Page images
PDF
EPUB

tinue to be discovered, attesting the use of Arabic, as a cultivated language, long before the age of Mohammed. The trilingual inscription of Zabad (Aramaic, Arabic, Greek) dates from 513 A.D.; a bilingual inscription of Harran (Arabic and Greek) from 568 A.D.

With Mohammed Arabic became the language of a victorious religion and of a victorious literature in Asia, Africa, and, for a time, even in Europe. The language of the Qur'ân became a new type of literary excellence by the side of the ancient Bedouin poetry. In the second century after the Hejra grammatical studies fixed the rules of classical Arabic permanently, and after 1200 years the Qur'ân, representing the language of the seventh century, is still read and understood by all educated Arabs. The spoken Arabic, however, differs dialectically in Egypt, Algeria, Syria, and Arabia. One Arabic dialect continues to be spoken in Malta.

Himyaritic Inscriptions.

There seems to have existed a very ancient civilisation in the south of the Arabian peninsula, sometimes called Sabaean, remnants of which have been discovered in colossal monuments and in numerous inscriptions, written in a peculiar alphabet, called Himyaritic. Their age is supposed to date from before our era, and to extend to the fourth century A.D. It is possible to distinguish traces of different dialects in these Sabaean inscriptions, but they are all closely allied to Arabic. The Sabaean language was probably spoken in the south of the Arabian peninsula till the advent of Mohammedanism, which made Arabic the language of the whole of Yemen.

Ethiopic.

In very early times a Semitic colony from Arabia, or, more correctly, from Sabaea, crossed over to Africa. Here, south of Egypt and Nubia, a primitive Semitic dialect, closely allied to Sabaean and Arabic, has maintained itself to the present day, called Ethiopic, Abyssinian, or Geez. We have translations of the Bible in Ethiopic, dating from the third and fourth centuries. Other works followed, all of a theological character.

There are inscriptions also in ancient Ethiopic, dating from the days of the kingdom of Axum, which have been referred to 350 and 500 A.D.

The ancient Ethiopic ceased to be spoken in the ninth century, but it remained in use as a literary language for a much longer time.

Beginning with the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a new language appears, the modern Ethiopic, or Amharic. In it the Semitic type has been intensely modified, probably owing to the fact that the tribes who spoke it were of Hamitic origin. It is still a spreading language, and has given rise in modern times to a new literature.

Other dialects, such as Tigré, Ekhili, and Harrari, so called from the localities in which they are spoken, have not yet been sufficiently explored to enable Semitic scholars to pronounce a decided opinion whether they are varieties of Amharic, or representatives of more ancient independent dialects.1

1 The latest and best account of the Semitic languages is given by Nöldeke in the Cyclopaedia Britannica.

Family likeness of the Semitic Languages.

The family likeness of the Semitic is quite as strong as that of the Aryan languages, nay, even stronger. Their phonetic character is marked by the preponderance of guttural sounds; their etymological character by the triliteral form of most of its roots, and the manner in which these roots are modified by pronominal suffixes and prefixes; their grammatical character by the fixity of the vowels for expressing the principal modifications of meaning, a fixity which made it possible to dispense with writing the vowel signs. These characteristic features are so strongly developed that they render it quite impossible to imagine that a Semitic language could ever have sprung from an Aryan or an Aryan from a Semitic. Whether both could have sprung from a common source is a question that has often been asked, and has generally been answered according to personal predilections. Most scholars, I believe, would admit that it could not be shown that a common origin in far distant times is altogether impossible.1 But the evidence both for and against is by necessity so intangible and evanescent that it hardly comes within the sphere of practical linguistics.2

1 See M. M., Selected Essays, i. p. 65, 'Stratification of Language.' 2 Theologians who still maintain that all languages were derived from Hebrew would do well to read a work by the Abbé Lorenzo Hervas, the dedication of which was accepted by Pope Pius VI, Saggio Pratico delle Lingue, 1787, particularly the fourth chapter, which has the title La sostanziale diversità degl' idiomi nella sintassi addimostra essere vana l'opinione degli Autori, che li credono derivati dall' Ebreo.'

CHAPTER IX.

ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE.

EFORE we proceed to a consideration of the languages which are neither Aryan nor Semitic, languages which in my Letter on the Turanian Languages, published in 1854,' I ventured to call Turanian, and which Prichard before me had comprehended under the name of Allophylian, it will be necessary to discover what are the constituent elements of all human speech, and in how many different ways these elements may be combined. For it is in the combination of these elements that the principle has been discovered according to which languages may be classified, even when it is impossible to discover between them any traces of real genealogical relationship.

Radical and Formal Elements.

The genealogical classification of the Aryan and the Semitic languages was founded, as we saw, on a close comparison of the grammatical characteristics. of each. It was the object of such works as Bopp's Comparative Grammar to show that the grammatical articulation of Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic was produced once and for

Letter to Chevalier Bunsen, On the Turanian Languages,' in Bunsen's Christianity and Mankind, vol. iii. pp. 263 seq. 1854.

all, and that the apparent differences in the terminations of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin must be explained by laws of phonetic change, peculiar to each dialect, which modified the original common Aryan type, and transformed it into so many national languages. It might seem, therefore, as if the object of comparative grammar had been fully attained as soon as the exact genealogical relationship of languages had been settled; and those who only look to the higher problems of the science of language have not hesitated to declare that there is no longer any painsworthy difficulty nor dispute about declension, number, case, and gender of nouns.' But although it is certainly true that comparative grammar is only a means, and that it has well nigh taught us all that it has to teach at least in the Aryan family of speech-it is to be hoped that in the science of language it will always retain that prominent place which has been gained for it through the labours of its founders, Bopp, Grimm, Pott, Benfey, Curtius, Kuhn, and others.

Besides, comparative grammar has more to do than simply to compare. It would be easy enough to place side by side the paradigms of declension and conjugation in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and the other Aryan dialects, and to mark both their coincidences. and their differences. But after we have done this, and after we have explained the phonetic laws which cause the primitive Aryan type to assume those national varieties which we admire in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, new problems arise of a far more interesting nature. It is generally admitted that gramma

« PreviousContinