smothering en- velope of superstition. They are now the foremost races of the world, and their organized humanities give a golden promise to the future of the human family. The very name of the Slavs points to the woful history of their past contact with their western brothers, since we owe to that race-name the word slave, as well as the word serf, the latter coming from the Servian branch of the race, through the THE ARYAN TONGUES. 219 Latin servus. In the dawn of their European life the Slavs had a hard time, lying as they did be- tween the Italo-Hellenes and the Teutons on the west and the Mongol hordes on the east. The name Slav includes Bohemians, Poles, Russians, Illyrians of the Serb and Croat type, and Bulgarians. Intrinsically, as well as on account of the antiq- uity of its literature as compared with that of any other Slav race, Bohemian ranks first among the Slav languages. The race itself calls this tongue Cesky. The illustrious names of its literature, from the martyr, Huss, to the more modern Czelakouski, Kollar, Schafarik, Hanka, Palacky, are little more than names to us; but they are notable among their German neighbors. The language is rich in root-words, in flexi- bility, in precision, — if we except its scanty store of tense-forms, — and in variety of inflection. Among its characteristics are the great frequency of the sounds ch and sh and ts ; the absence of the article ; the systematic differentiation in declension for names of animate and inanimate objects; the use of a peculiar possessive adjective-form deriv- able from nouns of the animate class; and the use of a special verbal form to express habitual action. The Russian language has only lately given signs of literary vigor. The tendency among our literary critics has been to overpraise the works of Russian novelists, Tolstoi especially receiving a 220 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. share of laudation that the next generation will surely pronounce to have been hardly his due. The Lettic branch of the Aryans, so nearly related to the Slavic that it is usual to class them together under the general term Wendic, is a small household. The most important member of it is the Lithuanian. Its isolation has preserved this old speech almost unchanged through many centuries. This fact has given the language a value in the eyes of philologists wholly out of pro- portion to the historic importance of the race. It is still spoken only in a small district on the south- east corner of the Baltic. Let us now briefly mark the migrations of the Aryans of Asia. The Iranian and Indian tribes who were left behind when the more adventurous members of the family passed westward and north- ward, were still at the pastoral stage of develop- ment at the time of this separation. Of the Iranian part of this body of Asiatic Aryans, the Persians have proved to be the most vital and persistent type. Their ancient language has left remains in the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achsemenid dynasty, discovered by modern ex- plorers in the ruins of Persepolis. Akin to the Persians were the Bactrians, whose tongue — the Zend — was nearly related to Sanskrit, and is pre served in the Avesta, the sacred book of the Zoroastrian faith, still reverenced by the Parsees of Bombay, who fled to India to escape from Mohammedan persecution in their own land. THE ARYAN TONGUES. 221 There is also a version of the Avesta written in Pehlevt, a dialect of Persian current in the time of the Sassanid dynasty. The Medes and the Armenians, who may be regarded as Persians of the north long subject to Assyrian sway and to contact with the wandering Turanian tribes, were also Iranian Aryans. To them may be added the Kurds and the natives of a little district in the Caucasus Mountains whose dialect is called Ossetic. The Hindoos probably remained long with their Iranian brothers after the migration of the western Aryans. The Medes, Persians, Bactrians, and Ar- menians moved northward, the last-named settling in the land that has ever since been known by their race-name; the Bactrians, however, passing probably no great distance away from the cradle of the Aryan race. The Hindoos moved south- ward, and in the course of ages overran India and Ceylon. Turning back now to the Persians, who alone of the Iranian stock created a series of empires and kept alive their sense of race-identity and their memories of literary activity, let us see what course of development their language took. By the time that the Sassanid dynasty succeeded in overthrowing the Parthian Empire — which was in the third century — the ancient Zend and Persian, crowded with Semitic words and freed from many of its inflections, had developed into what was prac- tically a new language. This was called Pehlevt, or 222 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Huzvaresh. Next in the order of development came a tongue, the Parsee, which scholars regard as the transition from ancient Persian to modern Persian. The most elegant of the languages now spoken in Asia is this modern Persian. It holds every- where among Moslems the place that was held in Europe by the French language throughout the reign of Louis XIV. Its structure is to the old Zend and Achsemenian tongues what that of French is to Latin or that of Modern English to the old Inflected English. At the same time, it is as rich in Arabic words as English is in words of French or Latin derivation. Its literature, too, is especially rich in poetry. Ferdousi, Sadi, Hafiz, and Djami form a remarkable series of gifted poets. The Sanskrit, spoken by the ancient Hindoos and made the vehicle for a copious literature, has, in the long course of ages, like all the old inflected languages, been decomposed into a number of modern dialects. Though, like Latin, a dead lan- guage, it is still studied in the native schools of the Brahmans. Between the modern dialects and the ancient Sanskrit came the Prakrit and that dialect of •Prakrit, the Pali, which was carried by the Bud- dhists into Ceylon and Farther India. The modern dialects are numerous, but may be generally classed under the names of Bengali, Hindi, Mahratti, and Cinghalese. One variety of the Hindi, the Urdu or Hindustint, is crowded with Arabic and Persian words brought in by the Mohammedan conquerors. THE ARYAN TONGUES. 223 One Indian dialect has been carried into almost every land of the civilized world by that strange race of wanderers whom we call Gypsies. They call themselves and their language Romany. The names of some of the earnest students of the Aryan tongues to whom the science of language is indebted may fitly be given here. Among the most eminent are Jolly, Schmidt, Ludwig, Hey- mann, Lottner, Fick, Ascoli, Pezzi, Havet, Pictet, Hearn, De Coulanges. These men have recon- structed the old Aryan vocabulary, and, by the light thus shed upon usages, the very life of the primitive Aryans. Pictet has shown what minerals and plants, what animals, wild and domesticated, were known to them ; how they built and furnished their houses ; what tools and weapons they used ; what they ate and drank ; how they were clothed ; what their views of property were ; how their family was constructed ; and what was the nature of their cosmogony and mythology. The true sense of a single word will often throw a flood of light upon some distinctive custom or law, that it might otherwise puzzle us to account for. Thus, when we know that varna, the Sanskrit word for " caste," literally means " color," we are led at once to the conviction that the whole social system of castes was originally introduced to dis- criminate between the conquered races, the mixed races, and the pure-blooded invader, and to put a stop forever to the miscegenation that had too long gone on in the land. 224 '^^E STORY OF LANGUAGE. There are many historic races hard to place. Among them are not a few of those that are certainly Aryan, but we cannot say definitely to what branch of the Aryan family they belong. It is possible, for example, that several of those races, early established among Kelts or, later, among Teutons, in the western part of Europe, were Wends. The Venedi, settled north of the Vistula at the time that the Vandali, or Vandals, dwelt on the other side of that river, were, almost certainly, of Wendic blood. The Veneti, whipped by Cssar in the seafight off the coast of Brittany; the Veneti, dwelling on the shores of the Adriatic and destined to become founders of Venice ; and the Vandals who, established in northern Africa after many wanderings, swept the Mediterranean as corsairs in the fifth century, — may all have been Wends. The one word father will serve to show the kinship of the Aryans. In Sanskrit it \% pitri ; in Zend, paitar ; in Persian, pader ; in Latin, pater: in Gr&ek, pater ; in Erse, athair ; in Gothic, vatar ; in German, vater ; in Saxon, faeder ; in Dutch, Danish, and Swedish, fader ; in Italian and Span- ish, padt-e ; in French, pkre. But in Bohemian it is otec ; and we have to look to other words, such as bratr, " brother," and sest7'a, " sister," to show the Aryan kinship. THE ARYAN TONGUES. 225 H CO , Saxon Eh J- Dansk n^vC. Swede L °^™" Norslc ( Lithuanian ' Lettic 5 Old Prussian E-< I Lettic Cfi c -< Russian W E. Slavic Bulgarian ^ ^ Illyrian Lech H W. Slavic i Czech l-r( ( Polabian H h J '0 c in •i 4) Doric 1 ~ (i jEolic la 3 Attic f 3 iS 1 t3 C5 1 ' Ionic J rt < ;z; H c Iz; A Portuguese >< pi < "B"^ tin Umb lal Latin Roniansch Wallachian Ladin Italian H^ ►3 1 Catalan I '5 J Castilian j p. > c ° Cfi § "^ Provencal ( LOld French \ "t rWelsh Cornish Breton Galatian Gallic Belgic Helvetian ;= f Gaelic .^ Erse ■S ( Manx O CHAPTER XV. LATIN. Through the wonderful capacity for organiza- tion and for rule of the race that spoke it, the Latin language has had a supremacy in Europe of various kinds and degrees for over two thousand years. As a spoken tongue and as the basis of all educa- tion, it has continued to hold its lofty place down to our own time. After the formation of those languages that are rightly called its daughters, it still remained the universal literary tongue for all serious studies through a long period of what is even ranked as modern history. It was the vehicle chosen by Descartes for his philosophical specu- lations and by Linnaeus for his natural history. It was the tongue in which Salmasius attacked and Milton defended the English people when they tried and executed their king. It is to-day the official language of the Church of Rome, as it was in the age of TertuUian. I have quoted the opinion of Macaulay on the inferiority of Latin as a literary instrument. A better scholar, our gifted essayist, Hugh S. Legare, speaks to the same effect, in a passage in which he LA TIN. 227 nevertheless extols it as emphatically the language of law. "Roman literature," says he, "properly so-called, is, in comparison of Greek or our own English, absolutely mean. The very language, except in the matter of politics and law, where it is richer even than the Greek, is the poorest of all, — without flexibility, variety, or copiousness. It is, indeed, impressed with the majesty which belongs to dominion and superiority long estab- lished and directed by a grave wisdom and the love of order and civilization." It had also another capacity which was fully developed in its subsequent use by men of letters as well as by jurisconsults, — a capacity perhaps incompatible with the fiery spirit of poetry, the profound reach of philosophy, or the light touch and exquisite grace of perfect comedy. I mean its capacity for rhetorical finish. In this art, De Quincey claims for Roman literature a singular pre-eminence; and he attributes its excellence in this respect to the sinewy compactness of the Latin tongue. He points especially to Livy, Ovid, the two Plinys, Lucan, Petronius Arbiter, Quin- tilian, and, above all, the two Senecas, as marked instances of superiority in rhetorical burnish and compression. We shall see as we go on how the language was so formed as to lend itself readily to these practical and, as it were, social uses, rather than to ideal and individual flights of genius. It must have required many generations of resi- 228 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. dence or wandering on European soil for the Achaian, the Latin, the Umbrian, and the Keltic tongues to acquire the distinct individuality that is apparent when they come within the ken of history. The Italian races that found their way into the midmost peninsula of the Mediterranean, and there supplanted what was probably a Hamitic race, were divided at first into the two branch-stocks of Latins and Umbrians, the latter including their southern offshoots, the Marsians and the Samnites. The Latin League, with Alba for their chief city, held central Italy, the Etruscan power on the north and the Hellenic communities on the south long preventing any expansion in either direction. In process of time, however, the border city of Rome, early of mixed Etruscan, Sabine, and Latin popu- lation, gained the supremacy over the League once held by Alba, and pushed the Latin power into a much wider area. The Latins struggling for equal rights in the enlarged domain, Rome overthrew their armies, and dissolved the League. The Latin language survived the fall of the race ; but Rome was henceforth to be sole mistress. She consoli- dated the Italians and then mastered successively the peninsula and the whole Mediterranean area, but not until she had absorbed the civilizations of the Etruscans and of the Hellenic cities in the south. The earlier culture, common to the whole Aryan family, which the Itahans had brought with them LATIN. 229 from Asia, is easily established by the identity of a large vocabulary of family relations, of religious ideas, of domesticated animals, of numerals, of metals, of housebuilding, of shipbuilding, of cloth- ing, in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. The same evidence of language attests the knowledge of agriculture by the Helleno-Italic stock and indeed by all the western Aryans before their separation. Both marriage and the founding of cities were celebrated with rites connected with the pursuit of agriculture. These tribes, too, had already changed descent in the gens, or clan, from the female line to the male, while the Etruscans, though more advanced in some points, were in this respect still at the earlier stage of development. The conservatism of the Romans, their rever- ence for authority, for law, and for the State, — so strongly in contrast with the Hellenic freedom of thought, — seems to have been derived from the Etruscan element in their national structure. It is true that in these respects, as in many others, the Romans strongly resembled the Lacedaemonians ; but I have long had doubts as to the purity of the Hellenic blood in the Dorian invaders of the Pelo- ponnesos. There are good reasons for assuming that there was a strong infusion of Hamitic blood in their veins. There were Pelasgians where they came from. All antiquity believed the Roman people to be composed, as has already been stated, of three 230 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. distinct races, — the Etruscan, the Latin, and the Sabine. Several of the gentes, or clans, in the third Roman tribe, the Luceres, were Etruscan. Mommsen is vehement against their having owed anything to the Etruscans, much less a large share of their blood. But Mommsen is here opposed by a better though an earlier authority, his illustrious countryman, Niebuhr. There can be no doubt that the language drew most largely from the Latin element; but the warlike Sabine and the ceremonious Etruscan seem to have given a stronger stamp to the moral temper of the race than the Latin, whose superi- ority in gentile organization and at first in the backing obtained from the cantons of the League, insured the prevalence of his tongue. Niebuhr believed that Rome was at one time the capital of a powerful Etruscan state. "The remains," says Reclus, " of ancient cities, cyclopean walls, burial- grounds, urns, vases, and ornaments prove that on the right bank of the Tiber the Etruscans were at least as strong as the Italians." It is certain, too, that the Tarquins were an Etruscan dynasty. It was the Tarquins who first gave the plebeian denizens some rights as citizens, enrolling them in the army, and doubling the Senate by recruits from the wealthy plebeians. All the evidence goes to show that in the origi- nal state the Sabines formed the warrior caste; the Etruscans, the priestly ; while the Latins, be- sides being leaders in war, were the husbandmen LATIN. 231 of patrician blood. The expulsion of the Tarquins meant the triumph of the Latins as the future masters of the state. But the complex elements remained in the blood of the Roman race, and made them differ through all their history from their Dorian kindred, whom they so strongly re- sembled in some particulars. The warlike spirit and the frugal manners of their Sabine ancestors were no less characteristic of the men of the early republic than the taste for agriculture that came to them from their Latin forefathers; while the toga praetexta, the curule chair, the fasces of the lictors, the stately triumph, and the mysteries of augur and pontiff were all derived from the ma- jestic ceremonial observances of the Etruscans. Indeed, the very word "ceremony" i^caremonia) came from the ancient Etruscan city of Caere. Strabo's statement that this city was founded by Pelasgians from Thessaly points to the Hamitic element in the blood of the Etruscans, if the pres- ent view of the most advanced ethnologists as to the Hamitic origin of the Pelasgians be well established. The Latins, who furnished the Latin language not only with its name, but undoubtedly also with much the larger part of its vocabulary and with its fundamental structure, are considered by ethnolo- gists as having been at one time more widely ex- tended than we find them at the dawn of history. But in Campania and elsewhere in southern Italy, they were mastered early by the civilization of 232 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Hellenic colonies. In that very region, by the way, we meet with names that help to show that the ground stock of the Latin race was Hamitic. Compare the Asculum in the land of Picenum, that in Daunia, and that in ApuHa, with the race name of the Oski and of the Tuscans (for Tuscan is as old a form as Etruscan), with Tusculum.in the later Latin region, with the traditional father of the Alban line, Ascanius, and with the race-name of the Basques, Euskaldunac, and we have a root that shoots up from the soil in slightly varied leaf- age wherever there is a Hamitic people. It may be traced, too, in the Askelon of the PhiHstines and in the Lake Ascania of Bithynia. Reclus, it is true, derives the name of the city of Askelon from the garlic that grows near it ; but it is much more likely that the city gave name to the escu- lent. Tarascon has the double Etruscan note in it, — Tar and Ask. The Latin language and the Umbro-Sabellian were the two branches into which the Italic stock divided. Both of them seem to have closer affinity to the Hellenic tongue than to any other form of Aryan speech, showing a general agreement in vocabulary as well as in their inflectional sys- tem. Schleicher and Pick have attempted to re- construct the mother tongue from which sprang these two divergent groups. After the divergence Greek developed an infinitely richer vowel-system, and created a number of new verb-forms. To show how much poorer Latin is in its verb-system, LATIN. 233 it is only necessary to state that while the Latin verb has but one hundred and forty-three possible inflections, the Greek has no less than five hundred and seven. The dual, which Greek dropped only late in its literary history, was apparently never used in Latin. It also lost, if it ever had it, the definite article. There is no assured evidence that it ever had the middle voice. It likewise departed still further from the Greek by its acquisition of an extensive vocabulary, apparently not related at all to the Hellenic in any of its dialects. Some scholars have supposed these words to have come from Keltic sources, but it is far more probable that they were derived from the Etruscan element in the Roman race. There were three stages in the development of Latin, — the archaic stage, before it was used in literature, the literary stage, and the stage in which the popular language reappeared and to some extent took its place in literature. The first is known chiefly from inscriptions. The Chant of the Arval Brothers is one of the oldest specimens of the language. Others are fragments of the ancient laws called the Twelve Tables. These are all difificult to interpret; and to the Romans of the literary period they seem to have been almost as unintelligible as to us. The popular language, fluid and free to change, became fixed by its use in literature under the influence of Greek culture. Five centuries had elapsed from the building of the city before Rome 234 ^•^•S STORY OF LANGUAGE. had the beginnings of a hterature. It is just possible that a rich unwritten Hterature may have existed in the shape of ballads narrating those stories retold in a later age by Livy, — ballads such as Macaulay imagined when he sang in Eng- lish his " Lays of Ancient Rome." It is a great pity, if such a literature existed, that it did not survive, for, as Macaulay truly says, — ■ " The early history of Rome is indeed far more poeti- cal than anything else in Latin literature. The loves of the Vestal and the God of War, the cradle laid among the reeds of Tiber, the fig-tree, the she-wolf, the shep- herd's cabin, the recognition, the fratricide, the rape of the Sabines, the death of Tarpeia, the fall of Hostus Hostilius, the struggle of Mettus Curtius through the marsh, the women rushing with torn raiment and dishev- elled hair between their fathers and their husbands, the nightly meetings of Numa and the Nymph by the well in the sacred grove, the fight of the three Romans and the three Albans, the purchase of the Sibylline books, the crime of TuUia, the simulated madness of Brutus, the am- biguous reply of the Delphian oracle to the Tarquins, the wrongs of Lucretia, the heroic actions of Horatius Codes, of Scsevola, and of Clcelia, the battle of Regillus, won by the aid of Castor and Pollux, the defence of Cremera, the touching story of Coriolanus, the still more touch- ing story of Virginia, the wild legend about the draining of the Alban lake, the combat between Valerius Corvus and the gigantic Gaul, — are among the many instances which will at once suggest themselves to every reader." Macaulay cites several authors of the literary period among the Romans in proof of the fact LATIN. 235 that ballads conLaining these old stories once existed. But before the splendor of Greek litera- ture the beauty of these simple lays lost their charm for the Roman public. Naevius sang the First Punic War in the old Saturnian verse, a true ballad measure. Ennius sang the Second Punic War in hexameters. The victory of the foreign taste caused the ancient ballads to be completely forgotten. A new literature sprang up, wholly alien in spirit and form. The fathers of that literature were themselves foreigners and slaves. Livius Andronicus, Terence, and Csecilius all began their Roman life in servitude. The first was from Tarentum, then a Greek city; the second was from Carthage. Plautus, though not himself a slave, gained his daily bread by work in a mill. They were all copyists from the Greek. Ennius, Attius, Pacuvius, — nay, even Nsevius, the last of the Saturnian poets, — imitated the Greek tragedians. Plautus and Terence trans- lated the comedies of Menander and Philemon. Everything goes to show that literature was not an indigenous production among the Romans. What little they had produced of themselves, they allowed to pass into oblivion, After their contact with Greek civilization, they were long content to take subjects, form, everything, from the polished Hellenic race. They resembled the Spartans in their single-hearted devotion to the one aim of building up a great state. To the classical writers, Latin was in some 236 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. degree an artificial language. Its vocabulary was not the same as that of the popular dialect. The rigid forms of construction were not adhered to by the masses. It is only in Plautus and Terence that we find an approximation to the dialect of every-day life. Plautus, especially, re- tains many forms which the writers of the Augus- tan age regarded as archaisms. These very expressions, however, were probably in current use among the people or in the country long after the decay of Roman literature, just as we find still in provincial use in England and Scot- land forms of speech that date back to Chaucer's time. Later, the language of literature becomes further and further removed from that of common life, and more and more a conventional usage of the cul- tivated. The charming diminutives with which the plays of Plautus and the lyrics of Catullus are so thickly strewn were tabooed by the graver taste of the Augustan age. Compound epithets were in the same manner rejected, and frequen- tatives, too, were put under the ban of a some- what hypercritical and too exacting taste. Still, even during the long period of its literary culture, despite the constant effort at a somewhat monotonous uniformity of dignified expression, there were changes going on in the language, — changes in vocabulary, in inflection, in word forma- tion, and in syntax. Many Greek words came in, from contact with the Greeks of southern Italy as LATIN. 237 well as from the study and imitation of Greek lit- erature ; and with them came frequently Greek forms of inflection. In the Latin of the later days of imperial rule the tender diminutives reappeared. In the " Satyricon " of Petronius Arbiter, where he introduces the conversation of the lower classes, a vast number of provincial forms loom up, showing us what a different tongue was spoken by the masses from that in ordinary literary use. Bar- barisms of all sorts disfigure the style of the African Apuleius. The vocabulary is still further enlarged when ecclesiastical Latin comes to be written. Long, mouth-filling words have the pref- erence over the simpler forms, the old plebeian names for things emerge and take the place of classical terms, adjectives are turned into substan- tives, verbs of secondary derivation take the place of simple verbs, the number of compound words greatly increases, and many irregularities in inflec- tion are noticeable. Thus, for sedes is used sessi- monium, sessibulum, or sessorium ; for placens, placibilis ; for crescere, adincrescere ; for equus, caballiis ; for damns, mansio ; for os, hucca ; for caput, testa. There are also many changes in the meaning of words. Focus, once " hearth," comes to mean " fire ; " papilio, once " butterfly," is now " pavihon ; " venatio, once " hunting," is now " venison." There is also a growing tendency to analytic instead of synthetic construction,- prepo- sitions being used much more generally than in the classic stage of the language to express what 238 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. inflected tongues naturally express by cases, — ille, hie, or is being used for the definite article, and nnus for the indefinite, and the infinitive following a preposition, as later became the usage in the Romance languages. The sense of quantity in verse is lost, and accent and rhyme please the ear instead. In time these changes become so pro- nounced as to make it evident that a dialect of Romance has taken the place of Latin. Mean- while, Latin continues to be written, while the Romance tongue is spoken. In the seventh cen- tury, the term Latin is confined to the literary lan- guage, while the popular speech is called lingua Romana. Such is the history of the Latin tongue, until it is wholly supplanted as a spoken idiom by its daughters in all the lands in which it had once been current. Let us now go back a little and consider it as it was in the days of its purity. The speech of Fannius against Caius Gracchus was regarded by Cicero as the best of all the ora- tions of the great formative period of Latin prose. The standard for pronunciation in that age was given by gentlewomen like Laelia and Cornelia. The next generation had the simple taste of Csesar and Cato to counteract the Hellenizing tendencies of Cicero and Atticus ; and, in the time of Augus- tus, as a literary organ the language reached its highest pitch of excellence. To the Romans themselves it was clear enough LATIN. 239 that there were characteristic differences between their tongue and that of Hellas. Seneca speaks of the stately and dignified movement of the Latin period, giving weight and emphasis to the thought it expressed. This is greatly enhanced by the uniformity of its accent, giving to the cadence of the sentence something like the heavy tread of the legion on its march. The precision of its grammar and the absence of dialect help, too, to maintain for the language its disciplined character, bestow- ing upon it what may not unfitly be described as a military pomp. This exactness of expression, while it precluded grace, versatiHty, and subtle sug- gestiveness, secured clearness and precision, and permitted both rhythm and force. Its dignity, its uniformity, its precision, — all concurred to make it emphatically the language of law and of organi- zation. Latin prose was perhaps carried to its high-water mark by Cicero, who, catching the tone of the ablest Romans, men like Scipio and Laelius, and armed with the finest culture of the Athenian schools, gave it all it could receive in the way of artistic finish of style. He was ably assisted, as already intimated, by the simple and straight- forward taste of Csesar. The prose that was the final outcome of their efforts has no rival in the qualities of dignity and force, cadence and rhythm, and yields to its daughter, the French prose, alone in clearness and precision. The best Latin is always direct, forcible, and perfectly lucid. 240 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. At the close of the first century, a Hispanian Latinity prevailed, led off by the Senecas, Lucan, Martial, and Quintilian. At the beginning of the next century, we find the African style paramount in writers like Fronto and Apuleius, whose conceits were mainly the affectation of an archaic style and a barbarous mixture of the forms of prose and poetry. This debasing tendency, however, did not pre- vail universally. The style of Gaius and the other lawyers is dry and unadorned, but clear, terse, and exact. Later still, from Claudian and Ausonius down to the medieval writers, we find the language gradu- ally losing the sense of quantity and passing wholly under the dominion of accent, preferring big words to simple ones, using rustic terms instead of the classical ones, turning adjectives into nouns, and using compound and derivative forms instead of the simple ones. This change has already been mentioned and illustrated. It is from these sources that many words have come into the Romance languages. Thus, giorno in Italian and jour in French are derived, not from dies, but from diurnum. The tendency, too, to analytic structure, as be- fore said, is marked, and shows how readily by a mere process of growth in this direction arose the analytic structure of the Romance tongues. That the two articles should have developed in this later Latin is the most surprising thing of all, for, ex- LATIN. 241 cept a trace of that meaning being assigned to unus in Catullus, there is an entire absence of the limiting sense of the article in classical Latin, and Greek had only the definite article. It is impos- sible to avoid the conviction that the Germanic races were already strongly influencing the genius of the language. It was only after centuries of degradation that anything like a pure Latinity revived, through the enthusiasm of Petrarca and the Humanists who followed him. Later still, Poliziano in Italy, Agri- cola in Germany, Erasmus in the Netherlands, Mu- retus in France, and Buchanan in Scotland wrote with a purity which Avould perhaps have been acknowledged by Cicero himself. Even as late as the eighteenth century, we find Latin used for works intended for the scholarly world at large. Leibnitz, however, was perhaps the last to use it habitually. In the debates in the Diet of Hun- gary, it was the parliamentary tongue until the year 1825, when it gave place to Magyar. It is singular how almost invariably the Latin writers are found to have come from other lands than the old home of the Latins. I cannot recall the name of a single one who was born in Rome. The early writers, as already said, were foreign- ers. Catullus was of Verona ; Cicero, of Ar- pinum ; Sallust and Varro, from the Sabine land ; Horace, from Apulia; Vergil, of Mantua; Livy, of Padua; Lucan, Martial, Quintilian, Seneca, were from Spain; Apuleius, Cyprian, Lactantius, 16 242 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Tertullian, Augustine, were from Africa; Vitru- vius, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, from Cisalpine Gaul; Ulpian, of Tyre; Ammianus, of Antioch; Claudian, of Alexandria; Ambrose, Salvian, Sidonius Apollinaris, from Gaul. Rome could produce great leaders, but seldom gave birth to men who could use her majestic language to tell of their deeds. Important as this literature has been to mod- ern Europe and her colonies in the development of her languages, her literature, and her civilization, it is in itself inferior to more than one of the litera- tures of the Aryan races. What Macaulay says of it has some of the exaggerated tone natural to his vehement rhetoric ; but it is in the main true. " The literature of Rome," says he, "was born old. All the signs of decrepitude were on it in the cradle. We look in vain for the sweet lisp and the graceful wild- ness of an infant dialect. We look in vain for a single great creative mind, — for a Homer or a Dante, a Shake- speare or a Cervantes. In their place we have a crowd of fourth-rate and fifth-rate authors, translators, and imi- tators without end. The rich heritage of Grecian phi- losophy and poetry was fatal to the Romans. They would have acquired more wealth if they had succeeded to less. Instead of accumulating fresh intellectual treas- ures, they contented themselves with enjoying, disposing in new forms, or impairing by an injudicious manage- ment, those which they took by descent. Hence, in most of their works, there is scarcely anything sponta- neous and racy, scarcely any originality in the thoughts, LATIN. 243 scarcely any idiom in the style. Their poetry tastes of the hothouse. It is transplanted from Greece, with the earth of Pindus clinging round its roots. It is nursed in careful seclusion from the Italian air. The gardeners are often skilful ; but the fruit is almost always sickly, One hardy and prickly shrub, of genuine Latin growth, must indeed be excepted. Satire was the only indige- nous produce of Roman talent ; and in our judgment by far the best." 244 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. 9 j (Burgundian) o £'J S.J 1 (Visigoth) (Alleman) (Frank) (Norman) (Alan) (Visigoth) 1 (Vandal) L(Arabic) fd t-i a o (H '.as Sueve) Visigoth) (Arabic) ?~l _ ( (Ostrogoth) " l (Lombard) 1^ »■ (Slav) > Z o Q H c^ O H K H H f O o 3 ((Rhstian) B I (Alleman) CHAPTER XVI. INFLECTED ENGLISH. Inflected English was the English spoken by the Sassenach, by which term I mean to des- ignate the various invading tribes of Teutonic blood who were so called by the Keltic population of Britain. The term Anglo-Saxon is a poor one, for it excludes the Jutes, who were the earliest of these invaders. It was in the year 449 that Hengest and Horsa, chiefs of the Jutes, settled in the Isle of Thanet, in the north of Kent. The Saxons did not come until 477, when their chiefs, Ella and Cissa, landed on the south coast, near the Roman city of Regnum, afterward called from Cissa Cis- sanceaster, now Chichester. Early in the sixth century, the Angles came over, settling in the northeast of Britain. They were all slow in making their separate conquests, and it was two hundred years after the Romans had left the island before it was fairly in the hands of the Sassenach. In Scotland, they drove the Kelts into the Highlands ; in England, into the mountains of Wales, Devonshire, and 246 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Cornwall, and into Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire. Here the Keltic people, called Welsh by the Sassenach, long remained independ- ent, but losing much of the civilization they had acquired under Roman rule. As there was constant hostility between the two races, there was not at this period any great mingling of bloods; and hence the traces of the Keltic tongue in Inflected English are compara- tively few. At the close of the sixth century, the Jutes were Christianized from Rome, the earlier Christianity of the Kelts having naturally failed to influence any of the Teutonic invaders as yet to abandon their faith in the old mythology of their fathers. The wars between the different Teutonic king- doms in the land had just ceased, with the recog- nition of Egbert, King of the West Saxons, as ruler over all the English, as the Sassenach now called themselves, when new invaders came to disturb the peace. These were the Danes, or Northmen, sea-rovers, as the Sassenach were before them ; and they made settlements not only in England, but in the Orkneys, the Isle of Man, and on the east coast of Ireland also. In the end, they conquered all the north and east of England, called, for some generations after them, the Dane- lagh. Indeed, eventually England was ruled by a briefly seated dynasty of Danish kings; and hardly had the old English line of kings been reinstated, when another set of Northmen, who INFLECTED ENGLISIL 247 had undergone an education of a few generations in France, overthrew the Enghsh and completely mastered the land. There are traces of the Danish tongue in many names of places a[nd families, and in a few words that were permanently added to the English language. The influence of that form of French spoken by the Normans was far greater, and will be traced at a later period. The blood of both Dane and Norman was an invaluable addition to the English stock. Some of the best qualities of the race are due to this admixture; and both language and literature have gained immensely by the loftier strain of the Norseman's nature, as well as by the fervor of the Keltic element and the humor of the Euskarian. Inflected English differs from modern analytic English not only in its grammatical system, but also in vocabulary. Thousands of words have come into Modern English from other languages, while a large part of the vocabulary of Inflected English has wholly disappeared. Still, by gradual stages of change, our modern tongue has descended directly from the speech of the wild Teutonic tribes that landed in Britain in the middle of the fifth century. This speech, long broken into dialects in Britain itself, was the language, probably dialectal then, of several dis- tinct tribes lying along the coasts of the North Sea at the mouths of the Rhine and the Weser and the Elbe. Their dialects all belonged to the 248 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Low German division of the great Teutonic stock, the earliest of them all to take literary form being that of the Moeso-Goths who left the shores of the Baltic and went southward more than a century before. The Gothic tongue was used, it will be remembered, in the Bible of Ulfilas in the fourth century. The dialect of the Saxons is supposed to have had close affinity with the tongue now spoken in Holland ; that of the Angles, with the Friesian ; that of the Jutes seems to have stood midway between the northern and the southern dialects, though it might be supposed to have been still nearer the Scandinavian type than the speech of the Angles. The Angles of Northumbria were the first of the new settlers to cultivate literature, and hence they gave name to the language, and the language ultimately gave name to the race, in spite of the subsequent rise to power of the West Saxon kingdom. Recognizing then the historic continuity of English, we find, on close examination of its long series of changes, that it has undergone three main stages of development, easily distin- guished by differences of inflection. Old English has full inflections ; Middle EngHsh has uniform inflections, the result of a sort of leveling process ; Modern English has no inflections, or very slight traces of the old inflectional system. The early speech was highly inflected. Nouns, INFLECTED ENGLISH. 249 adjectives, and verbs had all numerous changes of termination to express their different relations to one another. There were four cases ; and the declensions were divided, as in German, into strong and weak. The first and second pronouns had three numbers. The verb had, properly speaking, but two tenses, the present and the past. It had a subjunctive mood. In the structure of the sen- tence the old Teutonic order prevailed, the verb closing the sentence. The ornaments of poetry were alliteration and the large use of figurative terms and striking compounds. Few foreign words entered into the language. Latin gave the words for street, mile, punishment, church, bishop, Latin, cheese, butter, pepper, pound, inch, and in the names of places, camp, colony, trench, harbor, rampart. This contribution was exceedingly small compared with the vast influx of Latin words, both directly and through the French, into Modern English. The Roman colonies left those words that have passed so largely into the names of places; the Church of Rome brought those that have an eccle- siastical meaning. We find castra, in the north and east of England, with the hard sound, as in Lancaster, Doncaster, Tadcaster. In the midland counties, the same word takes the softer sound of cester, as in Leicester, Towcester, Gloucester. In the west and south, it takes the still softer form of Chester, as in Chester, Manchester, Winchester. Strata we find, not only in the word street, but also in the names of places like Stratford, Stratton, 250 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Stretton, Stretford. Colonia gave Colne, Lincoln; fossa gave Fosbrooke, Fosbridge; partus gave Portsmouth, Bridport. Ecclesiastical Latin brought in such words as postal from apostolus, biscap from episcapus, calc from calix, clerc from clericus, munec from mona- chus, preast from presbyter, aelmesse from eleemo- siine, predician from prcedicdre, regal from rigula. In later English, these took the form of apostle, bishop, chalice, clerk, monk, priest, alms, preach, rule. Along with the monks came some of the pro- ductions of the larger world beyond the seas ; and it was at this period that the language received the words that were to become in Modern English butter, cheese ; cedar, fig, pear, peach ; lettuce, lily pepper, pease ; camel, lion, elephant ; oyster, trout pound, oimce ; candle, table ; marble, mint. Keltic gave the words for badger, breeches, clout, pool, crock, cradle, darn, dainty, mop, pillow, glen, havoc, kiln, mattock. To these must be added the names of many rivers, mountains, lakes, and hills. Thus, Esk in Scotland, and Ex and Avon in England are the names of rivers, because both these words mean " water " in different Keltic dialects. There are fourteen Avons in Great Britain, while there are twenty streams called Ex. In Wales the same name is found in the form Usk ; in Yorkshire, in the form Ouse. We find it, too, in the names of places, as in Axminster, Oxford, Uxbridge. The Keltic name for " mountain " appears in Wales as INFLECTED ENGLISH. 351 Pen, in Scotland as Ben. The Pennine Mountains in England answer to the Apennine range in Italy. Later on, with the Normans, and still later on, through the influence of Irish wars and of the ad- herence of the Highlanders of Scotland to the cause of the Stuarts, there came many other Kel- tic words into current English. The Danish invasions put an end to the North- umbrian culture, and the West Saxon dialect took then the foremost place, King Alfred's own Hterary labors doing much to give it prominence. The Northumbrian literature culminated in the eighth century. It was in the ninth century that the re- vival of learning under Alfred took place. The Northumbrian poems were copied at this time in the West Saxon dialect, and it is in this form that they have survived. The earliest specimens of Inflected English are the inscriptions on the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses. These are in the Runic character. In the manuscripts, the characters are of that variety of the Roman letters found already in use among the Kelts by the Sassenach on their arrival in the island. As no convenient signs could be found in that alphabet for the English sounds w and th, the Runic letters called wen and thorn were adopted. W, however, is now printed in the texts of In- flected English, instead of the foreign-looking wen. The two forms of thorn, the one representing the thick and the other the thin sound of th, are re- 252 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. tained. C and G, as in Latin, were always hard sounds. As a general rule, the root-syllable had the accent. After the Norman Conquest, by overlaying them with the universal use of Norman-French, had put all the dialects into the same state of thraldom, many Danish and other Scandinavian words emerged with the struggling English and took their place in it, when it finally came again to the surface. Such are all names of towns ending in by, of which there are said to be more than six hundred in the east of England. By in Danish means " town," and this is the meaning of the word by- law, a law for a special town. Such are also the words, common in some parts of England and in some forms of our literature, beck, meaning a stream ; fell, an elevated bleak tract of land ; firth, or fiord, an arm of the sea; force, a waterfall; garth, a yard, — in the Orkneys, a house with the land belonging to it; holm, an island in a river; kirk, a church ; oe, an island ; thorpe, a village ; thwaite, a forest clearing; vik, or wick, a station for ships, or a creek. Many of these words are found in composition, making a part of the names of places or families, such as Wilberforce, Dunkirk, Berwick, Hogarth, Trenholm, Goldthwaite. But the most vital addition to the language from the tongue of the Danes is the word are, which took the place of the Inflected English sindon, the other form of which, bcoth, usually has a future , force. From the Danes also we get the habit of INFLECTED ENGLISH. 253 using a prefix with the infinitive, though they used at instead of to, and this usage still continues in Tennyson's native Lincolnshire. Other Danish words still in use as familiar English everywhere, or as merely dialect of the northern and eastern shires, or familiar to us in the old ballad poetry of the Border, are the bole of a tree, to be boun or bound on a journey, to busk in the sense of "dress" or " make ready," cake, call, crop (to cut), curl, cut, dairy, daze, din, droop, fellow, flit, for, froward, hustings, ill, irk, kid, kindle, loft, odd, plough, root, scold, sky, tarn, weak, and ugly. The Norman Conquest found the language already tending gradually to pass from the syn- thetic to the analytic stage. The substitution in the north and east of England of the Danish tongue for the Northumbrian dialect had of itself shaken the stability of the language; and when to this was added the rule of a Danish dynasty over all England, its disintegration became rapid. The declensions of nouns became unsettled: nouns that used to have a or u for their plural termination now took the ending as that belonged to another declension. Even before the conquest of the country by William the Norman, the language had been in- vaded and to some extent conquered by Norman- French; for Edward, the last king of Alfred's line, half Norman in blood and wholly so in rear- ing, had so thronged his court with Norman priests and nobles that for a quarter of a century before the 254 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. fatal landing at Pevensey, French was the fashion- able language in England. The fight at Senlac made that which had been a fashion permanent usage, and Norman-French became for generations supreme in the land. By its long clash with Eng- lish, it completed the change from synthetic to analytic speech. The conquest at once established in England a foreign court, a foreign aristocracy, and a foreign hierarchy. Norman-French was the language of all who were in power, and it was necessarily used by large numbers of the conquered race. English of course almost wholly ceased to be written, and as a consequence lost all its vocabu- lary except the homeliest words of ordinary life. The Normans meanwhile were contributing to the slowly forming new idiom, part-English, part- French, a few Keltic words that they had learned from their mothers in the old Gallic land upon which their piratical fathers had settled. The French they spoke in Normandy, along with the large vocabulary it had received from Latin, had retained a number of old Keltic words, which passed into English in this way. Among these are bag, bargain, and barter ; barrel, basin, basket, and bucket; bonnet, button, and ribbon; car and cart; dagger and gown ; mitten ■a.ryA motley ; rogue, varlet, vassal, and wicket. It was many genera- tions later that Burns's poems and Walter Scott's romances, reviving that interest in the Highlanders felt in the times of the Civil War and the Jacobite risings, fixed in the English language such Keltic INFLECTED ENGLISH. 255 words as clan, claymore, philabeg, kilt, plaid, pi- broch, and slogan. Whiskey was not so slow in nat- uralizing itself. When the Angevin dynasty came to the throne, other dialects of French besides the Norman poured like a flood into the land, and English sank into still greater disgrace. The loss of Normandy, however, threw the houses of the foreign nobility into closer associa- tion with the native English, and by the time the great wars of Edward III. and Henry V. came to make all alike proud of the name of Englishman, the English tongue, greatly changed in structure and largely filled with French words, succeeded in struggling to the front. It is at this point that something should be said about the literature of Inflected English ; for, un- important and devoid of interest in itself, it is a valuable factor in the development of the language, and in enabling us to comprehend the changes it has undergone. The oldest literature in Inflected English consists of three poems, " The Traveler's Song," " Deor's Complaint," and " Beowulf," all of which were once beheved to have been composed on the continent and brought over with them by the invading tribes, being long handed down by recitation before they were committed to writing. This is still thought to be the case so far as concerns " The Traveler's Song" and " Deor's Complaint," the composition of which is referred to the closing years of the sixth 256 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. century. The first of these is the work of Wid- sith, a poet of the Myrgings, a tribe dwelling near the Eider. The second is regarded as belonging to the same period. Its authorship is, however, unknown. "Beowulf," a work of crude power, is now be- lieved to have been written about the beginning of the eighth century. As to the question of where it was composed, authorities still differ. It is a hero- myth, relating to the Swedes, the Scandinavian Goths, and the Danes. Its interest is largely due to the fact that the later literature in Inflected English is so unoriginal, consisting almost wholly of paraphrases of the Scriptures and of the lives of the saints. Influenced by the Culdees of lona, the culture of the Northumbrian monasteries early reached a high point for that age; but the literature was chiefly in Latin. Besides the Latin writings, in which the scholarship of the time felt bound to ex- press itself, there was, however, another body of literature that was the fruit of a natural longing on the part of the race to put into their native tongue the religious teachings they had so lately received. This desire gave birth to the " Paraphrases " of Csedmon. The Lindisfarne " Gospels " belong also to this period. In the early years of the eighth century flourished Cynewulf, — a West Saxon poet of some originality and of greater versatility than any others that have come down to us. He wrote, besides the usual INFLECTED ENGLISH. 257 religious' poems, — his were " Phcenix," "Crist," " Elene, or The Finding of the Cross," and "Juliana," — secular poems: "The Wanderer," "The Seafarer," "The Wife's Complaint," and " Riddles." Felix, a monk of Croyland, was the author of " Guthlac." To these must be added the poem of "Judith," and "Andreas," — a poem founded on an apocryphal work in Greek, " The Acts of the Apostles Andrew and Matthew." In the ninth century came Alfred's struggles with the Danes, who had already put an end to the short-lived culture of the Northumbrians. But the vivid energy of Alfred — I use Green's admir- ing expression — was displayed no less in his ardent devotion to learning than in his wars with Guthrum and Hasting. He translated Gregory the Great's " Cura Pastoralis," Orosius's " Historia Universalis," Boethius's " De Consolatione Philoso- phise," and Baeda's " Historia Ecclesiastica." Nor were these works mere translations, for he added many shrewd comments derived from his general reading and his own experience. It is believed that the " Saxon Chronicle," existing before in rudest outline, owed to his command and en- couragement the fuller form which it now began to take. It was kept up in after times with vary- ing meagreness and copiousness of detail until the stormy reign of Stephen, when it died out at last in the Abbey of Peterborough. Along with the " Saxon Chronicle " ought to be mentioned also the " Laws " of Ethelbert and of Ine. 17 258 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. To the close of the tenth century belongs " The Battle of Maldon." After this, early in the eleventh century, come the " Lives of the Saints," the trans- lation of the "Heptateuch," and the " Homilies" of Wolfstan, and also the " Homilies " of ^Ifric, Archbishop of Canterbury. There is a long gap of two centuries between these works written in the unchanged, or but slightly changed, Inflected English and the first that appear in that greatly modified form of the tongue which has received the name of Middle English. The interval is wide indeed between ^Ifric and Layamon. Of this literature, in which the influence of Norman-French is so manifest, I must treat separately; for the language, though not yet free from inflection, had not the full inflection of its earlier period, and both lan- guage and literature will be better understood after an account has been given of the formation and structure of that French tongue by which they were so greatly affected. No doubt the presence of the Danes in the land had already greatly quickened phonetic de- cay. But the process went on with such acceler- ated speed after the supremacy of the French- speaking Normans had been established, that we may practically regard it as due wholly to the conflict with French. This chapter may fitly be closed with a passage from the thoughtful and scholarly essays of David Hilton Wheeler : — INFLECTED ENGLISH. 259 " We study Anglo-Saxon for the beginnings of our language only. The literature is as dreary a level as its native Holstein. Even the bits of legend which appear in the scant remains of Anglo-Saxon poetry are rather Danish than English. The facile fancy, the strong- winged imagination, the audacious invention which appear in our early romance and song are by universal agreement non-Saxon." CHAPTER XVII. FRENCH. That charming language, so facile, so lucid, so brilliant in its power of expressing thought, — the tongue of Montaigne, of Pascal, and of Moliere, 'of Voltaire, of Hugo, and of Daudet, — had but humble beginnings. Like the other Romance languages, it sprang from debased Latin, still fur- ther corrupted by the barbaric pronunciations and by the solecisms of the rude German conquerors. It seems as wonderful that so elegant a tongue should have risen from such a source as that the noble English speech should trace its origin back to the guttural and clumsy Inflected English. French has long been famous among languages for its facility in expressing thought with clearness and precision, with grace and vividness, with terse- ness and point. No language excels it in conver- sational ease and lightness of touch. It has found expression in a literature as rich and varied as any that exists, embodying the characteristics of senti- ment and thought of races as different as the Breton and the Provengal, the Norman and the Gascon, the Alsatian and the Parisian. FRENCH. 261 The name Francia appears for the first time in the fourth century. The Gallic rhetorician, Au- sonius of Burdigala, now Bordeaux, makes use of the term in certain lines of his to describe the land occupied by the tribes of the Franks, who were still dwelling beyond the Rhine. In the seventh century, Gregory of Tours, obey- ing the counsel of his mother to "write for the ignorant," deliberately uses " rustic " Latin, declar- ing that he writes as people speak, ignoring the declensions and keeping no distinction between the ablative and the accusative. At the same time he declares war against all the old learning, as in- extricably mingled with profane idolatries. The time has come for the legends of the saints to take the place of the classic literature. The spoken language of the entire Gallic region was developed mainly from the effort of the con- quering Franks to speak the tongue of the people who inhabited the land at the time of the Frankish settlement. It must be remembered that this tongue was already greatly corrupted from the Latin of literature, for in addition to the old Roman colo- nists in the towns, the population consisted of mingled Euskarians, Kelts, AUemans, Burgundians, Visigoths, and the Greeks of Massilia. South of the Loire the population was mainly of the old Euskarian, Greek, and Gallic blood, strongly tinctured with Roman civiUzation, and not greatly changed by Visigothic or Frankish conquest. Aquitaine, Septimania, Gascony, and Bourgogne — 262 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. this last largely Burgundian — were long regarded as territory subject indeed to the Franks, but wholly different in race and temper from Frankland proper. North of the Loire the population was partly Gallo-Roman and partly Teutonic. Flanders, Pic- ardy. Champagne, Normandy were of this mixed blood. Bretagne was purely Keltic. Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and that central land called the Isle of France because bounded by the rivers Seine, Oise, Aisne, and Marne, were of the mixed blood. The struggle between the rustic Latin, spoken by the mass of the people everywhere throughout the empire, and so often referred to by the classic writers of Rome as provincial and barbarous, — the struggle between this loose Latin and the vocal organs of the Teutonic masters lasted about four centuries ; for, as already intimated, Visigoths, Sueves, Allemans, and Burgundians had already done much in a Teutonic way toward the attrition of the vulgar Latin before the coming of the Franks. By the time of Charles the Great, the mongrel speech had become so distinct a dialect that he caused a grammar of it to be prepared for the use of his schools. A generation later, when the broth- ers, Charles the Bald and Louis the German, swore to their treaty of alliance at Strasburg, they swore and their people swore in the two different dialects, the one being now distinctively German and the other Romance. It was in the middle of the ninth FRENCH. 263 century that the West Franks thus became aware that they were speaking a different language from their kindred across the Rhine. The formation of the Romance languages — those of the Spanish and Italian peninsulas as well as those of the Gallic land — was a gradual process. There was a time — ■ and it lasted for centuries — when the popular tongue after the mixture of races seemed to the people as well as to the scholars only bad Latin. All western Europe spoke variations of the same barbarized Latin. So long as any trace of literature remained, the necessary comparison of the spoken tongue with the written forced men to regard their speech as mere barbarism. As the chasm between the two grew wider, manuscripts and the study of them retired more and more into the cloisters. There came a time at last when men recognized the fact that they no longer spoke Latin at all, but Roman. As this general speech became differentiated by race characteristics and usages, the Roman was perceived to be distinctively Italian, Spanish, Pro- vencal, or French. The next step was to write in these tongues that had gradually come to be rec- ognized as something more than mere dialects. The French tongue comes then mainly from the contact of Teutonic tongues with that branch of the Italo-Pelasgic known historically as Latin. For the most part, the Keltic contribution to it is repre- sented only by the names of rivers and places. 264 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. The Euskarian element, perhaps more persistent in the race than has hitherto been supposed, prob- ably expresses itself in the language by those characteristic nasal sounds, absent in Italian and Spanish, but markedly pronounced in Portuguese and French. The Teutonic influence in forming the new tongue, it must be remembered, was not confined to the Franks who ultimately gave name to it and to the land in which it was spoken. There were other Teutons in Gaul besides the Franks. There were the Allemans, who were settled in the land afterward known as Alsace, by the Emperor Juhan. There were the Saxons, transplanted in great num- bers into Neustria — later Normandy — by the Emperor Charles. There were the Goths, long occupying the south before its conquest by the Franks. There were the Burgundians, holding the southeast in the region of the Rhone. At a later period, the Normans got possession of the land in which the Saxon colony had commingled with the earlier Gallo-Roman population. But the Normans married the women of the country ; and the next generation speaking the tongue of their mothers, it is not likely that this Teutonic element counted for much in the ultimate speech. Taking then into the account only the Frankish, AUemanic, Saxon, Gothic, and Burgundian stocks, we see that, however few relatively each individual band of conquerors, there must on the whole have been a large infusion of Teutonic blood in the race FRENCH. 26s that was soon to be called French. The strength of this element in the race has naturally left the French language richer in Teutonic words than is any other Romance tongue. It has been calcu- lated that, while all the Romance tongues have to- gether nearly a thousand words of Teutonic origin, about half of this number are confined to the French language. From the middle of the ninth century, when the Latin Franks first became aware of the fact that they were speaking a tongue different from Latin and different from German, to nearly the close of the tenth century, when the French monarchy really began with the crowning of Hugh Capet (July 3, 987), the new language slowly but steadily grew in coherency and individuality. Meantime, in the old Gallic area, two dialects of the Romance tongue were struggling for suprem- acy, — the Provengal, and that spoken north of the Loire, which the grammarians now style Old French. They were distinguished in their own day as the Langue d'Oc and the Langue d'O'il, according to the form they used respectively for "Yes." In the case of both these tongues, there was a time when those who spoke them regarded them as only different kinds of bad Latin. They were then truly dialects. But long before men ventured to use them for literary purposes, they came to be spoken and recognized as distinct languages. As related to Latin, they have in common sev- 266 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. eral points, the clash of Germanic speech with Latin, or rather the effort of the Germanic con- querors to communicate with the conquered in what both regarded as the superior language, re- sulting in these changes: — I. The loss of cases and the abandonment of the neuter gender; 2. The gain of the article, by the use of unus and ille for a and the, thus sup- plying a grievous lack in the Latin tongue ; 3. («) The gain of compound tenses and a con- ditional mood ; (5) The replacing of the Latin future by the fusion of avoir {habere) with the infinitive; (c) The replacing of the Latin passive voice by the auxiliary etre {esse) and the past participle of the verb in use ; 4. The replacing of the Latin adverbial endings by mcnte, in the sense of " manner," " fashion." In addition to these points, common to Old French and Provengal, French is also distin- guished from Latin by the Latin tonic syllable becoming invariably the final syllable in French, — a result probably due to original and persistent Euskarian influence. For example, the Greek episkopos, becoming Latin episcopus, in French retained the accent on the second syllable and dropped the two succeed- ing syllables entirely. Compare French ^veque with English bishop, and note how in the French all the original syllables are discarded altogether, except that on which the accent falls and the ini- tial one, while in the English, the genius of the FRENCH. 267 language requiring the accent to be thrown as far back as possible, the syllable preceding the ac- cented one is discarded, and one of those dis- carded by the French is kept. Both languages retain the original accent, but each chooses a sepa- rate place for it in the utterance, and keeps or dis- cards the lighter syllables on each side of it in accordance with the characteristic bent each of its own structure. Another instance, frile, from Latin frdgilis, shows how at the formative period of the lan- guage accent was kept on the right syllable, while fragile, which was of much later introduction, shows how by that time the sense of Latin accent was lost, for in accordance with the genius of the French tongue the accent here is on the last syllable. The Langue d' Oil and the Langue d'Oc both differed from Italian and Spanish in retaining distinctive cases. Raynouard was the philologist who first called attention to this fact. But of all the old Latin cases they kept only two, one for the subject of the sentence and one for the object. Here we find synthesis evidently on the decline, though it has not vanished entirely, as in the other Romance tongues, and as it ultimately will depart in French too. We have on the one hand, in the, Latin original, synthetic complexity, and on the other, in the modern Romance tongues, analytic simplicity; and between them, showing some links in the gradual process of change, are these two 268 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. tongues of Oc and Oil. For example, "emperor" in the Provencal has two forms, — emperaire for the subject and emperador for the object, while in the Old French these cases are respectively emperere and empereor. In Modern French the one form for both subject and object is empereur. We find Italian and Spanish wholly without this distinction of cases as early as the thirteenth century, while French kept the two forms until the fifteenth. Why did French and Provengal re- tain this trace of synthetic structure when Italian and Spanish did not? Because they took form in literature in advance of the southern idioms ; and literature, as we have seen, exerts a powerful con- servative influence, checking change by establish- ing a prestige in favor of the forms which it uses. The existence of a literature is also both a proof and a stimulant of the consciousness of race-life. Such consciousness was the natural result of the success of the Franks in establishing a permanent dominion in western Europe. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, we find Old French divided into four distinct dialects, — the Burgundian in the east, the Norman in the west, the Picard in the north, and the speech of the Isle of France in the centre. Of these the last became eventually the dominant dialect. The distinctive peculiarity of tliis dialect is stated by Littre to be its preference for the diphthong oi, as in roi, ro'ine, estroit. The Picard changes ch into k, as kemin for chemin, kose for chose, cat for chat. FRENCH. 269 It uses the masculine article le with feminine words, as le femme for la femnie, le maison for la inaison. This usage accounts for some pecuHar family names which have probably puzzled many readers of French memoirs. The Norman dialect puts ei in the place of oi, as rei, reine, estreit. Some of the queer forms of French found in Eng- lish law are due to the characteristics of this dialect. While the dialect of the Isle of France triumphed in the main, the other dialects had their influence. Littre points out that the Norman pronunciation triumphed in the ultimate form of the imperfects of verbs, and in words like reine, ipais, and cr^ance. By this time the language was rich in literature, and was relished by foreigners to such an extent that they even wrote in it in preference to using their own tongues. In the thirteenth century the English traveller. Sir John Mandeville, the Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, and the learned Brunetto Latini of Florence, put forth their works in French. The historian of Venice, Martino de Canale, com- posing in the same tongue, states expressly that he does so " because the French tongue is current throughout the world and is more delightful to read and to hear than any other." The supremacy of the dialect of the Isle of France was largely due to historic facts, — to the progressive centralization of the government and to the creation of a capital. But, as we have seen, the other dialects, in the very act of yielding to 2/0 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. that which became dominant and thus aiding in constituting it a Hterary language, left their impress upon it in many ways that are still traceable. During the fourteenth century Old French gradu- ally passed into Modern French, losing in the pro- cess its peculiarity of separate forms for subject and object. This change occurred during the fermentation of society that brought about the transition from feudalism to strong monarchical government, — that political chaos which was so greatly increased by the insurrection of the peas- ants and the desolations of the long civil and foreign wars. The gradual disuse of case-endings is to be seen in the literature of this period of transformation. This is the time of disorganization. But reorgani- zation begins at once ; and in the fifteenth century we find the language free from all consciousness of case, vigorous, and ready to begin a new lease of life. For language must accord with the spirit of the age, with new conditions of thought and feel- ing, and hence must change with each great historic crisis and each step in the evolution of society. The transition from feudalism to pure monarchy was, no doubt, cause as well as concomitant of the change in language. Before this time the culture of the regions in which the Provencal tongue was spoken was undoubtedly superior to that of the little kingdom of France. The causes that brought about the ultimate triumph of French over Proven- FRENCH. 271 gal were the political fortunes of the kings of the Capetian line, the extension of the northern speech into England by the Norman conquest of that country, and, above all, the deadly blow dealt to the development of the south by the horrors of the crusade against the Albigenses. At the very time, too, when the art of the Trou- badours began to decay, the University of Paris had already attained a high pitch of celebrity, and was offering a focus for the gathering culture of the race on the Loire. The youth of great races always passes through an age of personal achievement which we call the Heroic Age. In the chivalry of the Christian races we find the enthusiasm of religion one of the most salient features during this period of development. To this stirring incentive was due that long series of great enterprises and adventures called the Crusades, directed not only against the Moslems of Palestine, but for more than seven centuries against those of Spain, and during a part of that time against those of Egypt, of Tunis, of Algiers, and of Morocco. The intellectual fruit of all this activity in arms and intensity of feeling was the great body of heroic lays produced by the Trouv^res, the chief of which was the famous " Lay of Roland." But rich as was the literature of the lays and the fabliaux, — the former serious, the latter merry, — the language could hardly be considered as fairly national until, in the middle of the thirteenth 272 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. century, with the downfall of the Albigenses, its greatest rival ceased to be cultivated, and the tongue of the Troubadours gave place to that of the Trouveres. Here it will be well to pause and note, by a few instances, how the effort of the Teutonic nobles to speak the provincial Latin modified the speech in quite another way from that involved in the several changes impressed upon its grammatical structure. We shall see that in some cases the very forms chosen to represent ideas otherwise expressed in Latin point to a distinct trace of German memory, or the effect of the conformation of the vocal organs in the German race. For instance, haut, " high," comes, it is true, from the Latin altus ; but it would not have been aspirated had not the German hoch been in the mind of the Teutonic lord and ready to leap from his lips. So also, while hurler, "' to howl," comes from ululdre, it gets its aspirate through the influ- ence of the German heuleii. Feu, " fire," came not from ignis, but from focus, because that word, akin to " fire," was nearer to the German Feuer. Laisser, " to leave," " to let," came not from sinere, but from laxdre, because that word, close to " let " in meaning, was nearer to the German lassen. Cour came not from aula, but from cohors, because German Hof was the nearer sound. There are some French words in common use that are directly of Teutonic origin, as, for in- stance, bague, " ring," which is identical with the FRENCH. 273 Inflected English be&g, occurring in that very an- cient saw, " Cyning sceal mid ceipe cw6ne gebicgan, Bunum and beagum — " So the German war has given guerre ; helm, haume ; schmelzen, ^mail ; hring (meaning "cir- cle "), harangue ; herberge, auberge. Returning now to the subject of the continuous development of the French language, let us see what followed upon the estabhshment of the su- premacy of the Langue d'O'il, and especially of the speech of the Isle of France. Littre calls attention to the likeness between language and other living organisms in its being, like them, subject to occasional crises. The first great crisis undergone by the language that we now call French was that transformation in the Latin which resulted in the birth of all the Ro- mance tongues. The second was that which re- sulted in the transformation of Old French into the modern speech. In these two principal cases the phenomena are so striking, says Littre, that light is projected from them over the subsequent history of the language, and we are enabled to comprehend what takes place, even in detail, from our knowledge of the previous pathological condi- tions of the organism. Thus we take note of two minor crises, — that which adapted the language of the sixteenth century to the thought and sentiment of the seventeenth, and that which in the nine- iS 274 'THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. teenth has exercised so powerful an influence in the enlargement of the vocabulary and in the in- troduction of new modes and forms of expression. Just as a sense of incongruity between the lan- guage of the past and the spirit of the present operated in the formation of the Romance tongues, and then, centuries later, in the change from In- flected into Modern French, so the same sense of incongruity produced a somewhat different type of language in the seventeenth century from that which had been in use from the time of the fourteenth. The wars of religion ended, the royal power greatly increased, the court forming a centre of social and intellectual culture, there came a change in language corresponding to the change in the form and pressure of the national spirit. Restric- tions were put upon such free license in the use of provincialisms and the coinage of words from the classics as was indulged in by men like Rabelais and Montaigne. Laws were framed, elegance and precision of statement were idoHzed, and the lan- guage was cramped by rules, not always based upon an accurate knowledge of its structure. The same incongruity between the inherited lan- guage and the modern spirit prevailed once again, when the speculative temper of the eighteenth century gave birth to the revolutions and wars of the nineteenth. The map of Europe could not be changed so often, the whole social fabric of France could not be torn down and built up anew, without FRENCH. 275 producing vast changes in the literature and the language. A new vocabulary, a new assemblage of idioms, a new rhetoric, were the inevitable result of a new world, in which the very traditions of feudality and monarchy had perished, a great body of sciences had been born and had sprung into sudden vigor, nations had been fused together into new nation- alities, and foreign literatures had for the first time been studied with enthusiasm. The clearness and point, the hmpid purity of style, that characterized the best French from the days of Corneille and Pascal to those of Voltaire and Buffon, gave place to the Gothic luxuriance of Hugo and the elaborate, though exquisitely dainty, phrasing of Daudet, while the speech of Parisian society itself is now as full of neologisms as the works of the literary artists of France. Still, that is true of the language which is so well said of the temper of the race by the great English historian. Green, when he speaks of " its rapidity and agihty of movement, its lightness and brilHancy of touch, its airy mockery, its gayety and good humor, its critical coolness and self- control." CHAPTER XVIII. INFLECTED ENGLISH AFTER THE CONQUEST. In the necessary friction between the two speeches brought about by the efforts of con- queror and conquered to communicate, the ex- crescences of inflected forms were gradually rubbed off. At the same time, the modifications and relations of prominent words came to be ex- pressed more and more by connecting particles. These connectives are all from the Old English side of the family. Here it will be well to note a distinction that this fact ought to impress upon us. While the greater body of the words in the English language are traceable to Latin roots, as an examination of the dictionary will show, it will not do to say that the Latin element has the preponderance in the language. The very large part played by the connectives just referred to, accounts for the fact that in almost any book, in any conversation between persons of culture, and markedly in the talk of the unlettered, the words of purely English origin will figure more largely than those from all other sources. INFLECTED ENGLISH AFTER CONQUEST. 277 The Norman Conquest found the language al- ready tending gradually to pass from the synthetic to the analytic stage. The long presence of the Danes in the land and the fashionable use of Norman-French during the reign of Edward the Confessor had produced a very decided effect in that direction. The careful pronunciation that was necessary to mark the terminations by which the correlation of ideas was expressed having long since ceased, the language emerged, after its long struggle with French, for the most part analytic in structure. Still, there were many forms of inflection that did not disappear until the very eve of the Tudor period ; and we cannot call the language in which Chaucer wrote Modern English, though he is in many ways so truly Elizabethan in his spirit. It must still be considered as more or less an inflected tongue until we reach the books that Caxton sent forth from his press. During the three centuries before English ob- tained official recognition, it was broken up into many dialects, no one of them having pre-emi- nence. Three main dialects did, however, take part in producing the literature of this Middle English. These were the Southern, the Midland, and the Northern. The last-named dropped the inflections for the most part, but retained the old vowel-sounds. It is the parent of the mod- ern Scottish dialect, familiar to us in the works of Burns, Scott, Wilson, Mrs. Oliphant, and Stev- 278 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. enson. The first-named kept the inflections, but changed the old vowel-sounds. It was the Mid- land dialect, however, that was destined to be- come the national literary language. This was the speech that prevailed between the Humber and the Thames ; and the East Midland form of it was that which ultimately triumphed over all the other dialects. There were several reasons for this. It got rid of its inflections sooner than the rest, because of the early influence of the Danish settlements in the east of England, the larger number of Normans settled there after the Conquest, the larger number of thriving towns, and the constant communication with the conti- nent through the seaport towns of these parts. Such are the causes assigned by Meiklejohn. But there were other reasons. One was the immense influence of London and the Court. Another was the fact that this was the dialect used by the first men of genius who wrote in English at all. The changes from Old to Middle English con- sisted chiefly in: i. Loss of much of the native vocabulary and adoption of French words to sup- ply the place of those dropped ; 2. Modernizing by vowel-changes the English words retained, a becoming 0, tending to 00, u to ou, ca to /, / to ee, ee to i ; and also by guttural consonants giving way to palatal; 3. Obscuration of vowels after the accent, and especially of final a, 0, u, all of these changing to a light e ; 4. Consequent confusion INFLECTED ENGLISH AFTER CONQUEST. 279 and loss of old inflections, and their replacement by prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and rules of posi- tion. To these must be added, for poetry, the supplanting of alliteration by rhyme. And, until the literary achievements of the East Midland dialect had given it the mastery, to all the other changes due to the struggle with Norman-French must be added the fact that there were many dialects and no recognized standard. The Normans also taught the English the use of the indefinite article. Inflected English having had only the definite. The French plural in es took the place of the English plural in en, though for long the Midland dialect retained the English form, and it is still mourned by lovers of poetry as far the better rhythmical form. The diff'erence between the dialects is most marked in the plural of the present indicative of the verb. Thus : — Northern. Midland. Southern. We hopes, We hopen, We hopeth. You hopes. You hopen, You hopeth. They hopes. They hopen, They hopeth. But the Midland rapidly threw ofi" its inflections, and, by the beginning of the thirteenth century, it had lost most of them. Ich had lost its guttural and become /. Him, them, and whom, originally datives, had become objectives also. The adjec- tive dative in light e had come into use as an adverb, softe, brighte being used where we should 280 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. now say softly, brightly. Many words by the loss of their inflections became monosyllables. Thus, bindan, drincan, findan became bind, drink, find. The Norman difficulty in sounding the guttural made monosyllables of many more. Thus haegel became hail; twaegen, twain; faegen, fain. In fact, the guttural was eliminated wher- ever it was possible to get rid of it. The ge at the beginning of past participles disappeared, gebrSht becoming brought ; geboht, bought; ge- worht, wrought. The g initial was dropped from many words : gif became if ; genoh, enough. The final guttural also vanished: Jialig became holy; eordhlic, earthly ; gastlic, ghostly ; munuc, monk. Many words that still retain the guttural in spell- ing have lost it in speaking. Such are through, plough, though, dough. In some the guttural took a softened form and sound. Rigg became ridge ; ^gg< edge ; brigg, bridge. In these the guttural became a sibilant. In others it became to the ear a labial sound, while still written with the guttural form. Such are cough, enough, trough, laugh, draught. In some the guttural was transformed into a vowel-sound, constituting an additional syl- lable. Thus sorg became sorrow ; and mearh, marrow. In others it disappeared wholly. Thus, maked became made. One amusing trace of the struggle between Nor- man organs and English speech is found in words like light, might, night, which were written in Inflected English liht, miht, niht. These were INFLECTED ENGLISH AFTER CONQUEST. 28 1 sounded as in Scotland with a light guttural or burr, — ^ written now for the Scottish dialect with a ch as in licht. As the Norman would not sound the guttural, however light, the words were written then with the strong guttural they still bear about with them as a dress, to induce the careless con- queror to attempt something like a guttural. But still the Norman refused to sound either h or gk. Even when a word Hke daeg was lightened for him into day, he would not sound the y, though it is still sounded by the people of New England, who came largely from the old Sassenach stock. Meiklejohn calls attention to the fact that the vanished guttural is replaced by many forms in Modern English ; by an i in hail, by ay in day, by a w \v\. fowl, by a ch in teach, by a dge in edge, by aj in ajar, by a ^ in drag, by a /^ in truck, by the sound of / in trough. Nor was this breaking down of inflections and avoidance of guttural sounds the only evidence of the influence of Norman-French upon English. The clumsy and involved order of the sentence in Inflected English gave way under French influence to the order of thought. The sentence became easier, lighter, and more rhythmical. Even when the English writer carefully eschewed Norman words, as Layamon seems to have done, his work was colored by Norman thought, his verse often took the Norman form, and he almost invari- ably drew his subject from a source already utilized by the Norman romancer. 282 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. This source was the rich treasure-house of Keltic myths. Even in the days of the first Henry the wild romance of the earlier race had attracted the interest of the court. The fervor and vividness of the Keltic imagination, its passion for color and charm, its delight in beauty and life, and the fiery spirit of Keltic heroism that have passed into the blood of the English people and, in some measure at least, affected both language and literature, drew the notice of scholars and poets to the old stories of Arthur. Geoffrey of Monmouth put them into his Latin Chronicle. Gaimar and Wace, two Nor- man trouvh'es, threw them into French verse. The grandson of the second Henry, born of a Breton mother, the hapless Arthur of English his- tory, was given his name in honor of the Keltic hero. Early in the thirteenth century, Layamon, the son of Leovenath, a priest of Ernley, on the bank of Severn in Worcestershire, fascinated by the " Brut d'Angleterre " of Wace, undertook to translate it into English verse. In this poem of thirty thousand lines, strong as was the Norman influence that led hii^ to the choice of his theme, there are not more than fifty Norman words. As to the form, the two influences are both perceptible, for alliteration and rhyme are employed, sometimes together, some- times alternately. A little later, we reach the " Ormulum," a series of homilies based upon the Scriptures that were used in the daily mass service of the church. INFLECTED ENGLISH AFTER CONQUEST. 283 This was the work of Orm, a canon of the order of St. Augustine living in some shire in the north of England, — probably in Lancashire, where there is an Ormskirk. Danish words abound in the " Or- mulum." Such are blunt, bull, die, dwell, ill, kid, raise, same, thrive, wand, wing. There are few Norman words, however; but the old inflectional structure of the language is almost gone. This absence of inflections, says Meiklejohn, is probably due to the fact that the book is written in the East Midland dialect. The verse is metrical, being iambic with four time-beats in one line and, in the next, three followed by a light half-time-beat. It is adorned with neither rhyme nor alliteration. What is singular about it is the effort of Orm to indicate the quantity of the vowels by the spelling, the short vowels being invariably followed by a double consonant, while single consonants are used after vowels with the long sound. The two open- ing lines of the introduction will serve to show his system of spelling : — " Thiss hoc iss nemmnedd Orrmulum Forr thi thatt Orrm itt wrohhte." About a quarter of a century after Layamon's " Brut," comes a work in the Southern dialect called the " Ancren Riwle," or " Rule of Nuns," written for a small sisterhood in Dorsetshire, consisting of three ladies, who with their servants, the lay sisters, made up the community. It is in prose, and, be- ing the work of an ecclesiastic and on a monastic 284 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. subject, has naturally more Latin words than either the " Brut " or the " Ormulum." To the middle of the thirteenth century belongs the poem of " The Owl and the Nightingale " by Nicholas de Guildford, also of Dorsetshire. The same date calls up "The Story of Genesis and Exodus," a rewriting, no doubt, of one of the old Biblical paraphrases of Inflected English, as it is unusually crowded with inflections for the age to which it belongs. A few years later, the government issued a proc- lamation in English, as well as in French and Latin. This shows that the language was by this time in general use throughout the country. Late in the same century comes the " Chronicle " of Robert of Gloucester, largely translated from the Latin of Geoffrey of Monmouth. It is written in Alexandrine metre ; that is, in rhymed couplets of six iambic time-beats each. There are about five per cent of Romance words in it. The fourteenth century opens with the " Chroni- cle " of Robert Manning, called Robert of Brunne. This takes up the old story of Brutus of Troy, the legendary founder of the British race and king- dom, and continues the history of events in the island down to the death of Edward the First. The first part is in rhyming couplets of four time-beats each. The second part uses the Alexandrine. It contains a large number of French words. At this time and in the previous century, the passion of the age for the French romances and the large INFLECTED ENGLISH AFTER CONQUEST. 285 number of readers of English caused the transla- tion into English of " Sir Tristrem," " King Horn," "Sir Havelok," "Sir Guy," "The Squire of Low Degree," " King Robert of Sicily," " King Alis- ander," "The King of Tars," "The Death of Arthur," " The Soudan of Damascus," and other popular lays of the trouvires. Sir Walter Scott, in his enthusiasm for the past, edited " Sir Tristrem ; " and its appearance in his collected works has probably given many a young boy his first lesson in Early English and in Old French and German too, for the notes are full of collateral readings from trouvires and minnesingers. Meanwhile English was steadily gaining ground. In 1362, it was ordered to be used in courts of law, " because the French tongue is much un- known." Complaint was being made against the usage of the schools, where jiupils were made to turn the classics into French. This continued until the Black Death of 1349, when the more purely English part of the population seem to have made a general social advance. It was then that John Cornwall, a schoolmaster, started a re- form, causing his pupils to construe " their lessons and their things " into English instead of French ; " and Richard Pencrych," says John de Trevisa, the Cornish clergyman who translated Higden in Richard the Second's time, " learned this man- ner of teaching of him, as other men did of Pencrych. So that now, the year of our Lord 1385, and of the second King Richard after the 286 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. conquest nine, in all the grammar schools of England children leaveth French, and constru- eth and learneth in English. Also, gentlemen have now much left for to teach their children French." In 1363, the chancellor opened Parliament with a speech in English. The language still clung tenaciously to its old vocabulary. Shortly before the middle of the fourteenth century appeared the " Ayenbite of Inwyt," or "Remorse of Conscience," by Dan Michel of Kent. It was followed closely by " The Voyage and Travaile of Sir John Maundeville," who wrote first in Latin, the tongue of scholars, then in French, that of society, lastly, in English, for his fellow-countrymen. He uses many French words, while his English is as modern in the main as that of the Elizabethan age. Few of the foreign words employed by him have since become obso- lete. His English was the current speech of the London of his day. A little later comes the " Piers Plowman " of the Londoner, William Langland, the embodiment of the bitter revolt of the poor against their misery. It is the first real outburst of originality in the literature. All before it has been translation either from Latin or French, the outcome of interest in Biblical, Roman, French, or Keltic literature — with the exception of " Beowulf " and the very jejune English " Chronicle." Langland paints his own time and the scenes that have passed before his own INFLECTED ENGLISH AFTER CONQUEST. 287 eyes. But he has seen nothing of that gay world of the court or that jocund world of the city burghers that Chaucer knows and paints so vividly. He has seen only the wretched laborers on the farms that lie around the Malvern Hills. He is a popular satirist, using verse as his medium of expression, but surely no poet. The English used in the "Vision of Piers the Plowman " is the Mid- land dialect. Its proportion of French words is very large. This is the last long poem in which alliteration is the ornament. There are three alliterative words in each line. The following may serve as a specimen : — " A voice loud in tliat light to Lucifer cried ' Princes of this palace, prest undo the gates, For here cometh with crown the king of all glory.' " To this period also belongs a translation from a curious French work of 1372, very popular in its day, the Book of the Knight Geoffrey de La Tour Landry, written for the instruction of his motherless daughters. In this book, as might be expected, French words abound. The English writings of John Wycliffe, espe- cially his version of the Bible, form a valuable contribution to the prose of this age. Geoffrey Chaucer, the great contemporary of Langland, Wycliffe, and Mandeville, though greatly supe- rior in genius to all the three who helped him in giving currency to the Midland dialect, and deserv- ing in every way to be called the father of English 288 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. poetry, wrote a language more archaic than theirs. This was because he was a poet, and because he drew so largely from foreign sources, Latin, French, and Italian. Many of the words he employed have therefore become obsolete. Yet his is so pre-eminently the greatest name of the fourteenth century, that a study of his English must give us our clearest view of the differences between Middle English and our modern tongue. Before entering upon this study, however, it will be well to note that he had other contemporaries besides the traveller, the satirist, and the reformer. These were Gower, Trevisa, and the two Scots, Barbour and Wyntoun. John Gower of Kent was held in high estima- tion by Chaucer himself, but his style is dull and heavy. Like Mandeville, he wrote in French and Latin, as well as in English. He was wholly a student of books, not, like Chaucer, of both books and life. John of Trevisa's translation of Higden's " Poly- chronicon " is valued for the light it throws on the condition of the language toward the close of the fourteenth century. The works of the Scottish poets of the same period show little difference in the English spoken in the two countries. Contemporary with Chaucer is John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, who wrote " The Brute " and " The Bruce," two metri- cal chronicles in the standard rhyming couplets of four time-beats each. To the year of Chaucer's INFLECTED ENGLISH AFTER CONQUEST. 289 death (1400) belongs Andrew Wyntoun's " Chroni- cle of Scotland." Chaucer, with his world-wide and lifelong experi- ence as soldier, courtier, ambassador, and scholar, with his wonderful gift for observing both human society and the open book of nature, with his gayety, his sense of humor, and his good taste, has given us the fullest picture of his own time, and withal has command of so rich a vocabulary that he is entitled to be the exponent of the language of this period. He lifts the language fairly into the domain of literature, — the literature of all time, — and by so doing prevents it from under- going in the later ages any marked changes. There could be no mere welter of dialects after the " Canterbury Tales." A brief account of Chaucer's English will be found in the Appendix. The metre of Chaucer varies with the poem; but in the " Canterbury Tales " he most frequently uses couplets of five time-beats each. The final e, as in French verse, is elided before a vowel and before some words beginning with h. It is in the influence of French accent that we find Chaucer's French learning most active in its effect upon English. Inflected English placed the accent upon the root-syllable. French accent was from the first upon the final syllable, that being the accented syllable of the word as it came from Latin, for the provincials of Gaul dropped all sounds after the 19 290 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. accented syllable. Thus, from Latin cabdllum, the French formed chevAl. When French words were taken into English, they came with their native accent, and by the time of Chaucer we find the language full of words so accented. The tendency to lay stress on the last syllable even extended in process of time to words of purely English origin. In Robert of Gloucester we find falshide instead oifdlshede, tidinge instead of tidinge, treweliMe, instead of tr^wehede, gladdore instead of gldddore, wisliche instead of wisliche, begynnynge instead of begynnynge, endyng instead of ^ndyng. In Chaucer we h.a.v& fredSin {ox frddom, hethenesse for hethenesse, worthinisse for worthinesse, lowly for lowly, wynnynge for wynnynge, weddynge for wM- dynge, comjinge for corny nge. In Modern English, many French words still keep their accents ; namely, all nouns ending in ade, ier or eer, ee, oon, ine, many adjectives from Latin in us, and all adjectives ending in ose and esque, and many verbs. For example, stockade, cannoneer, debauchee, bassoon, fascine, naive, morose, grotesque, supplant. Of course Chaucer puts the final accent on all words of French origin ending in aunce, oun, our, ie, er, age, tme, ure, /, esse, as, for instance, /«r- chaunce, confessioun, langage, melodie, bokeler, fortune, nature, possibility, richesse. Yet the contrary tendency is to be observed even in Chaucer : words of French origin take the INFLECTED ENGLISH AFTER CONQUEST. 29 1 English accent. Thus, mortdl becomes mortal; tempht, thnpest ; substdnce, substance; amydble, dmyable ; morsel, morsel ; servise, s^rvise ; duMsse, d^chesse ; cos;pn, cosyn. Some have both accents at different times, as batdille and bdtaille ; fortune and fortune. The EngHsh accent in most cases triumphed eventually, and the tendency has steadily been to throw the accent back even in the case of words borrowed from abroad. Shakespeare's chardcter- ize has long since become characterize. Balcony of a few generations back has long been bdlcony. In our own time progrdmme has become prdgram. The great irregularity of accent in English, however perplexing to foreigners, and a cause of anxiety to public speakers who have not had the advantage of good society in their youth, has had an admirable result in giving the tongue variety of modulation, and so enhancing its capacity for rich harmonic effects. While the Wars of the Roses made a barren period in literature, the language went on losing one inflection after another even of those few re- tained by Chaucer and his contemporaries. With Occleve, his disciple, — not such, however, as Soc- rates had in Plato, — the final e became uncertain, being sometimes sounded and sometimes not. A little later comes John Lydgate, a Benedic- tine monk of Bury St. Edmond's, whose chief works are "The Story of Thebes," "The Fall of Princes," and "The Hystory, Siege, and Destruc- 292 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. cyon of Troye." Lydgate's style is clear and fluent, though too diffuse and often languid. Oc- cleve, pedantic and spiritless, was of far less weight in the development of language and lit- erature. With Lydgate the final e wholly disappears. The verbal inflections in en also soon fall away. Still, in this period of transition, there was great diversity of usage. We find Caxton, who by the introduction of printing was to bring about uni- formity, complaining sadly of this prevalent diver- sity. "And certaynly," he says, "our langage now used varyeth ferre from that which was used and spoken whan I was borne. For we englysshemen ben borne under the domynacyon of the mone, whiche is never stedfaste, but ever waverynge, wexynge one season, and waneth and dycreaseth another season, And that comyn englysshe that is spoken in one shyre varyeth from a nother. In so much that in my days happened that cer- tayn marchauntes were in a shipe in tamyse, for to have sayled over the sea into zelande, and for lacke of wind thei taryed atte forlond, and wente to lande for to re- freshe them. And one of theym named sheffelde, a mercer, cam in to an hows and axed for mete, and spe- cyally he axyd after eggys, And the goode wyf answerde, that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry, for he also coude speke no frenshe, but wolde have hadde egges ; and she understode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde have eyren ; then the good wyf sayd that she understode him INFLECTED ENGLISH AFTER CONQUEST. 293 wel. Loo ! what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges or eyren? certaynly, it is harde to playse every man, by cause of dyversite and chaunge of Ian- gage." Caxton's own publications show the passing away of inflections, for the earlier have still some of them, while the later are practically in the Eng- lish of the Tudor age. The year 1485, when the Tudor dynasty was established, may well be as- sumed as the first year of Modern English. Dat- ing, then, from 1042, the year when under Edward the Confessor Norman-French first began to influ- ence the Sassenach tongue, we see that it took more than four centuries for the old Inflected Eng- lish to reach a purely analytic stage. The printing-press had a large share in bring- ing about the transition from Middle to Modern English. It used the Midland dialect to the ex- clusion of the others, and thus gave it a perma- nent prestige. It also tended greatly to fix the spelling, which before had been exceedingly capri- cious. Even the Old English characters went out of use, giving place to those used by the French. English literature begins with the four great contemporaries : Mandeville, the traveller ; Wyc- Hffe, the religious reformer ; Langland, the social reformer ; and Chaucer, the poet and humorist. English poetry begins with Chaucer. No mere verse-writing like Langland's, no mere translated metrical matter like Gower's, can for a moment be placed alongside of the " Canterbury Tales." 294 "^^^ STORY OF LANGUAGE. But the English language — English free from inflection — begins with the printing-press of Cax- ton. Besides Skelton, Malory, and Hawes in England, Caxton had for contemporaries in Scotland two poets of some worth. One of these was James the First of Scotland, who had received his education in England and had written there his poem of " The King's Quhair" (Quire or Book), a poem in seven-line stanzas, inspired by his love for the Lady Jane Beaufort, granddaughter of John of Gaunt, Chaucer's friend. He is the best poet of the fifteenth century. The other Scot was Blind Harry, a wandering minstrel of the same period, who wrote " The Actis and Deidis of the illuster and vailzeand Campioun, Schir William Wallace, Knicht of Ellerslie." This poem is in twelve books, the metre being the usual heroic one of five time-beats. The poet-laureate of Henry the Eighth's reign, the vigorous satirist of Wolsey, John Skelton, praised by Erasmus for his scholarship, was the best exponent of English verse at this time. His chief poems are the satire on the great Cardinal, entided "Why Come Ye Not to Courte?" "The Tunning of Elynoure Rummyng," " The Bowge of Courte," and " Phyllyp Sparowe." The last is called by Coleridge " an exquisite and original poem ; " but he seems to have forgotten that it is built on the charming poem of Catullus on a sim- ilar subject, and can therefore hardly be called INFLECTED ENGLISH AFTER CONQUEST. ■ 295 original. Skelton's verse is in general coarse and scurrilous, but vivacious and nimble. Hallam's description is very apt : " a torrent-like volubility of words in doggerel rhyme." Sir Thomas Malory was the author of that " Morte Darthur " which gave delight to many a reader in the days before any other prose romance in English existed, won the applause of Scott and Southey, and, in the abridgment of it for the modern boy made by Sidney Lanier, has helped many in our time to a knowledge of that great cycle of legend modernized by Tennyson in his " Idylls of the King." The author drew his mate- rial from a number of French and Welsh sources. He is believed to have been a Welsh priest. The style has a quaint charm that is all its own, for there is nothing precisely like it anywhere else. Stephen Hawes is chiefly known as the author of" The Temple of Glasse" and " The Pass Tyme of Pleasure." There is both learning and philos- ophy in Hawes, but his style is pedantic and obscure. One writer of this period remains to be noted, — Alexander Barclay, the satirist, whose poem, " The Shyp of Folys of the Worlde," translated from the German of Sebastian Brandt, with many amplifica- tions, is written in a style of singular ease and fluency, compared with much of the verse between Chaucer and Spenser. He has been lauded as a great refiner of the English language. In this work the only noticeable trace of the old inflection 296 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. is the use of the plural in es for nouns, as a sepa- rate syllable. There were many famous ballads that belonged to this time, — those, for instance, about Robin Hood, and the ballads of " Sir Patrick Spens," " Edom o' Gordon," "Chevy Chase," and "The Nut-Brown Mayde." But the greatest worker in literature of the age was that enthusiastic lover of books, William Caxton, who died in the year of the discovery of America. He was a Kentishman by birth and a Londoner by residence. He saw the working of the printing-press in Holland, and in the year 1474 established one in the Almonry at Westminster. The books he sent out from this printing-press are written in an English in no wise different from that of the Elizabethans. CHAPTER XIX. FRENCH GRAFTS ON THE ENGLISH STOCK. Attention has already been called to the great influence of French upon English in the breaking down of inflections, in the bringing in of many new words, as well as variety in accent, and in the triumph in poetry of rhyme over alliteration ; that is, of end-rhyme over head-rhyme. But the influence of French was not confined to these things. The French spirit was quicker and livelier than that of the English, and aff"ected the language — to use the metaphor of Lowell — as leaven gives lightness to the loaf The wonderful capacity of the Norman for assimilating what was best in the character and culture of the people whose lands he conquered, broadened and enriched English with the gains of his race in its continental career. The long connection with the continent kept up by the line of Plantagenet princes pre- vented the race from becoming again too insular, and the art and taste of the south streamed into the land from Bordeaux. In Chaucer's time the English were a great European power; and the language reaped the 298 THE SrORY OF LANGUAGE. fruits of this larger life. From Crecy to Agincourt English was the tongue of a conquering race, and what it took from French during this period it could absorb without humiliation. The process of evolution from synthetic to analytic structure was immensely hastened, and was made far more complete by the long years of supremacy held by the French tongue. What is the result of this process of evolution? That English is, with a few remnants of inflection, a wholly analytic tongue, and yet has retained many of the gains made by the inflected tongues from which it is descended. Multitudes of its words are — to borrow a term from " Alice in Wonder- land " — convenient " portmanteaus " for many roots ; and the expression of thought is greatly facilitated by them. It has also free command of many of the idioms of the tongues that other literatures have burnished and polished into variety and point. Another result of the loss of inflections, as noted before, has been a rich treasury of monosyllables, which have been found most effective for rhetorical and poetical use in contrast with the long, full- sounding words drawn from Greek or Latin. Attention has also been drawn to the fact that one of the most important results of French in- fluence, especially in giving lightness to the sen- tence and directness to the thought, was the change in the order of words. Old English suffered from the same difficulty in this matter as suffers Modern FRENCH GRAFTS ON THE ENGLISH STOCK. 299 German. The clumsiness of the German sentence would have been the fate of English to-day but for the influence of French upon our syntax. The rhythmic prose of our best writers could never have been shaped, had the order of Inflected English continued to prevail. In addition to all these gains due to French, we owe to the long existence together of the two languages in the same island those countless syno- nyms that enrich our modern tongue and enable its masters to enhance by discrimination in the use of them the beauty, strength, or wisdom of each thought. Let us examine now into the character of the words brought in by the Normans. It must be remembered that they spoke a dialect differing from that of the Isle of France both in spelling and in pronunciation. For example, the Norman- French for ro? was rei ; for ^troit, estreit ; for peu- ple, people ; for loyal, Hal ; for royal, r^al ; for royaiime, r^alm. This will account for many dif- ferences in form between the French words in English and their congeners in the French tongue. In the three centuries between the battle of Senlac and the period of Chaucer and Wycliffe, thou- sands of French words had taken firm root in the speech of even those English families most invet- erate in their preference for the ways of their fathers and the speech of King Alfred. These words were in the main words connected with war, with the feudal system, and with hunt- 300 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. ing; words connected with law, with the church, and with cookery; abstract terms and general names; and words synonymous with English words that were not rejected, but at one time seemed to need translation, so that both survived side by side. Of words connected with war, some examples are : arms, armor, hauberk, gantlet, mail, visor, lance, joust, tournament, assault, battle, captain, chivalry, standard, trumpet. Harness, the word that the conquered race used for armor, was degraded into meaning the equip- ment of a horse. Mail, coming originally from Latin macula, the mesh of a net, reminds us that the first coats of mail resembled network. Among words connected with the feudal system may be named : homage, fealty, suzerain, vassal, esquire, retainer, herald, scutcheon, seneschal, bla- zonry. Fealty, the Norman-French form of fi- dMt^, the very essence of feudality, leads us to doubt the usual derivations of the term feudal and to connect it with that custom of the Romans so often illustrated in Csesar's " Commentaries," of re- ceiving a humbled enemy in fidem. The esquire, in Old French escuyer, from Latin scutiger, is the shield-bearer; for that was his office on the march. Scutcheon, too, comes originally from Latin scutum, " a shield," the coat of arms by which the mediaeval knight was known, even with visor closed, being engraved upon his shield. The vassal took his name from Low Latin vassalus, " a little young FRENCH GRAFTS ON THE ENGLISH STOCK. 3OI man," the diminutive of vassus, which in turn came from the Keltic gwds, " a man." Valet, Old French vaslct, was another diminutive from the same word, and varlet is only another form of the same dimin- utive. Seneschal comes without change from Old French, and is derived from two Gothic words meaning " old servant," the high steward of a castle especially deserving that appellation. Connected with the chase are such words as: brace, couple, falcon, brack, leash, leveret, quarry, venison, venery, chase, course, copse, covert, forest, mews. Brace is directly from Old French, and that from Latin brachium, " an arm." It is applied to whatever, like the arm, holds up a thing. The keen air braces the nerves ; a brace of birds the sportsman holds up by tying two together. Couple comes ultimately from Latin copula, " a linking to- gether." Leash, from Old French lesse, is traceable to Low Latin laxa, " a thong," from laxus, " loose." Lasso has the same origin, only it comes to us through the Spanish. We have two quarries in English. The mining word comes from French carriire, and that from Latin quadrdre, " to cut square." The hunting word comes from Old French cuyerie, and that from Latin cor, " the heart," because the heart and entrails of the game were thrown to the dogs when the chase was over. Venison and venery both come from Latin through the French, the one from venationem, the other from vendri, the latter retaining the sense of 302 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. the primitive — "hunting," — while the former ac- quired the meaning of the " flesh " of game, and finally became Hmited in meaning to the flesh of deer. Copse, the shortened form of coppice, is from Old French copeis, which is traceable to the Greek for cutting or felHng, the term being properly ap- plied to woods growing thickly after a cutting. Forest in the old Norman sense does not necessa- rily mean woods at all. It comes primarily from 'La.Mn.foras, " out of doors." To the Norman lord it meant land taken out of the jurisdiction of the common law, — land set aside for the preservation of game. It was uncultivated, and might be heath, woods, river, bog, any space, provided it were wild and waste. Mews meant at first cages for hawks. It came from innet', " to moult," and that from Latin muidre, " to change," because the hawks were shut up when moulting. Then mews came to mean the royal stables in London, hawks having been kept there before horses were. Now the term is applied to livery stables. As to the terms connected with law, we may almost venture to assert that they are all borrowed from the French tongue, so long were the plead- ings in Norman-French. Assize, attorney, chan- cellor, equity, cestui-qiic-trust, judge, justice, court, plaintiff, plea, sue, summons, trespass, are a few of the words that have this origin. The attorney, from Norman attourn^, and that from Low Latin attornatus, "put in the place of another," is the man chosen by one to act for him FRENCH GRAFTS ON THE ENGLISH STOCK. 303 in a situation in which he cannot act for himself. The chancellor got his name from the fact that the imperial functionary in the days of Rome's wide- spread rule, who attended to those matters which afterward fell within the province of courts of equity, sat behind lattice-work, and in Latin these bars of lattice-work were styled cancelli, or " little crabs," the cross-lines of ornamented work resem- bling crabs' claws crossed. Cancel comes from the same word, and means to make cross-lines over what we wish to mark out as not intended to be read. Court comes from French, and that from Latin cohortem, originally a cattleyard or sheep- pen, and later a body of Roman soldiers, and then again, the place in which they kept guard. Sue comes from Old French suir, and that from Latin sequi, " to follow." Prosecutor, sequel, pursue, ensue, issue, and a host of other words, flow from the same source. Trespass, from Old French tres- passer, is traceable to Latin trans, "across," and/«5- sus, " a step," and means to take a step across the boundary of another man's land. Church terms are such as: altar, Bible, relic, baptism, penance, ceremony, friar, tonsure, cloister, vespers, matins, candle. Ceremony runs back for its origin through French and Latin to the ancient Etruscan town of Caere. Friar, from the French frire, " brother," reaches back to Latin fratrem. Cloister, from Old French cloistre, was in Latin claustrum, " an enclosure." Matins, coming directly from the French, has for 304 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE its original the Latin adjective-form matutinum. Candle, which may have come directly into In- flected English from Latin, is from cand^la, and that again from candere, " to shine." Many titles and dignities are from the Norman- French. Such are duke, marquis, count, viscount, peer, mayor, constable, governor. Duke and count were old imperial functionaries in the days of the Roman empire's widest exten- sion. Duke is from Latin ducem, "leader; " count, from comitem, a man entitled by his office to be the Emperor's messmate in camp. The title of count was replaced in England by the Danish earl ; but his wife was called countess. The viscount was the count's lieutenant, originally from Latin vice, " in the place of" The marquis was the lord of the marches ; that is, the frontier, where there was always keen watching and hard fighting to be done. The mayor, Old French maieur, took his name from Latin majorem, " greater." The consta- ble, Old French conestable, is traceable to Low Latin conestdbuhcm, originally comes stdbuli, "count of the stable ; " that is, master of horse. Governor, from French gouverneur, goes back to Latin guberna- torem, " a helmsman," the pilot of the Ship of State becoming in time its metaphorical meaning. The French have always been famed for their cookery. To this day it is the French c/ief that names the dishes that figure on the 7ncnu of a stylish dinner. Naturally, then, we find a vast number of words relating to cookery that come to FRENCH GRAFTS ON THE ENGLISH STOCK. 305 US from the French tongue, — words like ragout, fricassee, viands, victuals, entremets, dinner, supper, cates. Dinner is from dine ; and dine from Old French disner, which comes from Low Latin dis- ndre, a corruption of desinere, " to leave off; " that is, to desist from work in order to partake of food. Supper is from French souper, " to sup," and that is from soupe, the evening meal being simply a soup or broth, or bread and milk, a repast without meat. But the most striking fact in regard to the names of dishes is that the cooked meats got their names from the Normans, while the living animals which still required care and attendance kept their Old English names. The ox when served up for Norman banquets became beef (from French bceitf^ ; the sheep became mutton (from French inoutojt) ; the calf became veal (Old French veel ) ; the pig became pork (French pore). The reader of " Ivanhoe " will remember what amusing com- ment the jester Wamba makes on all this in his discourse with Gurth the swineherd. Latin had for many centuries been a language of culture ; hence it bequeathed to its Romance daughters a large store of abstract terms. Accord- ingly we find English ready to receive from French the greater part of the class-names required for purposes of exact thinking, while it kept the indi- vidual names it already had. Thus, animal and beast are from the Norman side of the family, while the English side furnishes fox, hound, whale, snake, wasp, fly. The Normans 306 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. brought over family, relation, parent, ancestor, cousin, uncle; the EngHsh retained their own father, mother, son, daughter, gossip. Realm, court, state, constitution, people, treaty, audience, navy, army, legislature, committee, jury, assembly, are Norman; while of abstract terms relating to the functions of the State, perhaps the only one that comes from Inflected English is kingdom. In words relating to agriculture and seafaring, however, the old tongue takes the lead. Plough, rake, harrow, flail, are purely English. English, too, are ship and sail, boat and oar, hull, fleet, stern, while prow comes from the Romance side of the language. So it is with the human personality; while French gives us person, face, countenance, corpse, stature, spirit, it is from Old English that we get eye, brow, nose, cheek, chin, tooth, tongue, hand, foot, elbow, finger, leg, back. From the Romance side come color, tint, nuance ; from the Teutonic, red, yellow, green, blue, brown, white, and black. Motion is Romance; but leap, spring, slip, slide, fall, walk, run, szvim, ride, creep, crawl, fly, are Teutonic. These are the commonplaces of the contrast between the two elements of English. Every writer on the subject enumerates many such in- stances of the dominion of Latin directly or through French over all that part of the language which expresses generalizations, and of Inflected English over that which expresses specific actions FRENCH GRAFTS ON THE ENGLISH STOCK. 307 or individual beings. I have followed Meiklejohn pretty closely in treating of all this matter. Then the synonyms form in themselves a great subject. We have books made up of them, whole dictionaries devoted to nothing else; and it is exceedingly difficult for even a trained writer al- ways to use them with taste and delicacy. There was a time in the history of the language when it was thfiught necessary to use them in couplets in order to reach the understanding of both classes of Englishmen, — those of the court and the city, and those of the people and the country. This usage has left its traces over a large part of our literature, and is particularly observable in the Book of Common Prayer. Chaucer has a number of such couplets. A few of them may fitly be set down here. Such are begin and commence, limb and member, will and testament, luck and fortune, flower and bloom, branch and bough, purchase and buy, amia- ble and friendly, cordial and hearty, country and land, gentle and mild, desire and wish, labor and work, miserable and wretched. . These are not often used together. But there are many that go in couples. Such are act and deed, use and wont, aid and abet, pray and beseech, acknowledge and confess, assemble and meet together, dissemble and cloak, humble and lowly. There are also, how- ever, as in German, couples of words that are wholly of Teutonic origin, such as stock and stone, stem and stern, hip and thigh. These, it will be 308 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. observed, are not synonyms, but sometimes simply alliterative and sometimes contrasted ideas. Allusion has already been made to the degrada- tion of certain words of Inflected English through their partial displacement by words of French origin. Meiklejohn calls attention to a number of such. There is, for instance, stool, which once meant " chair ; " but chair, taking its place, has re- duced it to a lower meaning. Whine, like the German weinen, once meant " to weep ; " but it has fallen to a lower use. The same thing is true of thatch, which once meant any kind of roof Hide once meant any creature's skin ; but its use is now restricted to the skin of a beast. Weeds once meant garments in general, but now only a widow wears them. Some of the words we have received from the French have undergone queer changes in their meaning; for instance, pay comes from French payer, and that from Latin pacare, " to pacify, or satisfy." Noise comes from Old French of the same form, and that from Latin nai'iseam, in the sense of annoyance. Max MiJller points out the fact that Joinville, the old French crusader who v/rote the doings of his master, St. Louis, uses both these words in both their earlier and their later sense. Then there is purchase, which comes from French pourchasser, originally " to hunt for," " to chase after a thing." In process of time the French word came to mean getting the thing hunted for, and was used in the sense of procur- FRENCH GRAFTS ON THE ENGLISH STOCK. 309 ing or catering ; and, lastly, in English it got the sense of buying. Some amusing transformations took place in the names of places. Such was the change from Chire Reine Cross to Charing Cross. At much earher periods in English history than that of the Norman influence, French literature, French taste, and French manners infected the language in divers ways. There has always been a steady influx of French words from these causes. Diplomacy, fashion, war, and science have, at vari- ous periods, introduced many. Social customs have given us matinh, soirh, etiquette, ^lite, stance, levee, carte-de-visite, goAt, d^Je^ner, ennui, programme. Diplomacy has given us precis, per- sonnel, coup-d'^tat, chargd d'affaires. War has given us aide-de-camp, coup-de-grdce , coup-d'ceil, reveille, mitrailleuse, pontoo?i, chevron, guidon. Literature has given us nam de guerre, naive, non- chalance, outr^, penchant, recherche, couleur de rose, brochure, eclat, debris, brusque. Fashion has given us blonde, brunette, belle, beau, bouquet, d3ut, de- butante, trousseau, prot^g^, mauve, corsage. We even abbreviate French phrases, as when we make P. P. C. calls and expect our English-speaking friends to understand that these letters stand for pour prendre cong^ and to know what that means, or send them invitations with R. S. V. P. below and take it for granted that they will recognize the symbols for repo7idez s'il vous plait. There was 'a time, as we learn from "Humphrey Clinker," when the good folk of Edinburgh caught 3IO THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. very readily the cry " Gardy-loo ! " and, under- standing that that meant Gardes I'eau ! or Garde a I'eau ! made all haste to hurry out of the narrow close to escape the deluge of slops from above. There was even a time when, under the in- fluence of writers like Horace Walpole and Gib- bon, who lived much in France, French idioms were temporarily in vogue. CHAPTER XX. ULTIMATE ENGLISH. The account given of Inflected English after the Norman Conquest brought us down to the Tudor period. From this time onward, the writers are too nu- merous and the Hterature too generally known to permit anything like detailed mention of men or books, however tempting the theme. Besides, the language was formed, and it is only of formative periods that language as a science takes cog- nizance. What actually exists is open to the eyes of all men. With the coming to the throne of the Tudor dynasty, English came of age and entered into possession of its noble estate. Looking back upon the past and scanning closely the two tongues that coalesced to form it, with a little help from Keltic and Danish quarters, we can see that the outcome was such as to blend the weighty strength and the deft flexibility of the original tongues into an instrument of rare force and of measureless compass. The Elizabethan literature alone stands as perpetual witness of 312 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. this. The toughness of fibre which had insured the survival of the speech of the Sassenacli, stripped as it was of so much that was distinctive, is nowhere more manifest than in the vigorous drama that illustrated the reigns of Elizabeth and James. The exquisite harmony of Shakespeare's verse, the beautiful and varied rhythm of the prose in which the English Bible and the Book of Common Prayer are written, and the mastery of a fine rhetorical style shown by even minor writers of that period, force upon us the sense of how much the language owed already to its French elements. The influence of Italian literature and of the Italian enthusiasm for the arts and letters of antiq- uity was even stronger with Surrey, Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser, and the whole body of the dramatists, than it had been with Chaucer two hundred years before ; and the language was enriched in many ways almost too subtle in their nature to be de- fined, and yet perceptible enough to the discerning reader. So large is the part played by verse in the Elizabethan Hterature that we are hardly aware, in our ordinary moods of recollection, of the remark- able character of its prose. Yet when we come to study the prose parts of Shakespeare's plays, we are at once struck with the ease with which he plays upon this unfamiliar instrument, with the grace and nimbleness of his periods, with the rich- ness of such ornaments as he permits himself to ULTIMATE ENGLISH. 313 use, and with the rapier-like swiftness of his thrust in dialogue. But it was, after all, in the age immediately suc- ceeding Shakespeare that we find prose rising to the dignity of a professed art, in spite of much that is beautiful in the "Arcadia," and wise in the "Tox- ophilus " and the " Scholemaster." The rich music of Elizabethan verse passed into the rhythmical prose of the Bible translators and the involved but harmonious periods of Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne. One of the chief ways in which the Elizabe- thans gave rhythmical beauty to a sentence was their free use of the principle of rhetoric as to the inversion of the order, to obtain emphasis. The received version of the Bible is full of instances of this device. " Great is Diana of the Ephesians ! " "There be gods many and lords many ; " "With a great sum obtained I this freedom," — are famil- iar examples. The eloquence of Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne and Milton in his prose owes much of its power to the swelling phrase and pomp of diction which their learning drew from classic writers. ThS revival of learning had been slowly but steadily infiltrating a vast vocabulary of Latin and Greek into English from the times of Eras- mus, More, and Ascham to the Caroline period. James was a pedant, and had favored pedantry at court. Ben Jonson was long the arbiter of taste in literary circles under the first English Stuarts; 314 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. and he prided himself upon his Latin scholarship. Everything favored the importation of Latin into EngHsh. It was thought elegant to load each sentence with as many Latinized words as it would bear. It seems odd, however, to us to note how many words now familiar were then regarded as unjustifi- able additions to the stock of English words. Alexander Gill, one of Milton's teachers, gives us some of these : — " O harsh lips ! I now hear all around me such words as common, vices, envy, malice ; even virtue, study, jus- tice, pity, mercy, compassion, profit, commodity, color, grace, favor, acceptance. But whither, I pray, in all the world, have you banished those words which our fore- fathers used for these new-fangled ones ? Are our words to be executed like our citizens? " This was in 1619. Shakespeare was dead. Is it possible that he wrote that beautiful commenda- tion of mercy, beginning, " The quality of mercy is not strained," with the consciousness that the word was a novelty? Is it possible that he punned so often on the words choler and color, with no con- ception of the strangeness of the latter word to many in his audience? I do not believe it. The worthy schoolmaster probably lived too much out of the world to know what currency words had there. Still, it is evident that many words that have long had their recognized place in the language ULTIMATE ENGLISH. 315 came crowding in at this time. Only, be sure that the dramatists would use few that were not well known to their audiences. Very many of those that were coined at this time, and later, had a brief life in the books in which they appeared, but were not taken up into general circulation even for literary use. There are not a few coinages of writers like Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne, who have won immortality, that never passed beyond the scholar's own mint. In English as in French there were now intro- duced many words from Latin originals that had already passed into the language in a more natural way. This coming into the language of the same word by two different doors — by the Eye and by the Ear, as Meiklejohn expresses it — gave rise to doublets. Thus, we have from the same source cadence and chance, captive and caitijf, conception and conceit, coffin and coffer, defect and defeat, dilate and delay, fabric and forge, faction and fashion, fact and feat, gentile and gentle, hospital and hotel, mint and money, nutriment and nourishment, par- ticle and parcel, pauper and poor, penitence and penance, persecute and pursue, potion and poison, pungent and poignant, quiet and coy, respect and respite, secure and sure, separate and sever, species and spice, tradition and treason. The words that have come from Latin by the industry of scholars are still for the most part book words. The words that came in long ago through 3l6 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. French are those that belong to the common speech of the EngHsh-speaking nations. The latter have generally been worn by the attrition of daily use into shorter form. In many cases all apparent identity has been lost by the development of wholly different shades of meaning. There are even a few triplets, — words that have come, one from Latin, one through Norman- French, and one through French of Paris. Meikle- john mentions some of them: regal, royal, and real; legal, loyal, and leal ; fidelity, faithfulness, and fealty. From Greek also we have two forms that repre- sent the same original, — one of them coming in with the Church long ago, the other, introduced by writers of more recent times, directly from Greek literature. Such are adamant and diamond, balsam, and balm, blaspheme and blame, sui'geon and chirurgeon {^surgeon seems to have come from Old French cirurgeon), dactyl and date, phantasy and fancy, presbyter and priest, paralysis and palsy, scandal and slander. There are also doublets of purely English origin, and there are not a few that, whatever their origin, seem to have been due to causes independent oi the difference between Ear and Eye mode of intro- duction. Some are due to differences of pronunci- ation. Such are person and parson, sop and soup, task and tax, ticket and etiquette, squall and squeal. Some are due to differences in spelling. Such are to and too, of and off, from and fro, union and ULTIMATE ENGLISH. 317 onion. Union at first meant a large single pearl, then the plant. Some are due to differences in dialect. Such are kirk and church, canker and cancer, canal and channel, deck and thatch, drill and thrill, naught, nought, and not, pike, peak, and beak, scabby and shabby, screech and shriek, shirt and skirt, shuffle and scuffle, spray and sprig. Some are due to contractions in the hurry of daily speech. Such are example and sample, alone and lone, defend said fend, manoeuvre and manure, capital and cattle, disport and sport, estate and jZh^^, esquire and squire, Egyptian and gypsy, emmet and ««4 gammon and game, mobile and ;«oi5, periwig and wzj^", omnibus and i5'«5, shallop and .y^i?/. Meiklejohn gives these examples and some others. A vast proportion of the additions made to the language must be referred to that stirring and studious age when scholars were thronging to Italy in search of the New Learning, when young gentle- men were pupils in the art of war under the white plume of Henry of Navarre or were fighting the Spaniards in the Netherlands, and when adven- turous spirits were sailing from Devonshire to discovery and battle in the New World. Lyly's " Euphues " was but one indication among many of the thirst for new and choice forms of expression. All the Elizabethans had the rage for rhetoric, and picked their words with an eager sense of difference in the value of them. 3l8 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. They were fully conscious of the excellence of their language. The poet Daniel, in his dedica- tion of " Cleopatra " to the Countess of Pembroke, is alive to this when he cries : — " Oh that the Ocean did not bind our style Within these strict and narrow limits so, But that the melody of our sweet isle Might now be heard to Tiber, Arne, and Po, That they may know how far Thames doth outgo The music of declinM Italy ! " Yet, lamenting thus the narrow limits of the English of his day, he would seem to have seen in prophetic vision the future triumph of his native tongue, for thus he sings : — " Who knows whither we may vent The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores This gain of our best glory will be sent T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores ? What worlds in the yet unformed Occident May come refined with th' accents that are ours ? " I have already alluded to the power English has of varying the music of a sentence by the contrast of long words with short. Of course it is peculiarly in verse that this excellence tells ; and our modern poets are not slow to avail themselves of this sing- ular advantage. Many passages could be drawn from Tennyson and Swinburne, both subtle mas- ters of musical effect, in illustration of this fact. But it is in the Elizabethan poets that we find the largest use of this appeal to the ear. It would be easy to select passages from scores of them in ULTIMATE ENGLISH. 319 illustration of this ; but I shall confine myself to two well-known and often-quoted passages from the master poets of the time, Shakespeare and Milton, the latter being in his early days truly an Elizabethan in taste and spirit. The first is this, from " Macbeth " : — " Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand ? No ! this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green, one red." Then, from " Comus : " — " A thousand phantasies Begin to throng into my memory, Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men's names On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses." But the rich Elizabethan fancy was to give way to far other tastes. The civil war seems to have killed music. The Puritan scorn for pleasure and dread of merriment doomed art in the day of Puritan triumph ; and a fate even worse befell the land when the Restoration came about. Charles the Second brought back with him the French taste ; and, following Boileau and his school, Dryden and the poets who took him for their master sought lucidity and point, until with Pope and all the rest of the Queen Anne wits poetry became perpetual epigram. I have nothing to do here with the foulness of the drama of the Restora- tion or with the scurrility of the satire of Pope and Swift, but merely with the vicious influence of a 320 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. narrow form of art upon the language. There is a monotony in the versification of the age which points with unerring index to a scant and impov- erished vocabulary and to a poverty in the use of idiomatic forms. At the same time, with lucidity and force for their aim, the prose writers from Bunyan, De Foe, and Swift, almost to the age of Goldsmith and Johnson, produced a prose of un- matched baldness and bareness. In the case of Bunyan its provincial texture is somewhat relieved by the abundant quotations from the great Eliza- bethan Bible and by his own wild gypsy imagination. In the case of De Foe, its slipshod looseness and frequent lapses from grammatical accuracy are for- gotten in our sense of its inimitable air of serious- ness and marvellous mastery of detail. With Swift, who, in the long companionship of his youth with a man of the world and practised writer like Temple, had learned correctness, the bareness of his style seems of set purpose, and is certainly in keeping with his intensely materialistic intellect, his unceasing play of irony, and his contempt for mankind. But certainly the English of that day is a tongue that has lost its bloom. The thrill, the bounding elasticity of youth, seems to have gone wholly from its limbs. Only in the genial humor and the playfulness of Addison and Steele do we feel some trace of that lighter vein that in the Elizabethan age made a comedy as airy as its tragedy was thrilling. " A change of language," says Max Muller, " in- ULTIMATE ENGLISH. 32 1 variably betokens a change in the social constitu- tion of a country." If we did not know the history of that interval between " Comus " and " The Rape of the Lock," we might well infer, merely from the contrast between those two poems, that a great social change had taken place. It would be still more apparent if we set the " Arcadia " side by side with" Moll Flanders." I think there can be no question about the matter: the language certainly suffered from the lowered tone. The literary form was still worse when Johnson dominated the literary world. It was in his age that writers grew afraid of using that fine idiomatic structure of the sentence that ends it with a short word, and resorted to the imitation of the stiff Latin formation. But Johnson's own style went far beyond this simple evasion of the Teutonic idiom that couples the preposition with the verb in an adverbial sense, but throws it to the end of the sentence to lighten its close. He systematically avoided the simple words, whether Teutonic or Norman-French, that lie at the sources of the lan- gdage. He always preferred the longest and most recently introduced words. His style was as un- English as his character was English. On this point at least Macaulay h^s not been a bit too hard upon him. His style is execrable, almost as bad as the ordinary newspaper English of our time, — which, indeed, closely resembles it. The philosophical mind of Burke, his warm 322 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Keltic imagination, and his Keltic taste for exu- berance of diction kept him from succumbing to Johnson's influence. Indeed, to two Irishmen, Burke and Goldsmith, and to another who was next door to an Irishman, the humorist Sterne, we owe it that the English language began to recover richness, lightness, grace, and idiom. Goldsmith, laughed at by men infinitely inferior to him in real goodness of heart as well as in genius and in com- mand of good English, has had his revenge. His works — novel, comedies, and poems — are all read still by people who care nothing for " Rasselas " or even for the vigorous satire of " London ; " and an incomparable stylist like Washington Irving took the style of Goldsmith for his model. Sterne, by the popularity of his " Tristram Shandy," did wonders for the language in bringing it back from books to nature ; for, full as the book is of false pedantry in the shape of a parade of stolen learning, nothing could be easier than the style. It has all the artless grace of life itself It was much the same with Fielding. His vigorous and manly style smacks not in the least of John- sonese. It is never grandiloquent except when he is humorously parodying Homer. But it is in Sterne that we see how utterly in some parts of England the old grammar of the language had been forgotten. In the days of George Fox, the essential plurality of you was still felt; else the Quakers never would have thought it necessary to protest against its use in ULTIMATE ENGLISH. 323 addressing a single person and to proclaim such use the acting out of a lie. Yet when we have reached the time of Sterne, all sense of its peculiar place in the language must have died out, for he almost uniformly says, " you was." I doubt whether an instance can be found of Sterne's using " you were." When we reach the age of Robert Burns — still more when we come to the Waverley Novels — we begin to see the beneficent effects upon language of dialect in literature. " Dialects," says Max Miiller, " are everywhere the natural feeders of literary languages ; and an attempt to destroy them, if it could succeed, would be like shutting up the tributaries of great rivers." The Greeks, with their invariable good taste, seem to have intuitively understood this ; and, dis- dainful as they were of all foreign tongues, they cultivated with care the dialects of their own and found fit place and use for each of them. To the last, Doric remained the proper form for choral song, while the dialogue of the actors kept pace with the development of Attic. It was a fortunate thing for English that the delicious Scottish dialect, already to some extent a literary tongue, was the first of the dialects to find its way into acknowledged English literature. It secured a respectful reception for the other dialects, and it deserved to rank as the English Doric. In fact, it was, with but a few recent changes, the early English of Caxton's day. 324 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. We have had many dialects in our literature since, — the Yorkshire, the Devonshire, and others ; and in the hands of writers of genius they are always enjoyable. Their utility to the general language consists in the fact that from time to time there is adopted from them some piquant word or idiom that goes down the stream of lan- guage and literature with renewed life, destined probably to last as long as the language itself In this last age, turning back to that gay courtier who became a singer when his wars and his em- bassies were over, we are worthily striving to revive the use of some of the richest and most expressive terms of our older literature, which had been unhappily allowed' to pass out of circulation. Tennyson takes us back to the old romances about Arthur Pendragon and Tristrem of Lyonesse. William Morris both in prose and verse renews the olden tongue and tells over the ancient stories. Swinburne weaves his musical words into the old metrical forms of France that were once so popular in England. Blackmore and others bring to the front dialects long hidden from literature. A for- gotten vocabulary, thus quickened into new life, is proving to us how exhaustless and ever fresh is the wonderfully copious language that is our heritage. The English are a race of travelers by land and by sea ; their commerce has long been world-wide ; and their colonies are on all the continents and in many an island. Their contact with other races ULTIMATE ENGLISH. 325 and with the fauna and flora of many a land has added innumerable words to the vocabulary of the language. In the Appendix will be found a number of illustrations of this fact. Some writers express great dismay at the influx of new words and the resurrection of old ones, fear- ing that the purity of the language may suffer. But while there is life, change must go on in a language ; and, the more vigorous the language, the greater will be the tendency to copiousness. It is the monotony of a would-be pure style that brings with it at last that sense of staleness which is so apt to drive a people to vicious corruptions and counterfeit glitter, or else to narrowness and priggishness. The sapless and stilted style of the last century was the consummation of the latter fault; the straining and contorting of Carlyle's English and the posturing of George Meredith's are examples of the former. There is perennial wisdom in that aphorism of Horace's : — " Many a word that has gone to the ground, Raised from the dead, shall in honor be found ; Many a word that is now in repute Shall in its turn be fallen and mute, Granting that use shall will it for each, — Use, which is almost the law of good speech." Modern English has thrown off", for ordinary use, some of the grammar of the Elizabethans. Thou^ thy, thee, and ye are seldom used ; and the termi- nation in th for the third person singular of the 326 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. verb is also very rare. We treat them as the Attic dialect came to treat the ancient dual. There are some carelessnesses in Modern English much oftener committed over the vs^ater than with us. Even Thackeray, for instance, whose style is usually admirable, makes use of that hideous sole- cism, " different to." It is hardly within the scope of my work to dis- cuss style, or I should like to say something of Hawthorne's invariable air of distinction, of Poe's choice language, of Paley's and Macaulay's clear- ness, of Ruskin's eloquence, of Lafcadio Hearn's Oriental luxuriance, of Stevenson's racy, deft, flexi- ble style, always adequate to the matter in hand. One point, outside of language proper, I must call attention to. It is this : there is a serious temper in the English race that shows itself in their literature from Caedmon to Tennyson. It was excessive in the unmixed race, and made them a nation of monks. The Norman blood cooled this zeal ; but we find it in Wycliffe, Langland, Spenser, Milton, — in a long line of theologians, satirists, essayists, poets. Perhaps in no other literature than this and the Hebrew has the cause of God been so strenuously set forth. It is the same with civil liberty and free thought. The language has been the truest friend to pure religion and sound government. The language in which Wycliffe wrote and Latimer preached ; in which Chillingworth, Butler, Chalmers, and Rogers reasoned; the tongue that ULTIMATE ENGLISH. 327 rang out the pulpit eloquence of Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, Whitefield, Robert Hall, and Thornwell; the language that was freighted with the rich imagination and the fervent zeal of Bunyan ; that flowed with kindred grace in John Newton's letters and Cowper's poems ; that expressed the vigorous thought of Owen and Howe ; that sang the songs of Zion in the tuneful words of Wesley, Toplady, Watts, and Keble, — such a speech must rank high in the annals of Christianity. Its service to civil liberty and to free thought has been no less great. Almost its whole litera- ture bears witness to this. Compared with other tongues in point of flexi- bility, copiousness, grace, softness, strength, har- mony, delicacy, richness in dialectic forms, it may yield to some in one element or another; but few will venture to deny that it surpasses all others in the combination of many excellences. Trench does not put its merits too high when he describes it as " a fit organ for expressing the subtlest distinctions, the tenderest sentiments, the largest thoughts, and the loftiest imaginations, which at any time the heart of man can conceive." Take De Quincey for subtlety ; the old ballads for tenderness ; Bacon, Burke, and Sir Thomas More for breadth of thought; Milton, Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, Coleridge, and Ruskin for imaginative reach, and all of these but Cole- ridge for pomp of language ; take Shakespeare for all these qualities and many more besides, — 328 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. and it is hard to imagine any one dissenting from the proclamation of this judgment. With the exception of the pronouns, the adjec- tives in their comparison, and the verbs in a few formations, the language has wholly shaken off the fetters of inflectional grammar. Inflection has left its treasures buried in the heart of many words ; but all that was oppressive in the system has been eliminated. It is like the case of feudalism and modern society. We gained much by the feudal system ; but in the evolution of society we have left its evils far behind us. The only curse our historic development has left with us — our atrocious spelling — unfortunately still clings to us. But it will not do so forever. This noble language, embodying a grand litera- ture, and as complex in origin and composite in character as the races that speak it, has now a home on every continent and in many a scattered isle. Wherever it has gone, with it have moved in happy harmony Christian faith and civil liberty. I cannot believe that it will ever be otherwise. CHAPTER XXI. SUMMARY. Language is the centre of the entire intellectual and social Hfe of man. As. the term is now em- ployed, putting aside the mere language of signs by gesture and by written character, it is a com- bination of sounds produced by the air breathed out, under expulsive efforts of the will, from the lungs through the cavity of the mouth or through the nasal cavity, their difference being dependent upon the path taken by the current of air and upon voluntary movements of certain structures within these cavities. The capacity of the lungs, the size and shape of the air passages, the size of the tongue, the condition of the teeth, and the shape and flexibility of the lips, modify variously the character of the sounds emitted. This is why races differ so greatly in their vocalization, some sounding gutturals impossible for others to enun- ciate, others reveling in dentals that are so difficult for many races to utter, while others again use labials preferably to any other sounds. " The general impression of fulness and richness con- veyed by the French language," says Meyer, "arises from its wealth in nasal vowels." 330 I'HE STOKY OF LANGUAGE. Language is undoubtedly a product of man's innate powers and his environment. The desire — nay, the necessity — that men should communicate with one another originated language. It is true that language also facilitates thought; but this function could have had little to do with its origi- nation. Food, drink, shelter, protection against dangerous animals, and the care of helpless off- spring were man's first needs. For these, inter- course and community of counsel and action were indispensable. The solitary man never could have originated speech ; the solitary now would disuse it and forget it. Gesture, posture, grimace, and utterance were necessarily the earliest modes of intercommuni- cation, and probably continued long in use to- gether. In many parts of the world, speech is still reinforced by the other methods. There are said to be tribes that on this account cannot com- municate, man with man, in the dark. Cries, exclamations, and imitation of the sounds in nature must have made up the first modes of utterance. These would soon get a conventional fixity of meaning among the members of the same tribe, and form the beginnings of articulate speech. The Aryan tongues have been traced back to roots of one syllable. The Chinese, the Otomi, and some other tongues consist still of such roots. But it is not unlikely that some races may have begun with the musical repetition of the same SUMMARY. 331 sound ; that is, with a root seemingly of two syllables. This tendency to rhythmic repetition is often observable in the case of children learning to speak. It is also noticeable in the language of the Huaztecs, spoken in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. Its pronouns are : — nana, " I." huahua, " we." tata, " thou." xaxa, " you." Jaja, " he." baba, " they." No efforts have as yet availed to reduce the Semitic vocabularies to simple roots. They may have had an origin wholly different from any yet imagined by philologists. The keeping up of conventional sounds with given meanings must long have been purely tradi- tional, as it is still for the great majority of the human race. It is largely independent of race, for the Negro by descent speaks the tongue of the race in whose land he is born. But that he makes a dialect of it is proof that race has a good deal to do with language. There are congenital tendencies both of brain and of vocal organs that differentiate his speech from that of the race in whose land he grows up. No doubt there are modes of expression and peculiarities of vocaliza- tion in English that hark back to old Euskarian or Keltic or Italic or Danish blood, while but a small part of the actual vocabulary is traceable to any of these sources. 332 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. The first sounds were probably made up of the closest consonants and the most open vowels, and must have been confined to the expression of purely physical concepts. All intellectual and moral ideas found later expression by means of the figurative use of words that had originally a physical meaning only. The study of language was begun by the com- parison and analysis of the Aryan tongues, after they had been discovered to be descendants of one mother tongue. But it was soon perceived that arrested growth in the case of other languages than the Aryan would enable us to study the evolution of language as a whole with even better prospects of making valuable discoveries. The result of such studies has been the con- viction that language began with positional gram- mar. There are tongues that dispense with the necessity of the sentence in our conception of the meaning of that word. Just as children make themselves comprehended by merely putting two or three words together, so there are races that contrive to communicate their ideas without hav- ing recourse to the full sentence-structure. In such unfinished and almost formless expressions, there may be, however, all the varieties of grammatical nexus. These are of four kinds: the relation of words to one another may be expressed by position, by intonation, by inflection, and by connectives. In a few tongues, positional grammar alone pre- vails. Chinese uses both position and intonation. SUMMARY. 333 In that language ia, according to its position, means " great," or " greatness," or " to grow," or " very much," or " very." The next step was for one word to become merely determinative of the precise meaning of another. Thus, in Chinese, jm means " man " and tu means " crowd," from which is formed by mere juxtaposition /?■«-/«, "man-crowd," or "a crowd of men." Tu is here mere determinative. The next step was for the determinative to suffer phonetic decay and become a mere suffix. Thus, in Burmese the plural is formed by to, and in Finnish by t. Some tongues took a different turn and showed a marked preference for prefixes. You will re- member how strikingly the Bantu tongues of Africa show the force of this tendency. The next step seems to have been to mark distinctions of meaning by interior change. This is the vowel-inflection of the Semitic tongues. The next step was the incorporation with roots of terminations composed of words that have wholly lost their separate identity and have been broken into short forms. This was the origin of external inflection and was the preferred gram- matical nexus of the Aryan races. The next step was the gradual wearing away or deliberate abandonment of inflections and the use in their place of simple connectives on which no stress is to be laid, but which act as stepping-stones from idea to idea. 334 '^^^ STORY OF LANGUAGE. Now, it must be understood that there are no hard and fast lines in all this. Chinese itself has some traces of agglutination and some traces of incipient inflection. Greek — that is, the ancient Hellenic tongue — has a well-marked system of intonation in its accents. The Aryan tongues have, all of them, many instances of interior vowel- inflection. Some of them and some of the Semitic tongues have use for prefixes as well as the Bantu tongues, though not on the same extensive scale. All languages have connectives. All languages use positional grammar to some extent. Yet it is evident that these different types of language are fairly distinguishable from one another by their characteristic use of some one form of grammati- cal construction in preference to all the others. Chinese is monosyllabic and positional and inton- ing. Japanese is agglutinative and positional. Zulu inflects by prefixes. Hebrew inflects by internal vowel-change. Latin inflects by affixes to the root. English is both monosyllabic and poly- syllabic and constructs sentences by connectives. But in truth English has a peculiar advantage in having in use all the modes of binding thoughts together. After its loss through many centuries of inflection, English has regained the power of making a word do many offices, — that power which Chinese shows us to have been possessed by tongues in the baby stage of development. By the Elizabethans it was used with the utmost freedom. English also retains to some extent the power of SUMMARY. 335 combination possessed by languages in the agglu- tinative stage. Thus, we say railroad or railway where the French have to say chemin de fer; steamboat where they have to say bateau a vapeur; chambermaid where they have to say femme de chambre. It is, in my judgment, however, a fortu- nate circumstance that the Norman-French came in to curtail somewhat this power of making com- pound words. We see the ill effect of excess in this tendency in German. So too with inflection : while English has almost wholly discarded grammatical inflection, there are few words of more than one syllable that do not carry in their faces the marks of the long processes of thought that lay at the back of their formation and were once embodied in inflected forms. Nor — to come down to changes from Inflected English to the modern speech — has English in accepting rhyme thrown away the grace of alliter- ation altogether. It plays a great part in English prose as well as in English poetry. It is barely possible that all these varieties of language-formation — the monosyllabic, the agglu- tinative, the holophrastic, the inflective by prefix, the inflective by vowel-change, the inflective by affix — may have sprung from one and the same original tongue. They seem, however, to follow race characteristics, and they may have originated at different centres, in spite of the fact that one set of inflected tongues — the Aryan — can be reduced to roots of one syllable. One thing is certain: 336 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. there is a constant tendency toward variation in language, and there have always been dialects. Whitney has pointed out the fact that each human being has a language to himself. His part of the mother tongue is not precisely identical with that of any other. Household differs from household, tribe from tribe, province from province. From this fact, with sometimes an added difference in origin or some historic happening, comes the ex- istence of dialect. Change in language comes about in no less than six different ways. There is change in the form of words, change in their meaning, the total disappearance of words, the introduction of new words, the loss of grammatical form once had, and the introduction of new grammatical forms. Whitney illustrates the first two by the Greek word episkopos changed thus in form : Latin, episcopus ; French, evique ; Spanish, obispo ; Portu- guese, bispo ; Danish, bisp ; German, bischof ; Inflected English, biscop ; English, bishop ; Italian, vhcovo ; while the person meant by the original Greek, — a mere superintendent of trembling pros- elytes — has become an ecclesiastical prince, often having great revenues and wielding august au- thority. This phonetic decay that changes the form of words prevails with regard to both vowels and consonants. Ease in thinking and ease in speaking have played the largest part in determining change in SUMMARY. 337 language. Underlying all changes and every stage of progress in language have been these two factors, of which the latter — generally styled phonetic convenience — has been the greater force in its later history. This agency of economy in utterance has been compared to a force like that of gravitation, always lying in wait to pull down what tradition or Hterary prestige do not avail to hold up. There is never, perhaps, in any human being a deliberate intention to change the speech of his fathers, and yet he unconsciously does vary in small particulars from the exact usage of the last generation; and all the infinitesimal variations in each generation produce a decided variation in the speech of the next. Syllables are shortened, the stress is changed from one syllable to another, compound words are by fusion made to appear simple, the vowel-changes called in German Ab- laut and Umlaut are developed, words are an- nexed from other languages, the slang terms produced by ignorance or humor are adopted into the language. There are variations in into- nation even among those speaking the same lan- guage. A Scotchman seems to an Englishman to be always asking questions, because he raises the pitch of his voice toward the close of all sen- tences. I have observed the same peculiarity in the speech of the negroes on the plantations that lie along the river Combahee in South Carolina. In the Teutonic languages the law that governs 338 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. the shifting of mutes, discovered by Rask, but first fully stated by Jacob Grimm, and Verner's law, supplementing Grimm's (relating specially to the shifting of spirants), are good illustrations of the regularity with which race modifies speech. Grimm's law is that /, b, f, in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, become in Gothic /, p, b, and, in Old High German, b, f, p. Also that t, d, th in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit become in Gothic th, t, and d, and, in Old High German, d, s, and t. Also that k, g, ch in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, become in Gothic k, k, g, and, in Old High German, g, ch, k. As to the accentuation of sentences, to which reference was made a while ago, it must be re- membered that we speak naturally in breath groups ; and it is curious to note how greatly races differ as to the place where stress falls. In English and German the stress falls upon the ini- tial sounds of a breath group. French stress, on the other hand, is very uniform, and the French groups are very long. Hence French intonation is somewhat monotonous, the dramatic verse in particular being a regular sing-song. The disappearance of words and of grammati- cal forms we have seen amply illustrated in our study of the struggle of Inflected English with Norman-French. The introduction of new words is a thing of frequent experience. The English have always been ready to take words, with but slight change in their form, from every land and race under the sun. SUMMARY. 339 As to structure, all structure is the result of growth, and growth necessitates change in struc- ture. The change from synthetic to analytic structure involves the introduction of new grammatical forms, in the larger sense of the term grammati- cal. The very capacity, so marked in English, for changing one part of speech into another — mak- ing, for instance, a noun do duty as a verb [" he eyed the man "] — is a power that may well be described as a new grammatical form for a tongue once inflected, old as the linguistic trick is in itself Those causes that produce dialects in any given language are in the main the same that divided languages originally from one another. The causes of all variation are : the separation of races, producing diversity of environment ; lack of fixity in language, owing to the race not having reached civilization ; the influence of neighboring tongues, especially in consequence of the law of exogamy ; and the delight of child races in playing with lan- guage. What we call dialect may be traced to similar agencies : the provincial life, with its own peculiar environment ; the lapses from forms form- erly prevailing, but not fixed by literary use ; the influence of communities into which provincials marry ; and the manufacture of slang in the sheer pleasure of word-making. It is true that dialect often simply retains what was once universal but has ceased to be used in the centres of culture. 340 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Many expressions and pronunciations, for instance, once common in English, are found now in Ireland and in the seaboard parts of Virginia and the Caro- linas. They were Elizabethan English ; but they died out in the England of the Hanoverian kings. When dialects drift apart and become separate languages, the parts of the vocabulary that remain most alike are the numerals, the pronouns, the words for family relations, and the domesticity in general, and, in addition to these, the forms of the verb " to be." It is wonderful that likenesses of this kind should last through thousands of years and across wide continents. But the likeness in grammatical structure remains long after all traces of resem- blance in vocabulary have passed away, as this verb " to be " also witnesses. I have laid some stress on the effect of phonetic variation in changing language; but it must not be forgotten that analogy is also a force that pro- duces sweeping results of this kind. For instance, in Modern English the inflected boc ought to have formed its plural in the same manner as the in- flected fot, by change of vowel. Old English fot became in the plural /%. Modern English made the singular foot and the plural feet. Boc, which once made its plural bee, ought to have been in modern English book — beech. But, instead of making its plural by vowel-change, it followed the analogy of the great majority of nouns and simply added an s to form the plural. SUMMARY. 341 But let US now revert to the general scope of my narrative of the evolution of languages. In some parts of the world, the yellow race — the earliest civilizers — ceased to develop their language at the monosyllabic stage. But it must be remembered that the monosyllabic dialects, even in China, differ widely from one another; and, were it not for the general diffusion of the literary dialect, it would be straining a point to say that there is such a thing as a Chinese language. Agglutination varies from a scantiness hardly above that of the isolating languages — tongues that have no formal structure — to an intricacy approaching inflection. It may be classed in three orders : agglutination by simple attachment, as practised by the Finns; agglutination of the holophrastic type, as seen in the American tongues ; and agglutination with some vowel in- flection and consonantal change by assimilation, as in the Bantu tongues. There is a principle of symmetry peculiar to each type of language. That of the monosyllabic is intonation, though all do not have it. That of the agglutinative is the euphonic interchange of consonants. That of the Semitic is a wonderful euphonic law of vowel-change. That of the Aryan is the law of symbolization. The agglutinative tongues of Akkad, of Sumir, and of the Hittite confederacy were of undoubted antiquity. The races using this type of language 342 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. that were not subjected to the influence of civiliza- tion improved their speech by natural processes of evolution into approximation either to the holo- phrastic or to the inflective type. The In-nu-it are an instance of the one tendency ; the Austra- lian tribes, of the other. The system of aggluti- native affixes prevailing in Basque and that of agglutinative prefixes prevailing in the Mpongwe present a very near approach to true inflection. Nor will it do to say, as was once asserted by phil- ologists, that grammatical gender is found only in the Aryan, Semitic, and Hamitic tongues. We have seen that there was something of the sort in several of the agglutinative languages. Shamanistic worship and totemistic social organ- ization seem to belong naturally to the agglutina- tive stage of development in language, though there are traces of both in those races that attained the higher development, from which we have some right to infer that these races passed through the lower stage of development. It is at the ag- glutinative stage that hieroglyphs seem to have been invented. The yellow race represents these tongues as well as the monosyllabic. The holophrastic stage, which appears to be a development of agglutination into which only cer- tain races have entered, has, conjoined with its excessively compounding principle, a fancy for the use of reduplication, of many frequentatives and duals, of gender in the verb, and of the sub- stantive as a verb. SUMMARY. 343 The Bantu languages would seem to be a re- markable blending of holophrastic powers with the ordinary agglutinative functions and an ad- vance in a peculiar direction toward genuine inflection. In the Hamitic languages we see perhaps the embryonic condition of the Semitic, as there is evident in them a line of development from mono- syllables up into biliteral and triliteral roots. In one of the lowest types, the ancient Egyptian, the root, as in the tongues of the yellow races, remains unchanged and the number-formations are by affixes. In the Semitic languages we find the highest expansion of the triliteral root-system and, along with it, a remarkably euphonious system of vowel- interchange. We also find that note-mark of gen- der in the verb characteristic of holophrastic tongues, and that initial inflection which prevails in the Bantu tongues. Assyrian had terminal inflection for cases ; Hebrew has it for gender and number. In Arabic we find positional grammar — the characteristic of Chinese — playing a large part in the structure of sentences. Entering upon their career as civilized races later than Akkad, Egyptian, and Hittite, the Sem- itic races began with languages at a higher stage of evolution ; but it is evident that their tongues had once passed through stages identical with those of Basque and Bantu. 344 ^-^-^ STORY OF LANGUAGE. The Aryan races were still more fortunate. They did not reach full civil organization and literary expression until their languages had passed through all the lower stages from the monosyllabic to that complex system of inflection peculiar to them. After passing through a great history and find- ing expression in monumental literatures, these inflected tongues have generally given birth to analytic languages, now distributed by the genius and enterprise of the leading Aryan nations over the whole world, so that no part of it is wholly free from the influence of Aryan speech. By far the richest of these Aryan inflected tongues is Greek. But as the organizer and the lawgiver of modern Europe and as the ancestor of many European tongues, Latin has greater importance in our plan of survey. Its value in respect to its capacity for rhetorical finish is also to be taken into account. Akin to the Doric dialect of the Hellenic stock and probably to the Illyrian, the Italic group of dialects to which it belonged in the Italian peninsula came in contact with Etruscan, the tongue of a race then far superior to the Italians in civilization. No doubt Latin drew more largely from this source than we can now at all estimate. Certainly much that belonged to Rome's language of cere- mony and of law was of Etruscan origin. Many circumstances concurred to make the Latin of literature in its palmy days a highly arti- ficial and hide-bound language. This purely con- SUMMARY. 34^ ventional purity could not, however, be long maintained. In process of time, Greek words and idioms and provincial expressions — the extremes of over-cultivation and rudeness — appeared in great numbers even in literature; and the lan- guage was already on the point of losing its rigid synthetic form through natural causes, when the influx of the Germanic races accelerated the pro- cess immensely. It broke up into as many dialects of Romance as there were independent nationalities in the old Roman domain striving to emerge from the chaos of imperial ruin. Its high qualities of dignity, precision, and force were in great measure inherited by its daughters, while their share of analytic structure enabled them to excel it in ease and flexibility. Inflected English, necessarily, is of importance to us who use the riper tongue into which it de- veloped. But never did wilder stock bear, through grafting, noble fruit and foliage. Toughness of fibre and strong vitahty are its only virtues. The enemies of the race were in the end its benefactors. Kelt, Dane, Norman, and Aquitanian bestowed rich gifts upon the blood of the race and upon the texture of the language. The inflections were nearly all eliminated, the gutturals softened, the accent varied, the structure of the sentence lightened, and the vocabulary enriched. Poetry, without altogether losing the ornament of allitera- tion, received the fairy gift of rhyme. Above all, through French, both language and literature 346 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. entered upon the grand inheritance of the conti- nent, and Latin, like a feudal suzerain, took seisin of English. French was an analytic development of Latin, while English was still in its inflected stage. Hence, in large measure, the ready triumph of Norman-French when brought into competition with the other tongue, though that was on its own soil and was spoken by multitudes. It made English even more analytic than itself, and then it succumbed to English. Still, its literature and its social prestige have always largely affected both English literature and English usages. English, the heir of all these tongues, — Latin, French, Low German, Scandinavian, Keltic, — has not been content with the immense gains of such heritage, but has taken from all lands and all tongues what words were needed to name new things. It still goes on thus from day to day, taking spoil from all forms of speech and repre- senting all in its own heterogeneous make-up. It is as rich in dialects as in idioms and synonyms. Its only serious lack is that the written language has no rational alphabet, and that hence English spelling is very, very far from being consistent with the sound of spoken English. APPENDIX. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF AUTHORITIES. Anderson : The Younger Edda ; Norse Mythology. Baker : The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia. Bancroft: History of Mexico; History of Texas; Native Races. Brinton : Races and Peoples ; The American Race. Bruce : Travels in Abyssinia. Butler : The Land of the Veda. Cesnola : Cyprus. Charnay : The Ruins of Central America. Chasles : Litt^rature Fran^aise. Cond^ : History of the Arabs in Spain. Crawford : The Kalevala. Creasy i History of the Ottoman Turks. Curtius : History of Greece. Darwin : Naturalist's Voyage round the World. Davis : Carthage and her Remains. Daw kins : Cave Hunting. Dawson : Story of the Earth and Man. Donaldson : New Cratylus ; Varronianus. Drummond : The Ascent of Man. Ebers : History of Egypt ; Uarda. Edwards : A Thousand Miles up the Nile. Pelton : Greece, Ancient and Modern. Fiske : Myths and Myth-makers. 348 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Forestier : Echoes from Mist Land. Freeman : History and Conquests of the Saracens ; His- torical Essays. Gray • China. Green : History of the English People ; The Making of England. Griffis : The Mikado's Empire. Grote : History of Greece. Haeckel : A Trip to India and Ceylon. Harper: The Study of Hebrew by the Inductive Method. Holcombe : Fridthiof s Saga. Kennau : Tent Life in Siberia. Kingsley : At Last ; Town Geology ; Madam How and Lady Why. Kunz : Die Kunst schnell Bohmisch zu lernen. Lane : Arabian Nights. Lang : Custom and Myth. Legar^ : Writings. Lenormant : Introduction to Oriental History. Littr^ : Histoire de la Langue Fran^aise. Lubbock : Prehistoric Times. Maine : Ancient Law. Mallet : Northern Antiquities. March : English Language. Meiklejohn : English Language and Literature. Mommsen : History of Rome. Morgan : Ancient Society. Morris : Chaucer — Prologue, Knightes Tale. Miiller : Chips from a German Workshop. Murray : Origin and Growth of the Psalms. Nevius : China and the Chinese. Nott and Gliddon : Types of Mankind ; Indigenous Races of the Earth. Ott^ : Scandinavian History. APPENDIX. 349 Orton : The Andes and the Amazons. Rawlinson : Seven Great Monarchies ; Herodotus. Reclus : The Earth and its Inhabitants. Sayce : Principles of Comparative Philology ; Monu- ments of the Hittites. Schliemann : Ilios ; Troja. Schuyler : Turkistan. Spencer : Descriptive Sociology. Squier : Peru ; Nicaragua. Stanley : Through the Dark Continent ; The Congo. Stephens : Central America and Yucatan. Trench : On the Study of Words. Tylor : Anthropology. Vambdry : Travels in Central Asia. Vincent : The Land of the White Elephant ; Through and Through the Tropics. Wallace : The Malay Archipelago. White : Philosophy of English Literature. "Whitney : Language and the Study of Language ; Life and Growth of Language ; Oriental and Linguistic Studies. Whymper : Travels in Alaska and on the Yukon. Wilkinson : The Ancient Egyptians. Wilson : The Abode of Snow. Winchell : Pre-Adamites. Winsor : Narrative and Critical History of America. Wright : The Hittite Empire. THE LANGUAGES OF THE AMERICANS. As I regard the Quich6-Maya civilization as older and higher than that of the Aztecs, or even than that of the forerunners of the Aztecs in Anihuac, I shall invite you to begin with the tongues of these advanced southern races. 350 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. In Quiche, gender is expressed by prefixing ixok, " woman," if the feminine is to be indicated ; as coh, " lion; " ixok coh, " lioness j " or, mun, "slave; " ixok inun, "woman slave.'' The plural is formed variously, the affixes, a6, eb, ib, ob, ub, being generally used. Thus, ixok, "woman;" ixokib, "women." Adjectives are pluralized by affixing ak, tak, ic, tic. Thus, nim, " great ; " nimak ha, " great houses ; " utz, " good ; " utzic va, "good victuals;" rihi, "old;" rihitak vinak, "old people." Abstract terms are formed by adding to the adjective al, el, il, ol, or ul. Thus, nim, " great ; " nimal, "greatness;" %ak, "white;" zakil, "whiteness;" utz, "good;" K&z7, "goodness." Ajjy noun may be made an adjective by adding alah, elah, ilah, olah, or ulah. Thus, ahau, " king ; " ahaualah, " royal." These ter- minations are sometimes added to the adjectives of one syllable. Thus, nimalah mak, " great sin ; " utzilah achi, "good man." The names of colors express the superlative by repetition. Thus, rax rax, " very green ; " zak zak, "very white." The comparative is expressed by the use of the words for " surpassing " or " exceed- ing; " the superlative, by prefixing »2az/^ or nim, "great." Different possessive forms are used, according as the noun begins with a consonant or with a vowel. Thus : nu mun, "my slave." a mun, " thy slave." u mun, "his slave." ka munib, " our slaves." _y munib, "your slaves." oui munib, " their slaves.' v'oyonal, " my wrath." av'oyonal, " thy wrath." r'oyonal, "his wrath." k'oyonal, " our wrath." y v'oyonal, " your wrath." c'oyonal, "their wrath." The verb has in Quichd no inflection. Thus, the present tense of the verb "to be" — which, as in Spanish, has two forms — runs: — APPENDIX. 351 " I am," in ux or in golic. " thou art," at ux or at qolic. " he is," are ux or are qolic. " we are," oh ux ox oh qolic. " you are," yx ux or jjj^; ^(7/zV. " they are," he ux or he qolic. In Maya, gender is denoted by prefixing, in the case of rational beings, ah for masculine and ix for feminine. Thus, ah cambezah, "instructor;" ix cambezah, "in- structress." In the case of animals, xibil is prefixed for males and chupul for females. The words " boy " and "girl " follow the rule for animals, as they did not seem to be regarded as rational beings. Thus, xibil pal, " the boy;" chupul pal, "the girl." Nouns form the plural by adding ob. Thus, ich, " eye ; " ich ob, " eyes." Adjectives ending in nac form their plural by changing the last two syllables into lac. Thus, kakatnac, " an idle thing ; " kakldc, " idle things." When adjective and noun occur together, the noun alone is pluralized. Thus, utzul, '• good ; " and uinic, " man," when used separately, but utzul uinicob, "good men." To form the comparative, the pronoun of the third per- son, u or y, is prefixed, and al, il, ol, or ul affixed. Thus, tibil, " a good thing ; " li tibilil, " a better thing ; " utz, " good;" yutzul, "better;" lob, "bad;" ulobol, " worse ; " kaz, " ugly ; " ukazal, " uglier." The super- lative is expressed by prefixing hach. Thus, lob, "bad ; " hachlob, " very bad." Abstracts are formed by affixing il. Thus, uinic, " man ; " uinicil, " humanity." The forms of pronouns are very various, but the norm is en, ech, ay, on, ex, ob. The verb has little or no in- flection, and always precedes its pronoun. The verb "to be" has some irregularity. The present tense runs thus : — 352 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. ten, " I am." tech, " thou art." lay, " he is." tdon, " we are." teex, "you are." Idob, " they are." The Aztec language lacks the six consonants, b, d, f, r, g, s. It is copious, and particularly rich in diminutives and augmentatives, as well as in verbal nouns and ab- stract terms formed from substantives. In pronunciation it is soft and musical, and free from nasal sounds. Agglutination is carried to a great extent. It pro- ceeds, however, not by simple juxtaposition, but by the omission of certain letters or even syllables, in conso- nance with the principle of euphony. Thus, teopixqui is composed of teotl, " god ; " and/zV, " guard," and means " priest ; " then, by compounding no, " my," tlazotli, " loved," mahidztik, " revered," teopixqui, " priest," ca, a ligature connecting words, and here meaning some- thing like "with," and tzin, "respect,'' the Aztec built up the word notlazomahuizteopixcatzin, which means " my deeply loved and revered priest." Inanimate objects usually take no plural. Animate objects form the plural in several ways. Primitive words affix me or que, or change in into ti7i. Thus, ichcatl, "a sheep;" ichcame, "sheep;" zolin, "a quail;" zoltin, "quails;" topile, " a constable ; " topileque, " constables." Words ending in toniH change this ending to totontin in the plural. Thus, ichcatontli, "a lamb;" ichcatotontin, "lambs." Those ending in tzintli change that ending to tzitzintin. Thus, tlacazintli, " person ; " tlactzitzintin, " persons ; " Those ending in ton change the tofi into toton. Thus, chichiton, " a little dog ; " chichitoton, " little dogs." Those ending in tzin change this termination into tzitzin. Thus, huehuetzin, "old man;" huehuetzitzin, "old men." When the possessive pronoun forms part of a word, APPENDIX. 353 the plural ends in van or huan ; as, noichcahuan, " my sheep." Some adjectives have several different forms for the plural. Gender is expressed by adding the words meaning " male " and " female " when necessary. There is no declension proper. Particles and prepo- sitions, or else mere juxtaposition, indicate the rela- tions expressed by cases in inflected languages. Comparatives are expressed by prefixing the word for " more." Diminutives are formed by the endings fon or tonili ; as, chichi, "dog; " chichiton, "little dog; " calli, " house ; " cacontli, " little house." Collectives are formed by the endings tia or la ; as, xochitl, " flower ; " xochitla, "flower-bed." Abstracts end moll; as, qualli, " good ; " qualotl, " goodness." Most prepositions are used as affixes. There are few irregular verbs. The verb alone has inflection. Thus, the present tense of temictia, " to kill," runs : — nitemictia, " I kill." titemictia, " thou killest." emictia, " he kills." titemictia, " we kill." antemictia, " you kill." temictia, " they kill." This seems to resemble that left-handed inflection so largely used in the Bantu languages of Africa. There seems no need for separate mention of any of the languages of the hunting tribes. It will be sufficient to classify them in a general way. Those of North America comprise the Athabaskans, or Tinneh, the Algonkins, the Iroquois, the Dakotahs, the Chahta- Muskokis, and others already enumerated. Their classi- fication will be understood best by reference to the 23 354 ^-^^ STORY OF LANGUAGE. language chart that accompanies Chapter X. No place has been found there, however, for the Natchez. This tribe stands apart from all the hunting tribes as a peculiar people, probably an offshoot from some civilized tribe of the Mexican area. The race, too, that built the town of Mavila, where Mobile now stands, and fought De Sjto so stoutly, must have made some progress in civilization. These tribes may have been descendants of the mound- builders, having much more thorough social organization and a higher culture than the mere hunting tribes. As in Mexico, sun-worship prevailed among these more ad- vanced tribes. Their languages, too, seem to have dif- fered from those of the wild nomads. As to the hunting tribes of South America, the unifying tendency among them was so slight that we have count- less names of bands rather than of nations or even tribes. Among them all, only the Arawaks and the Caribs had any sort of civil organization, and they, it will be remem- bered, were settled in the historic period north of the Amazon. The Iroquois or Six Nations, originally Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, Mohawks, and Tuscaroras, who lived communistically in long tenement-houses, de- serve special consideration on account of their powerful confederacy. They were the terror of the other tribes of the Atlantic coast in the northern continent; for, though still keeping up the principle of descent in the female line, — the earliest organization of the gens, or clan, — and therefore at a low stage of social develop- ment, their political union as tribes gave them an impulse that might have ended in the creation of national life, had no Europeans ever come to this land. APPENDIX. THE MPONGWE LANGUAGE. 355 The nouns have five modes of deriving the plural from the singular. The first of these declensions — if we may apply a term designative of affixes to a system of pre- fixes — includes all nouns that prefix / or si to form the plural, as «a^(7, " house ; " inago or sinago, "houses;" nyare, " cow ; " inyare or sinyare, " cows." The second includes all nouns that form the plural by dropping initial e, as egara, "chest; " gara, "chests; " or by also changing z after e into jk, as ezdma, " thing; " ydma, " things ; " .ezango, " book ; " yango, " books." The third includes all nouns that with i for initial letter change it into a to form the plural, as iMndA, " plantain ; " ak&ndA, " plantains ; " idambe, " sheep ; " ad&mbe, " sheep ; " or, having v after t, also change this consonant into mp, as ivanga, " law ; '' ampanga, " laws." The fourth includes all nouns that, having o for initial letter, change it into z to form the plural, as olamba, "cloth;" ilamba, "cloths;" omamba, "snake;" imamba, " snakes." The fifth includes all nouns with a for initial letter. These remain the same in the plural. Thus, aningo, "water," and alugu, "mm," have no distinctive plural. It will be remarked that, as compared with the usual forms of Aryan inflection, the Mpongwe language has what may be described as left-handed inflection. The adjectives and the pronouns follow the same law of inflection, and have number, but are without cases. Adjectives have regular degrees of comparison, but in this inflection the affix is used, and not the prefix. The comparative is formed by adding kwe to the positive, and the superlative by adding me. Thus, nda, " long; " ndakwe, " longer ; " ndame, " longest." 356 THF STORY OF LANGUAGE. Adjectives have forms for the different classes of nouns with which they are used. This can best be illustrated by using the pronominal adjective my with some of the nouns already given. Thus : — s. P- ny are yam, " my cow ; '' inyare sam, " my cows." egara zam, "my chest; " gara yam, "my chests." id&mbe nyam, " my sheep ; " add7Hbe mam, " my sheep." omamba warn, " my snake ; " imambayam, " my snakes." aningo mam., " my water ; " aningo mam, " my waters." As to the verb, its inflections are almost interminable. More than four hundred distinct forms can be evolved from one root, every one of which shall be characterized by a well-defined meaning of its own. All the verbs, except the verb " to be," are regular, the initial consonants having each its reciprocal letter into which it is changed in the course of inflection. Thus, b always changes into w, d into /, f into v or vw, j into y, k into g, n into nl, p into i>, s into z, t into r, sh into zy. The imperative is always derived from the present indicative, by this simple change of consonants. Thus, mi denda, " I do it; " lenda, " do it ! " and, again, tni kamba, " I speak ; " gamba, " speak ! " The verb in all its parts has a negative form to corre- spond with the affirmative. The active voice in either of these forms can be made passive in any mood or tense simply by changing final a into o. The negative form is distinguished from the affirmative by a prolonged intona- tion on the first syllable. This, in the publications by the missionaries, is indicated to the eye by the use of an Italic vowel when the other letters are Roman, or by a Roman vowel when the other letters are Italic. Thus : APPENDIX. 357 f act. mi tonda, " I love." ■ \ pass. Ml tondo, " I am loved." neg. act. mi tonda, " I do not love." pass, mi tondo, " I am not loved." There are six simple and twelve compound conjuga- tions. The simple are : ist, the radical, as mi kamba, " I speak ; " 2d, the causative, derived from the radical by changing a final into iza, as mi kambiza, " I cause to speak; " 3d, the frequentative or habitual, derived from the radical by adding ga, as mi kambaga, " I speak fre- quently ; " 4th, the relative, derived from the radical by changing a final into ina, as mi kambina, " I speak to one higher than myself; " 5th, the reciprocal, derived from the radical by adding na, as mi kambana, " I speak with others ; " 6th, the indefinite, derived from the radi- cal by its reduplication, as mi kambagamba, " I speak at random." The compound conjugations are formed by combining two or more of the simple conjugations. Thus the com- bination of the frequentative and the indefinite gives kambagambaga, " I speak habitually at random ; " that of the frequentative and the causative gives kambizaga, " I cause one to speak habitually ; " that of the relative and the causative gives kambinaza, " I cause one to speak to God ; " that of the indefinite and the causative gives kambagambiza, " I cause one to speak at random ; " that of the reciprocal and the causative gives kambanaza, " I lead in conversation ; " that of the frequentative and the relative gives kambinaga, " I speak to God often ; " that of the frequentative and the reciprocal gives kam- banaga, " I talk much in society ; " that of the indefinite and the reciprocal gives kambagambana, " I gabble greatly in society ; " that of the indefinite and the rela- tive gives kambagambina, " I talk ramblingly in prayer ; " 35 8 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. that of the relative, the causative, and the frequentative gives kambagambizaga, " I cause one to speak at random frequently ; " that of the indefinite, the relative, and the causative gives kambagambinaza, " I cause one to address God in random language." Dr. Wilson illustrates the conciseness which this flexi- bility of the verb imparts to the Mpongwe language by stating that the phrase, " Use not vain repetitions in prayer," is fully expressed by the single word agambam- bina ; the phrase, " they held an interlocutory meeting," by kambana ; and " to lead an assembly in prayer," by kambinaza. The language being so symmetrical in structure and so rich in expansiveness, the missionaries found no diffi- culty in forming words perfectly intelligible to the natives, to express ideas never before conceived by them. Thus, from sunga, " to save a thing on the point of being lost or destroyed," they formed ozunge, " the Saviour," and insunginla, " %3\.\aX\Qn." From danduna, "to pay a ransom," they formed olandune, " the Redeemer," and ilanduna, " redemption." It will be seen that this elastic system of verb-expan- sion is really a fine example of the agglutinative system ; and, inasmuch as in many instances a whole sentence can be thrown into one word, it belongs to that class of agglutination which Humboldt proposed to call " holo- phrastic." On this side of its structure, then, the Mpongwe resembles Turkish in some particulars, and the American languages in others. But it also has that power of inflection by both vowel and consonantal change already noticed. On this side, then, it presents points of resemblance to both the Semitic and the Aryan systems of inflection. In its sequence of consonantal interchanges there is also a resemblance to many of the agglutinative tongues. APPENDIX. THE OATHS OF STRASBURG. 359 The Oaths of Strasburg are recorded by Nithard, the son of Charles the Great's daughter Bertha by Aiigilbert, one of his great captains. Nithard, who died fighting against the Norman invasion, wrote the " History of the Dissensions of the Sons of Louis the Easy Natured." In this work we have the first note of the birth of the French tongue. The oaths were sworn on the 15 th of February, 842, Louis using the Romance {lingua romand) and Charles the German {lingua theotisca). The oath sworn by Louis in the Romance dialect ran thus : — "Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, dist di in avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo et in adjudha et in cadhuna cosa, si cum om perdreit son fradra salvar dist, in o quid il mi altre si fazet. Et ab Ludher nul plaid numquam prendrai, qui meon vol cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit." The oath sworn by the two peoples, represented by the armies then in the field, ran thus in the Romance dialect : " Si Lodhuvigs sagrament que son fradre Karlo jurat conservat et Karlus meos sendra de suo part non los tanit, si io returnar int pois, ne io ne nuels cui eo returnar int pois in nulla adjudha contra Ludhuwig nun lin iver." It will easily be seen that a large trace of Latin still remained in the tongue of Western Frankland. THE ENGLISH OF CHAUCER. Besides a certain naive and childlike grace that is peculiar to the man and not to the age, there is observable in Chaucer's English no small difference of form from that of our modern world. 360 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. The following marks of distinction from modern Eng- lish may be noted; — The plural of nouns generally has the ending es as a separate syllable, though some nouns end in s and a few in en, while those that still have the singular unaltered in the plural, and those that form the plural by vowel- change, follow the like laws in Chaucer. The genitive case also ends in es as a separate syllable. The dative case sometimes occurs, and it ends in light ^ as a separate syllable. The definite form of the adjective ends in the same light e. There are a few words that form the comparative in re, instead of er. The plural of adjectives is marked by a final e, sounded separately. As in the received version of the Bible, ye is the plural nominative, and you the objective, of the second personal pronoun, and his is used where we now use its in the third. In the plural of the third person, her is used instead of the modern their, and hem for them. In the present tense of the verb, final e is sounded as a separate syllable, eth is the termination of the third person singular, and en is sometimes the ending of the plural throughout. The prefix y or i (a remnant of the old ge^ is often given to the past participle. The negative often blends with the verb, as nam, " am not." Adverbs are generally formed from adjectives by the addition of e, separately sounded. Some few end in fy, some in en, and some in es. The double negative, as a strong negation, is common, as it was later with the Elizabethans. APPENDIX. 361 BORROWED WORDS IN ENGLISH. The borrowed words in languages always have an in- teresting history. Thus taroupe, which in French signifies the hair between the eyebrows, reminds us at once of the "joined eyebrows," esteemed a mark of beauty by the tale-tellers of the " Thousand and One Nights," and demands an Arabian or at least a Hamitic origin for the word. Yet I am not aware that the word has survived in Spanish in any of its dialects. The Spanish tongue has supplied us with alligator, armada, barricade, bravado, cargo, cigar, desperado, duenna, eldorado, embargo, filibuster, flotilla, galleon, grandee, indigo, jennet, matador, mosquito, negro, octoroon, quad- roon, renegade, savanna, sherry, tornado, vanilla, and a great many more. From Italian we have : alarm, alert, balcony, bandit, cameo, caprice, dilettante, domino, extravaganza, fiasco, fresco, gondola, guitar, incognito, influenza, lagoon, lava, madrigal, malaria, niche, opera, oratorio, palette, panta- loon, quarto, regatta, ruffian, serenade, sonnet, tenor, terra-cotta, umbrella, vermilion, virtuoso, zany, and countless others. The Dutch tongue has given us sea-terms : ballast, boom, hoy, luff, reef, skipper, sloop, taffrail, wear, yacht, yawl. From Hebrew we get : amen, behemoth, cherub, halle- lujah, jubilee, gehenna, leviathan, manna, pharisee, rabbi, sadducee, taltnud. German furnishes : cobalt, felspar, hornblende, land- grave, margrave, nickel, plunder, quartz, zinc. Arabic, through other languages generally, has supplied us with a great many words. Some of these are : ad- miral, alcohol, caliph, carat, dragoman, elixir, emir. 362 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. fakir, felucca, gazelle, giraffe, harem, hookah, koran, lute, magazine, minaret, nabob, naphtha, saffron, sherbet, talisman, tamarind, vizier, zenith, zero. From American tongues we get : alpaca, buccaneer, cacique, guano, hammock, jalap, llama, mahogany, opos- sum, potato, raccoon, squaw, tobacco, wigwam. From African tongues we get : baobab, canary, gorilla, kraal, oasis, quagga, zebra. From Chinese we get : bohea, china, hyson, joss, junk, nankeen, silk, tea, typhoon. From Japanese we get : daimio, shogun, siunurai, harikari, jinrikisha, japan. From Malay we get : amuck, bamboo, caddy, dugong, gamboge, mandarin, orang-outang, rattan, sago, upas. From Hindoo tongues come : avatar, banyan, coolie, durbar, jungle, loot, palanquin, rupee, sepoy, thug, toddy. From Persian are derived : awning, bazaar, caravan, dervish, firman, horde, jar, lemon, orange, paradise, rook, sash, taffeta, turban. From Turkish come : bey, caf tan, dey, janissary, kiosque, odalisque, tulip, yataghan. From the Polynesian tongues we have : boomerang, kangaroo, taboo, tattoo. Coming back to Europe, we find Portuguese giving us ; albatross, caste, fetich, lasso, marmalade, palaver, port. Hungarian supplies us with : hussar, sabre, shako, tokay. Russian gives : czar, drosky, knout, morse, rouble, steppe, ukase, verst. From Greek, for scientific use, we are constantly coin- ing new words, such of them as are appUed to practical inventions becoming very speedily familiar even to chil- dren. Some of course remain mere book terms, or are reserved solely for technical use. Telegram, telephone, photograph, dynamite, athlete, cesthete, empyreumatic. APPENDIX. 363 paranomasia, archceology, chiromancy, are a few out of thousands. Sometimes, as in the case of bicycle, the coinage is a hybrid, both Greek and Latin being represented in the word. PRESENT TENSE OF THE ARYAN VERB "TO BE." Note the likeness running through the following exhibit of the Indicative Present of that verb in a number of Aryan languages, the duals being left out : English. Inflected English. Gothic. I am, ic ^om. im, thou art, thu eart, is, he is, h^ is, ist, we are, w€ sind. sijum, you are, g^ sind, sijuth^ they are. hie sind. sind. High German. Old Norse. Latin. ich bin, em, sum. du hist, ert, es, er ist, er, est, wir sind, erum, sumus, ihr said, erudh, estis, sie sind. eru. sunt. French. Italian. Spanish. Portuguese. je suis. sono, soy, sou, tu es, sei, eres, es, il est, fe, es, €, nous sommes, siamo, somos, somos, vous etes, siete. sois. sois, ils sent. sono. son. sao. 364 THE STORY OF LANGUAGE. Wallachian. Rhoetian. Armenian. sum, sunt. em, es, eis, es, \ ei, e, suntemu, essen. emq. sunteti, esses, eq, sint. ean. en. Doric. Attic. Lithuanian. emmi, eimi. esmi. essi, ei, essi. esti, esti. esti. esmes, esmen, esmi, este, este. este, enti. eisi. (esti). Old Slav. Bohemian. Sanskrit. Zend. yesme, jsem, 4smi, ahmi. yesi, jsi, isi. ahi. yesto, jest. asti, asti. yesmo. jsme, 'smas. hmahi. yeste. jste, 'stha, sta. somte. jsou. sdnti. henti. HEAD MEASUREMENT. What is called the cephalic index is the breadth of the head above the ears expressed in percentage of its length from front to back, the latter being estimated as too. When the decimal denoting breadth is above 80, the head is called short or broad; when it is below 75, the head is called long. The long head is generally associ- ated with an oval face ; the short head, with a round face. INDEX. Abbey of Peterborough, 257. Abipones, 150. Abraham, iii, 113, 185, Abram the Hebrew, no, 182. Absence of dialect in Latin, 239. Abstract terms, 305. Abu-Faraj, 189. Abyssinia, 181, 186. Accent, 48, 211, 252, 289, 338. Accent and rhyme govern later Latin verse, 238. Accent kept after the loss of quan- tity, 266. Accent of Latin kept in French, 266, 289. Accentuation in French, 194, 289. Accentuation in Hebrew, 194. Achoemenid dynasty, 86, 220. Achaian masters of Pelasgic Ham- ites, 168. Achaians, 170, 209. Achaian tongue, 228. Addison, 320. Adelung's " Mithridates," 26. Aden, primal seat of Arab race, 184. Adjectives used as nouns, 240. ^Ifric, 258., Aeizanas, 186. ^olic, 88. Afghanistan, 115. Afghans, 52. Africa, Sabaean rule in, 186. African Latinity, 240. After the Conquest, Inflected Eng- lish, 276. Agassiz cited, 147. Agglutination by suffixes, 113. Agglutination, variety in, 34T, 352. Agglutinative character of Basque exemplified, 132. Agglutinative tongues, 71, 81, 106- 163, 201. Agreement of American languages in structure, 138, Agricola, 241. Agriculture among Western Aryans, 208, 229. Ainos, 120. Aisne, the river, 262. Akaiusha, 170, 209. Akerblad, 174. Akka, 161. Akkad,'84, 95, no, 182. Akkad civilization, no, 165. Akkadi, 106, 180, 341. Aksiim, 186. Alabaster on walls of Ur, no. Alaska, 143. Alava, 131. Alba Longa, 228. Albanian race, 213. Albigenses, crusade against, 271. Aleutians, 118. Alexander, 174, 203. Alexandria, 88. Alfred, King, 251, 257, 300. Algonkins, 144, 353. Alice Bodington quoted, 57. "Alice in Wonderland," 29S. Alleraans in Gaul, 89, 261, 262, 264. Alliteration gives place to rhyme, 279. Alliteration in "Piers Plowman," 287. 366 INDEX. Alliterative couplets, 326. Alsace, 264. Alsatian, the, 260. Amalekite, 190. Amazon, 143, 146, 354. Amazonia, no ancient civilization in, 149. Amazonian, 143. Amazonians and negroes contrasted, 148. Amazonians, tongues of the, 146. Amazonians, type of, 148. Ambiguity in Chinese, loi. Ambrose, 242. American civilization imported, 137. American languages, characteristics of, 143- American languages grouped, 143. American monosyllabic tongue, 104. American myths, 140. " American Naturalist," 57. American races, 77. American races more uniform than Old World races, 139. American reduplication, 142. American tongues differ widely in vocabulary, 142. American type, 148. Amharic, 85, 181, 188. Ammianus, 242. Ammon, 191. Andhuac, 141, 143, 153, 156. Analogues of prehistoric men, 56. Analogy, power of, 340. Analytic construction in later Latin, 239, 240. Analytic Greek, 88. Analytic type of language, 71, 72, 78, 197, 222. Anamese, 104. Anam in Cochin-China, 104. Anatomical structure, diversity of, 61. Anatto used as paint, 149. Ancren Riwle, 283. Andes, 143, 149, 157. Angevin dynasty, 255. Angilbert, 359. Angles, 245. Anglo-Saxon a poor term, 245. Anjou, 262. 'Antar, 188. Anthology of Arab poets, 189. Anthropology indebted to the science of language, 35. Antilles, 137. Antilles, Lesser, 145. Antioch, 117. Aorist lost by Latin, 213. Apaches, 143. Appalachian, 143. Appendix, 347. Appius Claudius, 202. Apuleius, 237, 240, Apulia, Asculum in, 232. Aquitaine, 261. Arab Bedouins, 181. Arabia, 85, no, 181. Arabian rule in Persia, 204, Arabia, Southern, 176. Arabic, 181, 189. Arabic character used by Malays, 126. Arabic in Persia, 204. Arabic in Persian, 222. Arabic in Spanish, 197. Arabic supplants Aramaic, 197. Arabic terminal inflection, 193, Arabic words in Hindustani, 222, Arabs, 78. Arabs contrasted with Turks, 117. Arabs, Northern, 180. Arabs, Southern, 164. Aramaic, 85, 181, 191, 195. Aramaic, type of, 197. Aramaic used in the Bible, 195. Arany, 118. Ardras, 149. Araucanians, 144, 149, 158. Arawaks, 146, 354. Arbiter, Petronius, 227, 237. Archaic style affected, 240. Archaisms in Plautus, 236. Architecture of the Incas, 157. Ardeshir, 203. Are, we get from Danish, 252. Argentine Republic, 136. Arickarees, 145. Aristophanes, 211. Arizona, 153. Armenia, 109. Armenian mountains, no. INDEX. 367 Annenians, 52, 221. Arnaud, i8d, 186, 189. Arrested development, 200. Arrest of progress by civilization, 179. Art, Hellenic, 211. Arthurian tales, 202, 205, 282. Arthur Pendragon, 202, 205, 282, 324- Arthur, Prince, 282. Article, Bohemian has no, 219. Article, Latin has no, 233. Artificial languages, 69. Arvad, 194. Arval Brothers, 233. Aryan, 26, 86, 220. Aryan conquest of the Akkadi, no. Aryan Daughter, 30. Aryan inflection, 40, 74. Aryan numerals, 29. Aryans of South Europe, i58, Aryan tongues, 199-225. Asari the same as Osiris, 112. Ascania, 232. Ascanius, 232. " Ascent of Man," 60. Ascham's prose, 313. Ascoli, 223. Asculum, 232. Asia Minor, 168. Asiatic Society, 27. Asi gods, 34. Asshur, 181. Assimilation, Norman capacity for, 297. Assiniboins, 145. Association of ideas, 61 . Assonance, 80. Ass unknovfn to the Americans, 139. Assyria, 85, 173, 183. Assyrian, 85, 180, 193. Atchinese, 125. Athabaskans, 353. Athanasius, 186. Athens, 117. Atlantic, 145, 164. Atlantic Americans, type of, 147. Attic, 88. Atticus, 238. Attius, 235. Augustine, 242. Augustus, 238. Ausar, or Osiris, 112. Ausonius, 240, 261. Australian, 130, 342. Australian skull, 130, Australian type, 130. Austro-Hungarian empire, 217. Auxiime, 187. Averroes, 189. Avesta, 220, Avicenna, 1S9. Aymard language, 150. Aymarfe, 139, 145, 149. Aymard, type of, 150. Ayogo or Mpongwe, 162. Aztec, 143, 352. Aztecs, 139, 153. Aztec worship, 157. Babel, confusion of tongues at, 62. Ba-Bemba, 162. Babylonia, 183, 196. Babylonian captivity, 196. Babylonian cubit, in. Babylonian language, 180, 196. Babylonian talent, 109. Bacon, 327. Bactria, 88, 199. Bactrians, 33, 220. Baeda, 257. Ba-Farami, 162. Ba-Fiot, 161. Bagdad, 117. Bagistana, 183. Bakairi, 146. Ba-Kalahari, 161. Ba-Kale, 162. Ba-Kisk, 162. Ba-Koko, 162. Ba-Kundu, 162. Bali, Malays of, 126. Ballads, 234, 296. Ba-Lolo, 162. Ba-Long, 162. Baltic, dialects of the, n8, 216, 220. Ba-Luba, 162. Ba-Mbuku, 162. Banana, evidence furnished by the, 147. Bancroft cited, 142. 368 INDEX. Ba-Ngala, i6i. Ba-Noko, 162. Bantu tongues, 76, 84, 160-163, 343. Bantu type, 161. Baptism, 157. Ba-Puko, 162. Barbarisms in Latin, 237, Barbour, 288. Barclay, 295. Bartlielemy, j8o. Basalt slab, 174. Bashkirs, 82. Basians, 116. Basque, 84, 119, 131, 165, 342. Basque provinces, "jZ. Basque syntax, 132. Ba-Suto, 161. Ba-Teke, 161. Batta, 125. Battle of Maldon, The, 258. B6arn, 13 1. Beaufort, Lady Jane, 294. Be-Chuana, 161. Bedouins, 181. Behistun, 183, Belgia, 87. Belgic Kelts, 205, 210. Beloochistan, 125. Bengali, 86, 222. Beowulf, 202, 255. Berber, 85, 164. Berenike, 175. Bertha, Princess, 359. Bible of Ulfilas, 216. Bible quoted, 195. Bible, The, 190, 312, Bibliography of Authors Consulted, 347- Big words preferred by bad taste, 237, 240. Biliteral roots, 343. Biology, its processes used by the science of language, 35. Birars, 114. Bisaya, 125. Biscayan, 84. Biscayans, Spanish, 165. Black Death, 285. Blackmore, of " Lorna Doone," 324. Black races of the Bantu stock, 76, Blemmyes, 186, Blind Harry, 294. Blond Hamites, 165. Blood-letting, religious, 157. Blue enamel on walls of Ur, no. Bodington, Alice, quoted, 57. Boethius, 257. Bogoti, 139. Bohemians, 88, 219. Bohica, 140. Boileau, 319. Bokhara, 116. Bombay, 220. Book of Common Prayer, 312. Book of Songs, 189. Book of the Dead, 178. Bopp, 27. Bordeaux, 261, 297. Borneo, 125. Botta, 180. Bourgogne, 261. Brahmans, 222. Brahni, 125. Brandt, Sebastian, 295. Breath groups, ■^'})Z. Bretagne, 87, 205, 262. Breton, the, 260. Brilliancy of French, 260. Brinton, 28, 137, 165. Britain, 137, 171. British America, 143. British Columbia, 143. Bronze in use in Europe, 168, 171. Browne, Sir Thomas, 3r3, 315, 327. Brunetto Latini, 269. Brunne, Robert of, 284. Brutus of Troy, 284. Brythonic Kelts, 205. Bu-Banghi, 162. Bubastis, 173. Buchanan, 241. Buddhism, 93, 121. Buddhist Kalmucks, 115. Buffon, 275. Bugis, 125. Bulgarian, 88, 106, 117. Bulgarians (Slavs), 117, 219. Bulgars, 117. Bunyan, John, 320, 327. Burdigala, 261. Burgundian dialect, 268. Burgundians, 89. INDEX. 369 Burgundians in Gaul, 262, 264. Buriats, 115. Burke, Edmund, 321, 327. Burmah, Pegu in, 104. Burmese, 104, 333. Burmese story, 66. Burnouf, 27. Burns, 277, Burns, influence of, 254. Burns, Robert, 323. Butler, Bishop, 326. Cabul, 115. Caddoes, 145. Cadiz, 194. Caecilius, 235. Caedmon, 256, 326.. Ca;re, 231, 303. Caesar, 28, 238, 300. Cairo, 172. Caish^nas, 149. Cakcliiquels, 153. Caledonia, 87, 2o5. Calendar stone, 157. California, 143. Camboja, 104, 140. Cambojan, 104, 108. Cambojan origin of American civil- ization, 108. Cambyses, 174. Camel unknown to Americans, 139. Campania, 231. Canaanite, 85, i8r, 183, 190. Canada, 145. Canale, Martino de, 269. Canarese, 84, 124. Canaries, 85, 165. Cannibal feasts, 157. . Cannibalism in the Polished Stone Age, 166. Cannibals, 149, 157. Capacity of Latin for rhetorical fin- ish, 227. Cape Colony, 160. Cape Palmas, 133. Capet, Hugh, 265. Cara, 158. Caribs, 146, 354. Carlyle's grotesque English, loi, 325. Carthage, 83, 194, 235. Carthaginian, 181. Cartouche, 174. Carvings in Yucatan, 156. Casas Grandes, 153. Cases left in Romance tongues, 267, Caspian, 86. Caste, origin of, 223. Castilian, 215. Catalan, 215, Cathay, 94. Catherwood the draughtsman, 154. Catullus, 236, 241, 294. Caucasus range, dialects of, 85, 221. Causatives, 357. Causes of triumph of French over Provengal, 271. Caxton, 277, 292, 294, 296. Caxton quoted, 292, Celebes, 125. Central America, Tj^ 139. Cereal grains unknown to Ameri- cans, 139. Ceremony, Roman, 231. Ceylon, banana in, 147. Ceylon, Buddhists in, 222. Ceylon, conquest of, 202, 221. Ceylon, Malays in, r25. Ceylon trading with Yemen, 185, Chahta-Muskokis, 145, 353. Chaldsean civilization, 164. ChaldEEans, Sfemitic, 183. Chaldeans, Turanian, 109. Chalmers, 326. Champagne, 262. Champollion, 175. Chandala or " Impure," 123. Chanfes or " Serpents," 151. Change in language, 336. Change in language, constant, 325. Change in language corresponds to change in national spirit, 274. Change of consonants in Mpongwe, 355- Changes from Old to Middle Eng- lish, 278. Changes in meaning, 237, 308. Chant of the Arval Brothers, 233. Characteristic preferences in con- struction, 335. Characteristics of American lan- guages, 142. 24 370 INDEX. Characteristics of Greek, 211. Characteristics of Roman, 213. Characters, Old English, 293. Charles the Bald, 262. Charles the Great, 262, 264, 359. Charles the Second, of England, Charmers exiled by Gudea, 112. Charnay, Desire, 154, Chase, words of the, 301. Chaucer, 236, 277, 287, 289, 293, Chaucer's English, 277, 359. Cherokee language, 72. Cherokee Se-quo-yah, t^"]^ 144. Cherokee Syllabary, 97, 144. Chiapas, 151. Chichen-ltza, 153, 155. Chichester, 245. Chichimecs, 139, 153. Chihuahua, 153. Children's invented languages, 57. Chillingworth, 326. China, area of, 94. Chinese, 93, 334. Chinese and Roman empires com- pared, T04. Chinese civilization, 93, 154. Chinese extension, 78. Chinese incapacity to sound certain letters, 67. •, Chinese script, 97. Chippeways, 145. Chiquimula, 152. Cholula, pyramid of, 153, 156. Chosod. 115. Chow, the race of, 93 Christian Malays, 127. Christian monks, 140. Church of Rome uses Latin, 226. Church terms, 303. Cicero, 213, 241. Cicero on good speaking, 238, Cicero's prose, 239. Cilicia or KiUkia, 190. Cinghalese, S6, 222. Circassian, 86. Circle, great, derived from Akkad, 109. Circumcision, 157. Cissa, 245. Cissanceaster, 245, Cisterns in Yucatan, 155. Classical Chinese abroad, 103. Classical Chinese not used collo- quially, 102. Classic Latin largely an artificial language, 236. Class-names from French, 293. Claudian, 240, 242. Clearness of French, 239, 260. Clicks, 134. Clumsiness of the Teutonic sentence, 299. Coalescence of article with noun, ijfj 193- Coalescence of preposition with noun, T31, ig6. Coalescence of verb and pronominal object, 193. Cochin-China, banana in, 147. Cochin-China uses classical Chinese, 103. Cocomes, 153. Coinages not confirmed,, 315, Colebrooke, 27. Coleridge, 294, 327. Colonies, English, 324. Columbus, 139. Comanches, 145. Combahee negroes, 337. Commerce, influence of, on English, 324. Common Prayer, Book of, 312. Communistic life, 139, 354. Community of language no sure proof of community of race, 52. Compactness of Latin, 227. Comparative philologists, 194. Comparison between Northern, Mid- dle, and Southern dialects, 280. Competitive examination, 93. Compound conjugations, 357. Compound tenses gained by Ro- mance tongues, 266. Compound words in Greek, 212. Conditional mood gained by Ro- mance tongues, 266. Conestogas, 145. Confederation of tribes, 139, Confession, 157. Confucius or Kung-fu-ts, 93. INDEX. 371 Congo basin, 161. Conjugations, 42. Connectives, all tongues have, 334. Connectives in English are Teutonic, 275. Conservatism, -Roman, 229. Conservative tendency of literature, z68. Consonantal change, I24, 355. Consonantal heaviness avoided in Greek, 211. Consonants, change in Japanese, 122. Consonants, Punic, 194. Constantinople, Greek in, 88. Constantinople under the Turks, 117. Constantius, 1S6. Conventional symbolic sounds, 61. Conversational ease of French, 260. Cookery, 304. Copan, 152, 154. Copper nails in Ur, no. Cdrdova, i8g. Corean, 8r, 120, 123. Corean akin to speech of the Dravi- da, 123. Corea uses classical Chinese, 103. Corneille, 275. Cornelia, 238. Cornwall, 205, 209. Cornwall the schoolmaster, 285. " Corpus Semiticarum Inscriptio- num," 180, Corsica, 167, Cortona built by Hamites, 167. Cosmogony of the Quich6s, 151. Coulanges, 223. Couplets from Greek, 315. Couplets in English, 307. Courland, speech of, 88. Court dialect of China, 103. Cowper, 327. Cozumel, the island of, 155.- Crania of Chinese, 95. Crayfish, 28. Creeks, 145. Crees, 145. Crete, 168. "Crist," the poem, 257. Croats, 88, 219. Crows, 145. Croyland, 257. Crusades, 271. Cukulcan, the Maya culture-hero, 150. Culdees of lona, 256. Culinary terms, 305. Culture of Provence, 270. Cumberland, Kelts crowded back in- to, 245. Cuneiform records, 182, 220. Cupra, the Etruscan Juno, 171. Cuzco, 157. Cynewulf, 256, Cyprian, 241. Czechs, 88, 219. Dacia, 215. Dai Nippon, 120. Dakotas, 145, 353. Damascus, Aramaic of, ig6. Damascus held by Nabataeans, 196. Danaoi, 170, 209. Danelagh, the, 246. Danes, 246, 276, Daniel quoted, 318. Danish words in English, 247, 252, 283. Dansk, 90, 217. Dante, 202. Danube, 215. Danubian Bulgarians are Slavs, 117. Dardans, 169. Darius, 183. Daudet, 260, 275. Daunia, Asculum in, 232. Daurians, 114, Days come from Akkad, no. Dead Sea, bitumen from, 196. Dead, The Book of the, 178. Death from using the wrong pro- noun, 66. Declensions, 42. De Coulanges, 223. Definite article creeping into Latin, 238. Definite article, none in Geez, 187. De Foe, 320. Degradation of words, 308. Degrees, the three hundred and sixty, from Akkad, 109. Delagoa Bay, 163. 372 INDEX. Delight in mere words, 68, 339. Delta of the Nile, 170, 173, 174- Demosthenes, 211. Demotic script, 174. Denmark, 90, 216. " Deor's Complaint," 255. De Qiiincey, 327. De Quincey cited, 115, 227, De Quincey's claim for Latin, 227. Descartes wrote in Latin, 226. De Soto, 354. Determinative, 333. Devonshire, Kelts driven into high- lands of, 245, Dhii-Nu'ds, 1S6. Dialect, 336. Dialect, absence of in Latin, 239. Dialectic variation in China, 96. Dialect in Greek and in English, Dialects, different in the same house- hold, 336. Dialects used in literature, 323. Dictionary English mainly Latin, 276. Diet of Hungary, Latin used in, 241. Differences between Koptic and Egyptian, 177. Dignities, terms for, 304. Diminutives, 236, 352, 353. Diphthongs abundantin Greek, 211. Disappearance of final e in English, 292. Disciplined character of Latin, 239. Disintegration of Inflected English, 252. Dissensions of the sons of Louis the Easy Natured, 359. Dissyllabic formations, 50. Diversity of race a cause of dialects, 63- . Diversity of race in uttering sounds, 68. Diversity of usage under the early Tudors, 292, Djimi, 222. Djurjura, i6g. Dog unknown to the AmericanSj 139. Dokos, 161. Donaldson, 27. Donegal, T67. Dorians, 229. Doric, 88. Doublets due to contractions, 317. Doublets due to difference in spell- ing, 316. Doublets due to difference of pro- nunciation, 316. Doughty, 185. Dravida, 108, 123. Dravida, type of the, 124. Dravidian, 81, 124. Dravidian vowel-change exemplified, 124. Drawling the vowel, 51. Drummond's theory of origin, 60. Dryden, 319. Durban airad, or " The Four Allies," 115. Dutch sprung from Low Germans, 90, 217. Dyak verbmaking prefix exempli- fied, 126. Dyaks, 125. Dzungar, 115. Early life of Aryans, 223. Easter Island, 125. East Midland, 278, 2S3. East Mon:;ols. 115. East Slavic, 88. Ea the god, 112. Ebers, 178. Ecclesiastical Latin, 237, 250. Economy in utterance, 49, 337. Ecuador, 139, Eddas, 33, 202, 217. Edessa, ig6. Edom, I go. Edomite, iSi. Edomites, 196. Edward the Confessor, 253. 293. Edward the First of England, 284. Egbert, 246. Egypt, 113, 171. Egypt, Greek in, 174. Egyptian belief, 175, Egyptian cubit, iii. Egyptian engineering, 172. Egyptian influence in the early Hellenic world, j68. INDEX. 373 Egyptian language, 173, 176, 179. Egyptian literature, 178. Egyptian mummies, 178, 196. Egyptian type, 175. Egypt invaded by Pelasgians, 169. Egypt possibly Akkadian at first, 109. Egypt under Turkish rule, 117. Elamite dynasty, 1 1 1 . Elam, mountains of, 108. Elegance of modern Persian, 222. Elene, 257. " Elf Leyleh wa-Leyleh," i8g. Eliakim, 195. Elizabethan literature, 312. Elizabethan rhetoric, 312, 317. Ella, 245. Elliotts, or Kalmucks, 115. Eloquence, Keltic, 210. Eloquence of the Appalachians, 144. Embryonic type of Semitic speech, 342- Emotional exclamations, 61. Enchorial script, 174. Energy of the Teutons, 218. Engadine, 2:5. Engineering of the Incas, 157. England, the Danes in, 246. English affected by Latin, 88. English almost free from inflection, 32S. English a low German offshoot, 90, 217. English alphabet wholly inadequate, 346- English and French derivatives from Latin compared, 266. English and French words largely identical, 36. English and German words largely identical, 36. English dialects, 323. English extension, 32S. English, harmonic effects of, 291. English language, beginning of, 294. English literature, beginning of, 293- Englishman, 199. English monosyllables the result of phonetic decay, loi. English ordered to be used in courts of law, 285. ,. , English, Parliament opened in, 286. English poetry, beginning of, 293. English spelling, the abominable character of, 328, 346. Ennius, 235. Environment, diversity of, 61. Erasmus, 241, 294, 313. Erech of the Chaldees, 1 10. Eridu of the Chaldees, no. Eries, 145. Erse, 205, 209. Eskimo, 118. Eskimo long-skulled, 95. Esthonians, 81. Ethiopian, 85. Ethiopian dynasty in Egypt, 173. Ethiopic, i8i, 187. Ethnology indebted to the science of language, 35. Etruscan, 84, 228. Etruscan book, 170. Etruscan civilization possibly of Akkadian origin, 168. Etruscan mystery near solution, 170. Etruscan words, 171. Etruscans, 168, 170, 213, 229. Etruscans invading Egypt, 169, 170. Etruscans partly Akkadic, 1 68. Etruscans partly Hamitic, 168. Etruscans partly Low German, r68. Etymological inflection not attained by the Americans, 142. Euphonic change of vowels, 124, 34«- Euphonic laws, 80. Euphonious agglutination, 124, 341. Euphrates, 109, 173. European Aryans not savages, 208. Euscaldunac, 232. Euskara, 131. Euskarian, 84. Euskarian Kelts, 73. Euskarians in Gaul, 261. Euskarians in Ireland, 87, 205. Euting, 185. Evolution from Inflected English to analytic, 298. Evolution in language, 32. 374 INDEX. Evolution of English, 348. Exactness of expression in Latin, 239- Exogamy, tlie law of, 65. Eye words and Ear words, 315. Fabliaux, the, 271. Facility of French, 260. Falstaff's sack, 79. Fannius against Gracchus, 23S. Farrar, 27, 35. Farrar quoted, 35, 213. Farther India, 222. Fasting, 157. Felix, 257. Female descent earlier than male in Vazgens, 229, 354. Feminine gender, 67, 125. Ferdousi, 204, 222. Fervor of Kelts, 247, 2S2. Feudal words, 300. Few Keltic words in English, 245. Fick, 223, 232. Fielding, 322. Figures, positional value of, derived from Akkad, 109. Fiji, S3. Fiji islands, 128. Finding of the Cross, 257. Finnish declension, 117, 333. Finnish soft and melodious, 107, Finnish tongue like that of Akkad, 106. Finnmark, 78. Finno-Hungarian, 81. Finns, 81, 114, 117, 168. Fixity of roots, 1 79. Flanders, 262. Flattened forehead, 155. Flexibility, Latin deficient in, 211. Flexibility of Mpongwe verb, exem- plified, 357. Flinders Petrie, in. Foreign marriages of the nineteenth dynasty, 178. Formosa, 83. Formosa, Malays in, 125. Forms rarely used, 325. Fossil inflection in English, 44, 328, 335- Fox, George, 322. Foxes, 145. Francia, 261. Franks, 89, Franks beyond the Rhine, 261. Franks in Gaul, 261. Freedom in arrangement due to in- flection, 43. Freedom of thought, Hellenic, 232. French, 87, 260-275. French accent, 289. French, birth of, 359. French, early popularity of, 269. French grafts on the English stock, 297-310. French intonation, 338. French literature, 260. French monarchy, beginning of, 265. French nasal sounds, 264. French prose, qualities of, 260. French rich in Teutonic words, 265. French romances, popularity of, 284. French, Romdn in West Francia perceived to be, 263. French words, 300. Frequentatives, 236, 342, 357. Friesian, sprung from Low German, 217. Friesian, tongue of Angles like, 248. Fronto, 240.. Fuegians, 150. Fusion of " have " with infinitive to form future in Romance tongues, 265. Gaboon River, 162. Gades, the western Kadesh, 194. Gadhelic, 209. Gaelic, 87, 205. Gaimar, 282. Gaius, style of, 240. Galatia, Kelts of, 210. GalilEeans, 191. Galilee, 192. Gallas, T79. Gallia, 210. Galway, 167. Ganowilnian Family, or Americans, 147. Gardy-loot " 310. Garnett, 27. Gascon, the, 260. INDEX. 37S Gascony, 261. Gaul, 87. Gauls, 210. Geez, 85, 181, 187. Gender by high caste and low caste, 124. Gender in the verb, 142, 193, 342. Genitive relation in Hebrew pecu- liar, 194. Genoese Riviera, 166. Gentoo, or Telugu, 84, 124. Geoffrey of Monmouth, 2S2, 284. Georgia, 145. ■Georgian, 86. German, High and Low, 89, 217. Germanic races, their early influence on Latin, 241. Gesture, 61. Getulians, 165. , Ghaznevid prince, 204, Gibbon, 310. Gila River, 153. Gildersleeve, 28. Gill, Alexander, 314. Girgeh, 172. Gizeh, 172. Glaser, 1S5. Goidelic Kelts, 205. Gold plates on walls of Ur, 109. Golds, 114. Goldsmith, 322. G6nd, 124. Goomtee River, 58. Gothic cathedrals, 202. Gothic like Greek in some respects, 217. Goths, Sg, 216, 264. Gower. 288. Gracchus, Caius. 238. Grace, Latin devoid of, 239. Grace of French, 260. Graduated scale, in. Grammar, Egyptian, 179. Grammar, precision of Latin, 239. Grammar, Punic, 194. Grammatical connectives, 61. Grammatical gender, 66. 124, 341. Grammatical structure, 28. Grammatical structure, similarity in, 38, 78. j Great Mogul, 94. I Great Pyramid, 172. Grebo, 133, 160. Greek, 211. Greek Christians, 114. Greek couplets, ,315. Greek particles and Greek precision, 212, Greek, use of by Cicero, 213. Greek words in Latin, 237. Greeks, 52, 199. Greeks in Gaul, 261. Greeks of Italy, 213. Green diorite, statues of, in. Greenland Eskimo, 118. Green, quoted, 257, 275. Gregory of Tours, 261. Gregory the Great, 257. GriiRs cited, 120. Grimm, Jacob, 27, 32, 338. Grimm's law for the shifting of mutes, 338. Grisons, dialect of the, 215. Groups of American languages, 142. Groups of Semitic languages, 182. Guanches, 165. Guaranis, 146. Guaycurus, 150. Gucumatz, 150. Gudea, 11 r, 114. Gudrun, 33, 202. Guest, George, or Sequo-yah the Cherokee, 144. Guiana, 146. Guipuzcoa, 131. Gulf of Mexico, 143. Gulf States, 145. Guthlac, 257. Guthrum, Alfred's wars with, 2^7. Guttural character of Inflected Eng- lish, 278, 2S0. Guttural language, 150. Gypsies, 223. Hadramaut, 184. Hafiz, 222. Haidahs, iiS. Hal6vy, 180, 187. Hallam, quoted, 295. Hall, Robert, 327. Hamites, contrast of Semites to, 176. 376 INDEX. Hamites in Chaldsea and in Egypt, 165. Hamitic, likeness of Semitic tongues to, 176. Hamitic, mastery oLthe Akkadi, log. Hamitic races, 76, 104. Hamitic tongi^es, 80, 164-179, 343. Haran, no. Harper, Dr., cited, 193. Hasting, Alfred's defeat of, 257. Havet, 223. Hawaii, 83, 125, 171. Hawaiian mcapacity to sound certain letters, 68. Hawes, 294, 295. Hawthorne, 326. Hazara, 115. Hearn, Lafcadio, 326. Hearn tiie philologist, 223. Hebrew, 85, 181, 334. Hebrew a dead language, 191. Hebrew civilization, 77. Hebrew contrasted with Aryan tongues, 193. Hebrew inadequate for science or philosophy, 193. Hebrew in the schools of the Rabbis, 192. Hebrew of the Bible, 180, 190. Hebrew once had terminal inflection, 193- Hebrew vocabulary limited, 193. Hebrew words in Aryan tongues, 197, 361. Hebrides, 16/, 205. Heliand, 90. Hellenes, 208. Hellenic, 86. Hellenic characteristics, 210. Hellenic cities of Italy, 232. Hellenic race, 203. Helvetia, 86. Helvetians, 210. Helvetius, 210. Hengest and Horsa, 245. Henry Drummond on the origin of language, 60. Heptateuch translated, 258. Herat, 115. Heritage of Greece, 203. Herodotus, 56, 211. Heroic Age, 271. Hervas, his catalogue of languages 26, Heymann, 223, Hezekiah, 195. Hierarchy, graded, 157. Hieroglyphic syllabary, 175. Hieroglyphs, 78, 112, 155, 174, 342. Higden, 285. Hilkiah, 195. Himyar, 186. Himyarite Arab, 161. Himyaritic, 85. Himyaritic inscriptions, 180, 185. Hindi, 86, 222. Hindoo genius for grammatical study, 31. Hindoo incapacity for political pro- gress, 207. Hindoo-Koosh, 199. Hindoos, 51, 199, 221. Hindostan, 203. Hippo, 85, 194. Hippophagy in the Polished Stone Age, 167. Hispania Tarraconensis, 131. Hispanian Latinity, 240. Hittite civilization, 112. Hittite influence in the early Hel- lenic world, 168. Hittites at war, 169. Hittites in Egypt, 173. Hittite syllabary, 113. Hog unknown to the Americans, 139- Holland, 247. Hollanders, 218. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, quoted, 7. Holophrastic tongues, 72, 77, 84, 136-159) 342- Holstein, 259. Homer, 211. Homerites, 186. Homer parodied in "Tom Jones," 322. Homer's social world, 168. Homilies of Wolfstan and of iElfric, 258. Hondo, T20. Honduras, 152. I Honorary changes in address, 122. INDEX. 377 Hoopahs, 143. Horace, 241. Horace quoted, 325. Hordes, Kalmuck, 115. Home Tooke, 31. Horse unknown to the Americans, 139- Horshesu, 172. Hottentots, 134. Houses of the Sun and Moon, 156. Huaztecs, 331. Huber, 185. Hudson's Bay, 143. Hugo, 260, 275, Humanists, the, 241. Human sacrifices, 139, 157. Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 27, 84. Humor, Keltic, 210. Humor of Euskarians, 247, Hungarians, 118. Hungary, 78. Huns, 154. Hunting terms, 301. Hurons, 145. Huzvjiresh, 222, Hybrid coinages, 363. Hyksos held Egypt, iii, 113. Iberians, 165. Iberians of Britain (Silurians), 205. Iceland, go. Iceland, Aryan language in, 217. Identity of roots, 38, 46. Identity of sound for diversity of idea, 99. Identity of sound misleading, 28, 37. Identity of words, 37, 229. Ideophonetics, 98. Idols, 155. Iliad, 33, 202. Illyrian, 88. Illyrians, 208, 213, 219. Imazighan, 165. Imitative sounds, 61. Imperishable parts of language, 340. Incas compared to Romans, 158. Incas, the, 139. 157. Incas, tombs of the, 147. Incense-waving, 157. Indefinite article comes from Nor- mans, 278. I Indefinite article creeping into Latin, 238. Indefinite verbs, 357. India, 1S5, 202, 221. India, Ainos from, 120. India, Aryan languages in, 86. Indian (East), 220. Indian Ocean, 164. India, wild children in, 58. Indie, 86. Indo-Chinese, 104, 199. Inflected English, 90, 218, 245-259, 276-296. Inflected English, poetry of, 190, Inflected French, 266. Inflected tongues, 72, 79, 249. Inflection illustrated, 42. Inflection in Old English, 249. Inflection, its kinds compared, 41. Inflection, its nature, 38, 333. Inflection, its origin, 40, 333. Inflections still left in English, 44, 327- Influence of Danish settlements, 283. Influence of Semitic tongues on Aryan, 199. Initial inflection, 192. In-nu-it, 118, 131, 141, 342. Inscriptions, their language archaic, 195. Inserted plural, it8. Intercalative tongues, 'j'j. Interchange of consonants, 80. Intercommunication, earliest modes of, 331- Intonation,. 80, 99. 134, 332, 341. Intonation for negation, 356. Intonation in Grebo, 133. Intonation, variations in, 337. Invention of language, 69. Ionic, 88. Iota, characteristic sound in modem Greek, 88. Iranian tribes, 220. Iranic, 86. Ireland, 140, 167, 209. Ireland, Danes in, 246. Iron unknown to the Americans, 139. Iroquois, 140, 353, 354. Irrawaddy, a lover drowned in the, 66. 378 INDEX, Irving, Washington, 322. Ishmael, 184, 191. Ishmael of Persia, 203. Isis, 175. Isle of Man, 86, 210. Isle of Man, Danes in the, 246. Isle of France, 262, 268, 299. Isola del Liri, skulls at, 166. Isolated group nowhere exists, 63. Ispahan, Abu-Faraj of, 189. Israel, 173, igi. Israelite, 190, Italian, 87, 215, 26S, 361. Italian literature, influence of, 312. Italians, 208, 213. Italic, 86, 213. Italy, Hamites in, 169. Italy, Kelts of, 87. Itzas, 153. Izamel, 155. James the First of England, 313. James the First of Scotland, 294. Japanese art, 123. Japanese language, 120, 334. Japanese, origin of the, 120. Japanese sak6, 79. Japanese syllabary, 121. Japanese syntax, 122. Japanese type, 120. Japanese use classical Chinese, 103. Java, 125. Javanese, 83. Javans, 125. Java, or Malay tongue, 83. Jenghiz Khan, 115. Jerusalem, 117. Jethro a priest-king, 185. Jewish- Aramaic, 181. Jews, 198. Joah, 195. Johns-Hopkins University, igi. Johnson, Samuel, 321. Joined eyebrows, 361. Joinville, 308. Jolly, 223. Jones, Sir William, 27. Jonson, Ben, 313. Joseph, 173. Jovian gods, 34. Judah, 190, 192, 195. " Juliana " and " Judith," 257, Julian the Emperor, 264. Jutes, 245, 247. Jutes Christianized, 246. Kabah, 155. Kabyles or " Tribes," 165. Kadesh on the Ocean, 194. Kadesh on the Orontes, 113, 169, 17S. Kaffa, 161. Kalah, 181. Kalevaia, 118. Kalka, 115. Kalmucks, 115. Kamboja, 104, 108. Kambojan, 104, loS. Kannadi, or Canarese, 124. Kansas, 145. Karakalpaks, 116- Kara Kirghiz, 117. Karchemish on the Euphrates, 113. Keble, 327. Keltiberians, 205, Keltic blood, 210. Keltic dialects, 87, 121. Keltic literature, 210. Keltic myths, 282. Keltic tongue, 228. Keltic words in English, 250, 254, Kelts, 52, 169, 205. Kelts of Bretagne, %-j^ 245. Kelts of Britain, 87, 245. Kelts of Cornwall, 87, 245. Kelts of Galatia, 87. Kelts of Gaul, 87, 261. Kelts of Italy, 87, 213. Kelts of Man, 87. Kelts of Scotland, 87, 245. Kelts of the Po, Z^, 213. Kelts of Wales, 87, 245. Kenai, 143. Kent, 245. Kerry, 167. Khafra, 172. . Khasia, banana in, 147. Khatti or Hittites, 112. Khita or Hittites, 112, 169, 178. Khita-sira, 113. Khiva, 116. Khoi-Khoin, 134, 161. INDEX. 379 Khokand, ii6. Kho language, 104. Khond, 124. Khufu, III, 172. Kickapoos, 145. Kioways, 145. Kirghiz, 82, 116. Kirghiz Kazaks, 117. Kirgipa, 113. Kisfaludy, 118. Kittim or Cyprus, 190. Kobo, Japanese scholar, 121. Kopts, 175. Koran, 189. Kata, 124. Krall, Professor, 170. Kumuks, 116. Kung-fu-ts or Confucius, 93. Kurdistan, Aramaic in, 197. Kurds, 221. Kurile islands, 120. Kushite, 85. Kutchins, 143. Kymric, 87, 209. Kypriole characters, 112. I^ABNA, 155. Lactantius, 241. Ladin, 215. Ladrones, 83. Lcelia, 238. Lselius, 239. Lake Victoria Nyanza, 160. Lala, 113. Lampongs, 125. Lamuts, 114. Lancashire, 283. Land-bridge across the Atlantic, 137. Lang, Andrew, 34. Langland, 2S6, 293, 326. Language an art, 13. Language, a necessity to early man, 55- Language, change in, 63. Language checked in growth by civilization, 16. Language, classification of, 18. Language, definition of, 14, 329. Language, fossil remains in, 44. Language, historic significance of, 15- Language like society, 70. Language must be learned, 23. Language not a sure test of race, 22. Language, race capacity in, 17. Language, starting-point in study of, 25, 70. Language, study of, 13, 25. Language subject to crises, 273. Language suffers from lowered national tone, 321. Language, written, 20. Langued'Oc, 265, 267. Langue d'Oil, 265, 267. Lanier, Sidney, 295. Lappland, 78. Lapps, 81, 117, 168. Larsa of the Chaldees, no, 113. Lars Porsena, 113. Lassen, 27. Lateness of American development, 140. Latham, 27. Latimer, 326. Latin, 87, 213, 226-244, 334- Latin adverbial endings made uni- form in Romance, 266. Latin barbarized, 26-;. Latin grammar, precision of, 239. Latini, Brunetto, 269. Latin in English, 249, 314. Latin League of thirty cities, 228. Latin of the Schoolmen, 192. Latin passive rejected by Romance, 266. Latin prose, 239. Latin share in spreading Chris- tianity, 215. Latin the language of law, 214, 227, 239- Latin tonic syllable becomes French final syllable, 266. La Tour Landry, Geoffrey de, 287. Law, Latin the language of, 214. Law of exogamy, 65, 339. Law of the Twelve Tables, 233. Law of vowel-change, 49, 80, 341. Laws of Ethelbert and of Ine, 257. Law terms, 302. Layamon, 258, 281, 282. Layard, 180. ' Lay of Roland, 271. 380 INDEX, Lazian, 86. Lebanon, 180. Lechs, 88. Left-handed inflection, 40, 76, 353, 355- Legar6 quoted, 227, Legends of the Saints, day of, 260. Leibnitz, 26, 241, Leka, 170. Leku, 170. Lena, 114. Lenape, 145. Leptis, 85. Lesghian, 86. Lesser Antilles, 145. Lettic, 88, 220. Lettic Aryans, 220. Letts, 208, 215, 220. Levant, 184, 205. Levantine, 169. Libyan, 85, 164. Libyans, 165. Life of the early Aryans, 223. Ligurians, 1C8. Lincolnshire, 253. Lindisfarne, 256. Lingua Romana, 238, 359. LinniEus wrote in Latin, 226, Literary language changes too, 64. Literature, Hellenic, 211. Literature not indigenous in Rome, 235- Literature of Inflected English, 255. Literature, Roman, 214. Literature stunts language-growth, 16. Lithuanian, 88, 220. Littr6, 28. Littre cited, 268, 273. Littr6 quoted, 8. Lives of the Saints, 258. Livius Andronicus, 235. Livonia, speech of, 88. Livy, 33, 227, 234. Loire River, 261. Lombard cities, 206. Lombock, Malays of, 126. Long words in American tongues, 142. Loo-Choo, or Riukiu Islands, 103. Lottner, 223. Louis, tbe German (Ludwig), 262. Louvre, the, 183. Lowell cited, 297. Lower Egypt, 178. Low German, 89, 216, 218. Lucan, 227, 240, 241. Lucian, 211. Lucidity of French, 260. Lucidity of good Latin, 239. Ludwig, 223. Lukoi, or Lycians, 169, 170, 209. Lules, 150. Luther's German, 64, 217. Lycians, 169, 209. Lydgate, 291. Lyiy, V-1- MABINOGION, 33, 202, 2o6. Macassars, 125. Macaulay on Dr. Johnson, 321. Macaulay on Latin, 214, 242. Macaulay quoted, 214, 234, 242, 325, Macaulay's ballads, 234. Mackenzie River, 143. Macpherson, 206. Madagascar, 125. Magian religion, 203. Magicians, iii. Magyar, 81, 106, 117. Magyar displacing Latin, 241, MahS,bhS,rata, 33. Mahmoud, 204. Mahratti. 86, 222. Ma'in, 185. Maine, 262. Majesty of Latin, 239. Malabar, 124. Malagassi, 83. Malay, 83, 120. MalaySlam, 84, 124. Malay and Papuan compared, 82. Malay character, 127. Malay civilization, 127. Malay-Polynesian, 81. Malay region, home of bananas, 147, Malays, 125. Malays great sailors, 125. Malay skull, 126. Malay type, 127. Malory Sir Thomas, 294, 295. Mama Oello, 140. INDEX. 381 Manco Capac, 140. Mandaean dialect, ig6, Mandans, 145. Mandarin, 103. Mandeville, 269, 286, 293, Manegrs, 114. Man, Isle of, 87, 210. Manning, Robert, 2S4. Man, relapsed, 59. Mantchu, 82, 114. Mantchuria, 103, 120, Manx, 205. Maori, 83. Marble slabs, 109. March, 28. Marco Polo, 94, 152, 269. Mariab, 186. Marks of Semitic tongues, 182. Marne River, 262. Maro-sira, 113. Marquesas, S3. Marsh, 28. Marsians, 228, Martial, 240, 242. Martin Luther's German, 64. Martino de Canale quoted, 269. Masculine gender, 67, 125. Massilia, the modern Marseille, 261. Maundeville, Sir John, 286. Mauritanians, 165. Mciutenara, 113. Mavila, the modem Mobile, 354. Maya, 351. Mayapan, 152, 155. Mayas, 108, 139. Medes of Susa, 209. Medes of the North, 221. Media, 109, 183. Median, 183. Mediterranean, 107, 112, 173. Meiklejohn cited, 278. 2S1, 283, 307, 308, 315. Melanesian, 82. Melchizedek, the priest-king, 185. Memphis, 172. Mena, 172. Menander, 235. Meneptah, 169, 173, 209, Menkera, 172, Mentone, skulls at, 166. Meredith's fantastic English, 325. Mesopotamia, 185, T97. Metric system of Chaldaeans, basis of, 109. Mexico, 139. Meyer quoted, 329. Miamis, 145, Michel, 286. Micmacs, 145. Micronesians, 125. Middle English, 24S, 277. Middle voice, 233. Midland dialect, 277, 293. Mikados made monks of, 121. Military pomp of Latin, 239. Milton, 226. Milton quoted, 319. Milton's seriousness, 326, Milton's prose, 313, 327. Mimicry originates many virords, 59, Minaean alphabet, 185. Minaean tongue, 179, 181, 185. Mingrelian, 86. Minutes, the sixty, from Akkad, 109. Mir^nhas, 149. Miscegenation felt to be an evil, 223, Mishna, 192. Mississippi, 154. Missouri valley, 136. Mitla, 156. Mitsjeghian, 86. Mixed races, 120. Moab, 191. Moabite, 181. Modern English, 248. Moesia, Goths of, 89, 248. Mceso-Gothic, 217, 248. Mohammed, 180, 186. Mohammedan conquerors of India, 222. Mohawk incapacity to sound certain. letters, 68. Mohegans, 145, Moloch, 157. Moluccan Malays, 127. Mommsen's heterodoxy, 230. Monacans, 145. Monarchy, beginning of French, 265. Mongolian, 81, 104, 113. Mongolians broad-skulled, 95. Mon language, 104. Monogamous Americans, 149. 382 INDEX. Monolithic monuments, 157. Monosyllabic tongues, 80, 93-106, 178. Monosyllables in English, advantage of, 298. Monosyllables, origin of English, 48, 280, 298. Montaigne, 260, 274. Months came from Akkad, 109. Moon, worship of the, 110, Moravia, 115. Moravians, 88. More, Sir Thomas, 313, 327. Morgan cited, 147. Morris, William, 324, Mosaics in Mitla, 156. Mosaics in Ur, 109. Moslems, culture of, 189. Motya in Sicily, 194. Mound-builders, 154, 354. Mount Pindus, vi^ild child on, 57. Mount St. Elias, 143. Mozcas, 139. Mpongwe, 84, 162, 342, 355. Mu-Fundu, 162. Miiller, 185. Miiller, Max, 27, 308. Miiller quoted, 320, 323. Multiplication of languages, 141. Mummies, bitumen for, 196. Mundurucus, 148. Muras, 149, Muretus, 241. Murray, Professor, quoted, 191. Mykense, built by Hamites, 167. Myrgings, a Low German tribe, 256. Mysians, 169. Nabat^an, 181. Nabataean coins, 196. Nabatseans, 196. Na-chan, 152, 154. Nadaillac, 34. Njevius, 235. Nahuatl, 143. Names of places, 251, 252, 264. Names of rivers, 264. Nana, 113. Nanticokes, 145. Napoleon Bonaparte, 174. Naram Sin, in. Nasal sounds in French and Portu- guese, 264. Natchez, 354. Navarra, 131. Navarre, 131. Negro, 147, 160, 331. Negroes long-skulled, 95. Nejd, 188. Neologisms in French, 275, Neustria, 264. Neuter gender, 67. Neuter lost in Romance tongues, 265. Nevius quoted, 103. Nevif Caledonia, 143. New England sounds final y^ 281. New Guinea, 128. New Mexico, 140, 153. Newton, John, 327. Ngatkons, 114. Nibelungenlied, 33, 202. Nicaragua, 143. Nicholetts, Captain, and the wild child, 58. Niebuhr, 230. Nigidals, 114. Nigori, 122. Nile, 172. Nile basin, t6o. Nineteenth dynasty, 178. Nineveh, 152, iSo, iSi. Nithard, 359. Noghaians, it6. No hard and fast lines, 334. Nohpat, 155. Nomadic tribes, 115. Non-Aryan numerals, 30. Norman blood, value of, 247. Norman conqueror of the Canaries, 165. Norman conquest, effect of, 277, 281. Normandy, importance of the loss of, 255. Normandy of mixed blood, 262, 264. Norman-French, 90, 252, 268. Norman- French, influence of, on English, 247, 281. Norman pronunciation, 269, 2S1, 299. Norman, the, 260, 297. Norman words, character of, 300. INDEX. 383 Norsk, 90, 217. Northern dialect, 277, 279. Northmen, 246. North Sea, 316. North Sea coasts, 247. Northumbrian culture, 248, 251,256. Norway, go. Nubian races, 78. Numerals a good guide, 29, 340. Numidians, 165. Oajaca, 156. Oaths of Strasburg, 359. Obongo, 161. Occleve, 291. Ococingo, 154. Odyssey, the, 33, 202. Official, Aramaic, 195. Ogow6 basin, i6t. Ohio, 145. Oise River, 262. Old English, 248. Old French, 215, 265, 268. Old Norse, 217. Old Prussian, 88. Old Saxon, 90, 218. Old Testament language more mod- ern than New, 192. Olidts or Kalmucks, 115. OUphant, Mrs., 277. Olmo, skulls at, 166. Omahas, 145. Oman, 184. Orders, religious, 157. Ordoiiez cited, 151. Oregon, 143. Organization, Latin the language of, 239- Organs of speech differ, 67. Origin of gender, 66. Origin of inflection, 40. Origin of Modern French, 270. Orkneys, Danes in the, 246, 252. Orm and his Ormulum, 283. Orochus, 114. Or6mo, or Gallas, 179. Orontes, 178. Orosius, the Hispanian, 257. Orson, a modern, 58. Osages, 145. Oscans or Oski, 87, 170, 213, 2-;2. Osmanii Turks, 82, 116. Ossetic, 221. Ossian, 206. Ostiaks, 81, 117. Otoes, 145. Otomls, 105, 141. Ottawas, 145. Oude, wild boy in, 58. Ovid, 33, 227. Owen, 327. Ox unknown to the Americans, 139. Oxus, 34, 199. Pacific, 144. Pacuvius, 235. Painted walls, 155. Palaces, stone, 156. Palaiologos, 204. Palenque, 144, 152, 154. Palestine, 181. Palestine held by Elamites, iii, Palestinian peoples, 190. Paley, 326. pan, 86, 222. Palmwood rafters in Ur, no. Palmyra, inscriptions of, 196. Palmyrite, 181. Pampas tribes, 150. Panormos, 194. Papua, 128. Papuan art, 129. Papuan character, 129. Papuan languages, 129. Papuans, 125, 128. Papuan submerged continent, 128. Papuan type, 128. Parentintins, 149. Pariah, 123. Paris, 182. Parisian, the, 260. Paris, University of, 271. Parliament opened with a speech in English, 286. Parsee, 86, 220, 221. Parthian empire, 203. Particles, Greek, 212. Parting of the Aryans, 208. Pascal, 260, 275, Passamaquoddies, 145. Passive lost by Geez, 187. Passive replaced in Romance, 266. 384 INDEX, Passumahs, 125. Patagonians, 150. Patriarchal government retained by the hill tribes of India, 124. PawneeSj 145. Peccary tusks, 149. Pegu, 104. Pehlevt, S6, 221. Pelasgians, 166, 169, 229, 231. Pelasgic element, 212, Pelasgic race, 167. Pelasgic type, 168. Pelesta, 170. Penances, 157. Pencrych the schoolmaster, 285. Pentaur, the Poem of, 178. Pepi Merira, 172. Pequots, 145. Perfect participle active lost by Latin, 213. Pergamus, 117. Permians, 117. Perpendicular writing, 122. Perpetuity of Chinese civilization, cause of, 104. Persian Gulf, 106, j8i. Persian literature in Hindostan, 204, Persian, modern, 197, 222. Persian resuscitation, 203. Persians, 52, 202, 220. Persian spoken by the Hazara, 115. Persian words in Hindustani, 222. Personification a source of gram- matical gender, 67. Peru, 139, 140, 147. Peruvians, 157. Peterborough, Abbey of, 257, Peter's provincial dialect, 191. Petofi, 118. Petra, 196. Petrarca, 241. Petrie, Professor Flinders, iii. Petronius Arbiter, 227, 237. Pevensey, the Norman landing at, 254. Pezzi, 223. , Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty, 113. Pheidias, 202. Philemon, 235. Philippines, Z-^, 125, 147, Philistines, 170, 190. Phoenician alphabet, 185. Phoenician colonists, 78, 85. Phoenician influence in the early Hellenic world, 168. Phoenician inscriptions, 180. Phcenician language, 181, 190, 194. Phoenicians of Sidon, 164. Phcenix, 257. Phonetic convenience, 337. Phonetic decay, 49, 73, 258, ZZZ^ 336- Phrygian word for "bread/' 56. Physical incompetency, 63. Picard dialect, 268. Picardy, 262. Picenum, Asculum in, 232. Pictet, 28, 223. Piedmont region of Chiapas, 154. Pindar, 211. Pindus, wild child on Mount, 57. Pirates, Arab, iSi. Piros, 149. Pizarro, 147. Plantagenet princes, 297. Plato, 211. Piatt Deutsch, 216. Plautus, 235. Plaza mayor of Mexico, 157. Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, 227, 242, Plumed Serpent, 150. Plural in «?«, misfortune to have lost, 278. Poe, Edgar Allan, 326. Poem of Pentaur, 178. Point of French, 260, 275. Points in which the Romance tongues agree, 267. Polabians, 88. Poles, 88, 219. Poliziano, 241. Polo, Marco, 269. Polynesian, 82. Polynesian blood, "j*]. Polysynthetic tongues, 84, Pomeranian coast, 218. Pomeranians, 88. Poncas, 145. Pope, 319. INDEX. 385 Popol Vuh, 151. Porphyry, iii. Pdrsena, Lars, 113. Portuguese, 87, 215. Positional grammar, 43, 48, 100, 190. 334- Positional grammar comes first, 332. Positional grammar, Greek free from, 212. Positional grammar in Arabic, 190, 343- Possessive forms, varying, 350, 356. Pott, 27. Poultry (except turkey) unknown to Americans, 139. Poverty of Latin verb inflection, 232. Poverty of Sassenach intellect, 259. Powhatans, 145. Prakrit, 86, 222. Precision, Greek, 212. Precision of French style, 260, 274. Precision of Latin grammar, 239. Prefixes, Bantu, 333, 355. Prefixes written but not sounded, 104. Prehistoric life of Aryans, 33. Prehistoric river names in America, 138- Prescott cited, 105. Priest-kings of the Akkadi, iii. Priestly rule, in, 156, 185. Printing-press, its influence in mak- ing English modern, 293. Process of development in language, 73- Prose and poetry, their forms mingled, 240. Provengal, 87, 215, 260, 265. Psammetichus, his linguistic experi- ment, 56. Ptolemies, 174. Pueblos, stone, 153. Pueblo tribes, 140. PunaWa system of intermarriage, 171. Punic, iSi, 190, 194. Puritan enmity to art, 319. Purupurus, 149. Pyramids, 139, 153, 156, 172. Pyrenees, 84. Quaternary period, 136, 164. Queer changes in the meaning of words, 308. Quetzalcoatl, 140, 150. Quiche, 138, 350. Quichfi-Maya, 143, 349, Quichfe, 108. Quichiia language, 157, Quichua type, 149, Quichuas, 108, 138, 149. Quintilian, 227, 240. Rabelais, 274. Rabbis invent vowel points in He- brew of the Bible, 192. Rabsaris, 195. Rabshakeh, 195. Race, its share in language, 52, 332, Race of the Rough Stone Age in Europe, 166. Ra-ian, 173. Ramayana, 33. Ramessu, 169, 173, 178, 209. Raratonga, 83. Rdsena, or Etruscans, 113. Rask, 27, 338. Ra, the Sun god, 175. Rawlinson cited, 209. Raynouard, 267. Reasons for triumph of East Mid- land, 283. Rebu, or Libyans, 170. Recapitulation, 329-346. Receding brow, 155. Recent theory of Aryan origin, 199. Reciprocal verbs, 357, Reclus cited, 232. Reclus quoted, 230. Red Sea, 109. Reduplication, 50, 142, 217. Regeneration of Persian race, 203, 229. Regnum, 245. Rejangs, 125. Relapsed man can be taught speech, 59- Relation of historical transition to language, 270. Relative verbs, 357. Religion and nationality, 203. Renan, 28, 180. 25 386 IN-VEX. Resemblance between Basque and Japanese syntax, 132. Resemblance in names of Akkadi, Hittites, and Etruscans. 113, Resemblance of Rome to Sparta, 230. Revival of arts and learning, 204. Revival of pure Latinity, 241. Revolution in Japan, 121. Rhetoric, genius of Latin for, 227. Rhetoric, taste of the Elizabethans for, 317. Rhythmic power of Greek, 212. Rhythmic repetition, 50, 331. Riddles, 257, Riukiu, or Loo-Choo Islands, 103. 120. River names of Europe Keltic, 208. Rivers masculine, 67. Roadway from Europe to America, Robert of Gloucester, 284,290. Rocky Mountain range, 143. Rogers, Henry, 326. Roland, Lay of, 202, 272. Romaic, 88. Romin, 263. Romance dialect, 263, 359. Romance dialect, formation of, 23S, 263. Romance languages, 266, Roman ceremony is Etruscan, 231. Roman characteristics, 213. Roman literature late in appearing, 234- Romans, 52, 205, 215. Romansch, 87, 215. Romany, 22, 69, 86, 223. Rome, 213, 228. Romulus and Remus, 59. Roots, 40, 47, 330. Rosen, 27. Roses, Wars of the, 291. Rosetta Stone, 174. Runic inscriptions, 251. Rusellaa built by Hamites, 167. Ruskin, John, 326, 327. Russian, 88, 219. Russian literature, 88. Russian novelists overpraised, 219. Rustic Latin used by choice, 240, 261. Saba, 184, 185. Sabxan, iSi, 182. Sabarites, 186, Sabine, 228. Sacs, 145. Sacy, Sjlvestre de, 174, Sadi, 222. Sahagun, Father, 151. Sahara, then a sea, 164. Saka, or Scythians, 79, Sallust, 24T. Salmasius wrote in Latin, 226, Salvian, 242. Samaritan Pentateuch, 197. Samnites, 228. Samoa, 83. Samoyed, 81, 114, 118. Sanagirs, 114. San, or Bushmen, 134, 161. San, or Zoan, 173. Sanskrit, 25, 31, 47, 86, 202, 222. Sapalala, 113. Saracens, 181, 188. Sardinia, 167. Sargon, King of the Akkadi, iii. Sargon, King of Assyria, 113, 185. Sarzec, Ernest de, no. Sassanid dynasty, 203, 221. Sassenach, 87, 205. Sassenach, definition of the term, 245. Satarona, 113. Satire original with the Romans, 244. Saturnalia in Akkad, 112. Saturnian gods, 34. Saturnian verse, 235. "Satyricon," attributed to P. Ar- biter, 237. Saxon, 218, 248. Saxon chronicle, 257. Saxons, 245, 264. Saxons in Gaul, 264. Sayce, 28. Sayce cited, no. Scandinavia, 216. Scandinavian, 89. Schara, 115. Schlegel, Frederick, 27, 32. Schleicher, 27, 79, 232. Schliemann, 168. INDEX. 387 Schmidt, 223, Scholars forgetting that language is a growth, 69. Scipio, 239. Scotland, Highland clans of, 209. Scots, 206. Scott, 277, 285,295, 305,323. Scottish dialect, 277, 323. Scottish guttural, 2SSg. Scott, Walter, influence of, 254. Seafarer, The, 257. Seedless bananas, 147, Seine, the river, 262, Sela in Sicily, 194. Seljuks, 116. Seminoles, 145. Semitic and Sumirian, no. Semitic conquest of the Akkadi, iSi. Semitic inflection, 39, 49. Semitic literature, iSo. Semitic races, 181. Semitic roots, 73, 182. Semitic scholars, 192. Semitic speech, 180-198, 343. Semitic words in Egyptian, 178. Senecas, the two, 227, 239, 240. Senefru, in. Senlac, the fight at, 254, 299. Septimania, 261. Sequence of vowels, 82. Se-quo-yah, the Cherokee, 144, Serbs, 88, 207, 218. Sereet 'Antar, 188. Serious temper of the English, 326. Serpents, the Race of the, 150. Service of the Greeks to the human race, 203. Seti the First, 169. Severn, 205, 282, Shdh-n^meh, 202. Shakalasha, 170. Shakespeare, 202, 312, 319, 327. Shakespeare quoted, 319. Shakespeare's prose, 312. Shamanistic religion, 112, 138, 342. Shan-se, province of, 95. Shardana, 169. Share of Latin in the spread of Christianity, 215. Shawnees, 145. Sheja, 184, 185. ' Sheba, queen of, 185. Shebna, 195. Sheep unknown to the Americans, 139. Shepherd Kings, 173. Shiah Mohammedans, 203. Shinto, 121. Shoshonees, 145. Siamese, 104. Siberia, 114. Sicilian caves, skulls in, 166. Sicily, 167. Sidney's prose, 313. Sidonian, 85. Sidonian civilization, 85, 164. Sidonius Apollinaris, 242. Sidon, the Hittite seaport, 113, 180, Sikels, 170. Silesia, 115. Silesians, 88. Simplicity of agglutination exempli- fied, 114. Sirpurra of the Chaldees, no, T13, Six Nations, The, 140. Skelton, 294. Skipetar, 213. Slang, 339. Slavery among the Akkadi, 112. Slavs, 52, 207, 215, 218. Sleeman, Colonel, 58. Slovaks, 88. Smollett's " Humphrey Clinker,'^ 310. Solar myth, 140. Solomon, 185. Somerset, 167. Songs, Book of, 1S9. Sophocles, 202. Sounds impossible for some races, 67. South America, 354. South Arabia, 179. South Carolina, 145, 337. "Southern Presbyterian Review," 162. South of France, 167. Spanish, 87, 197, 215, 268, 361. Spanish-speaking Malays, 127. Specific terms Teutonic, 305. *' Spectator," on wild children, 58. 388 lATDEX. Spelling, English, 328, 346. Spelling fixed by printing, 293, Spelling, Orm's system of, 2S3. Spenser, Edmund, 312, 326. Spirit-seers expelled by Gudea, 112. Spoken Chinese, 102. Spoken Chinese, dialects differ in, 103. Stateliness of Latin, 239. Steele, 320. Steinthal, 27. Stephen, King, 257. Stephens, the explorer, 154. Sterne, L^iwrence, 322. Stevenson, Robert Louis, 277, 326. St. Louis, 308. Strabo cited, 231. Strasburg, 262. Strasburg, Oaths of, 359. Stress in English and German, 337, Study of language, 13, 25. Suabian dialect, 218. Suanian, 86. Sueves, 89, 262. Sumatra, Malays of, 125. Sumir, 84, 182, 341. Sumiri, 106. Sunda, 83. Sundanese, 125. Sun-worshipers, 139, 354. Suomi or Finnland, 117. Surrey, 312, Sweden, 90. Swedish, 90, 217. Swift, 319. Swinburne, 318, 324, Switzerland, 210. Syllabary, Akkad, 107. Syllabary, Cherokee, 97, 144. Syllabary, Chinese, 96, 121. Syllabary, cuneiform, 109, 182, Syllabary, hieroglyphic, 175. Syllabary, Ilittite, 113. Syllabary, Japanese, 120. Symbolization, 80, 341. Symmetry in each linguistic type, 79, 341- Symmetry of Mpongwe, 358. Synagogue, solemn chant of the, 192. Synonyms in English, 299, 307. Syntax of Hebrew, 192, Syntax of Japanese, 122. Synthesis declining, 267, Synthesis in language, 71. Syria, 109, 185. Syriac, 181, 197. Syrian language (Aramaic), Ss, iSi, 191, 195. Taanau, 170. Table of Agglutinative Languages, 135- Table of American Languages, 159. Table of Aryan Languages, 92. Table of Aryan Languages of the East, 225. Table of Aryan Languages of the West, 225. Table of Hamitic and Semitic Languages, 91. Table of Hamitic Languages, 179. Table of Languages, 91. Table of Languages of the Italic Stock, 244. Table of Monosyllabic Languages, 105. Table of Semitic Languages, 19S Taboo, 125. Tacullies. 143, Tagals, 125. Tahiti, 83. Takkaru, 170. Talmud, 191. Tamil, 84, 124. Tapajoz River, 146. Tarascon Etruscan, 232. Tarascos, 143. Tarchon, J13. Tarentum, 235. Targum, 196. TarkondSmos, 113. Taroupe, 361. Tarquinii, the city, 113, Tarquins Etruscan, 230. Tarshish, or Tarsus, 109, 190. Tarshish, or Tartessus, 194. Tartan, 195. Tataric tribes, 81, 207. Tatars, 115. Tattooing, 148, 168. INDEX. 389 Tauism, 94. Taylor, Jeremy, 313, 315, 327. Technical terms avoided, 12. Teima, 185. Tel-loh, 106. Telugu, 84, 124. Temple, Sir William, 320. Tendencies to dissyllabic formation, 50. Teni, 172. Tennessee, 145. Tennyson, Alfred, 295, 31S, 324, 326. Tennyson's " Northern Farmer," 5'- Tenochtitlan, 153, 157. Teotihuacan, pyramids of, 153, 156. Teoyaomiqui, 157. Terah the Hebrew, no. Terence, 235. Terminal inflection in Assyrian and Hebrew, 193. Terminal inflection of Aryan tongues, 49, 193- Terseness a result of inflection, 212. Terseness of French, 260. Tertiary period, 137. Tertullian, 226, 242. Teukroi, 170, 209. Teutonic, 86. Teutonic couplets, 308. Teutonic group, 206. Teutonic influences on French, 272. Teutons, 52, 215'. Texas, 143. Thackeray, 326. Thanet, Isle of, 245. Thania, 113. " The Ascent of Man " cited, 60. Theban princes, 173, Theocritus, 211. Thick speech of the Galileans, 191. Thlinkeets, iiS. Thornwell, James, 327. Thothmes the Third, 173. Thousand Nights and a Night, 189, 361. Tiberias, University of, 192. Tibetan, 104. Tibetans, 104. Ticunas, 149. Tigr(5 dialect, 187. Tigrifia dialect, 1S7. Time English took to become analytic, 293. Time-note limited in the Hebrew verb, 192. Timur, 115. Tinia, the Etruscan Jupiter, 113, 171. Tinne'h, 143, 353. Tiryns built by Hamites, 167. Titicaca, Lake, 157. Titles, 304. " To be " in Aryan tongues, 64, 3&3- ■ Toda, 124. Tolstoi, 219. Toltecs, 139, 153. Tone, 49, So, 99, 134, 212. Tonga, S3. Tooke, Home, 31. Toplady, 327. Totemistic society, 138, 342. Touraine, 262. Toy, 28. Trade in bitumen, myrrh, and spices, 196. Trajan's capture of Petra, 196. Traveler's Song, the, 255. Travel, influence of, on English, 324- Travel to Italy, influence of, 316. Trees, fruit-bearing, feminine, 67, Trench quoted, 327. Trevisa, 2S8. Trevisa quoted, 285. Trikala, wild child at, 57. Triliteral roots, 68, 343. Triplets, 316. Trojans, 169. Troubadours, decay of their art, 271. Trouveurs, or Trouv^res, 271. Tudor period, 277, 293, 31 1. Tuirsha, i6g, 170. Tula, land of, 105. Tulan, 152. TuM, 152, 154. Tuloom, 155'. Tulu, 124. 390 INDEX, Tunes, 85. Tungus, 114. Tungusic, Si. Tupis, 146. Turanian civilization the oldest, 106. Turanian horse-eaters, 166. Turanian languages devoid of gen- der, 100. Turanian races, 76, 167. Turanian type, ir2. Turbet and Turgut Kalmucks, 115, Turkey, 78. Turkomans, 82, 116. Turks, H4_ 116. Turks confounded with ' Tatars, 115. Tuscans, 232. Tuscaroras, 145. Tusculum, 232. Tu-Shilonge, 161. Tuteloes, 145. Tutul Zius, 153, Two cases kept in Old French and Provencal, 267. Tyre, 180, 194. Tyrian civilization, 77. Tzendal, 144. Tzendals, 153. Tzequils, 152, " Uarda," romance by George Ebers, 178. Ugrian, Si, Ugrians, 117. Uigurs, 82, 116. Ulfilas, 89, 216, 248. Ulpian, 242. Ultimate roots monosyllabic, 48, Umbrian, 87, 213, 228. Umbro-Sabellian, 232. Um-gababa, 163. Um-hlutane, 163. Um-kamazi. 163. Um-komanzi, 163. Um-kusi, 163. Umlaut, Gothic had no, 89. Um-lazi, 163. Umpquas, 143. Um-teuta, 163. Um-volosi, 163. Um-zuti, 163. Uniformity of accent, in Latin, 239. United States of America, 202. University of Tiberias, 192. University of Upsala, 216. Ural-Altaic group, 120. Urdu, 222. Urma Nofirura, 113. Urof the Chaldees, no, 1S2, Uruki, no. Usbeks, 82, 116. Utes, 145. Utica, 85, 194. Utilitarian philosophy of the Chi- nese, 93. Uxmal, 153, 155. Vana gods, 34. Vdndali may have besn Wends, 224. Variation, causes of, 339. Variation in language, 62. Varieties of language formation, 335- Veiscones, 131. Vera Cruz, 156. Vedas, 33, 202. V^nedi, probably Wends, 224. V^neti of Brittany may have been Wends, 224. V^neti of Lombardy may have been Wends, 224. Verbal inflection complete in Greek, 212. Vergil, 33, 202, 241. Verner's law for the shifting of spirants, 338. Versatility, Latin devoid of, 239. Vertical index of skull, 16S. Vestal virgins, 157. Victoria Nyanza, i6o« Virginia, 145. Visigoths in South Gaul, 262. Visigoths in Spain, 262. Vitruvius, 242. Vividness of French, 260. Vizcaya, 131. Vocabularies different for male and female, 150. Vocabulary, Egyptian, 179. Vocabulary, Latin, 233. INDEX. 391 Vocabulary, loss of, by Inflected English, 254. Vocabulary of Hebrew limited, 193. Vocabulary, Punic, 194. Vocalization, difference of races in, 33°- Voguls, 117. Volga, Bulgars of the, 117. Voltaire, 260, 275. Voltan, the Tzendal culture-hero, 150. Vorosmasty, 118. Votan, myth of, 151. Vowel accord exemplified, 1 14. Vowel change, 49, 80, 341. Vowel-ending languages, 130. Vowel inflection, 38, 333. Vowel points inserted by Rabbis, 192. Vowels in Turkish harmonic, 116. Vulfila, or Ulfilas, zi6. Wace, 282. Wales, 167, 205. Wallace cited, 128. Wallace quoted, 82. Wallachian, 87, Z15. Wallachian wild child, 57. Walpole, Horace, 310. Wanderer, The, 257. War necessary for development, 201. War, words of, 300. Washasha, 170. Washington, 143. Water of Euphrates, 109. Watts, 327. Wa-Buma, 161. Wa-Ganda, 162. Wa-Nanda, 162. Wa-Nyoro, 162. Wa-Pokomo, 161. Wa-Sangara, i6r. Wa-Zinza, 161. Weddahs of Ceylon, 22. Weeks come from Akkad, 109. Welle River, 161. Welsh the Sassenach name for Kelts, 246. Wendic, 86, 220. Wends, 88, 207, 224. Wesley, 327. West Indies, 146. Westmoreland, 245, West Saxons, 246. West Slavic, 88. Wheeler, D. H., quoted, 259. Whitefield, 327. White races, 7^. Whitney, 28, 72, 336. Widsith, 256. Wife's Complaint, The, 257. Wild man does not speak, 59. William the Norman, 253. Wilson, John, 277. Wilson, Rev. Dr. J. R., cited, 162. Winnebagoes, 145. Wishitas, 145. Witches expelled by Gudea, 112. Wit, Keltic, 2ro. Woguls, or Voguls, 81, 117. Wolfstan, 258. Women equal with men in Sirpurra, 112. Wooden swords, obsidian-pointed, .56. Works and Days of Hesiod, 33. Wyatt, 312. Wycliffe, 287, 293, 326. Wyntoun, 288. Xenophon, 211. Xeres, wine of, 79. Xerxes, 183. Xibalba, 151. Xochicalco, pyramid of, 153, 156. Yacannacunnee, 150. Yakut of Siberia intelligible to Turk of Constantinople, 116. Yakuts, 82, 114. Yamato, conquering tribe of, 120. Year, division of the, comes from Akkad, 109. Yeddo, speech of, 122. Yellow races, 75, 165, 168, 342. Yellow River, 95. Yemassees, 145. Yemen, 180, 184, 196, Yenisei, 114. Yesso, Ainos in, 120. Yi-ang-tz, 103. York, 88. 392 INDEX. Yorkshire, 167, 323. Young, Dr. Thomas, 174. Yucatan, 77, 139, 155. Yu-pi-ta-tze, 114. Zamna, the Maya culture-hero, 150. Zapotecs, 156. Zend, 86, 220, 221. Zend-Avesta, 33, 220. Zoan, or San, 173. Zoroastrian faith, 220. Zulu, 85, 334. Zulus, 161. "A 'Wonderfully useful hook for busy people/' NATIONAL EPICS. By KATE MILNER RABB. 12mo, 398 pages, $1.50. Mrs. Rabb's treatment of each epic consists of (i) A descriptive sketch of the poem; (2) An outline of the historical narrative embraced in it; (3) Selections, each of which narrates a complete incident ; (4) A short bibliography of each poem ; (5) A list of standard English translations of the foreign epics. The last two of these items make the book valuable as a work of reference. The author has performed her heavy task with such diligence and literary ability as will certainly win much credit to herself, and be the means of edifying and entertaining many a grateful reader. This is an excellent guide to a knowledge and appreciation of the world's great epic poems. 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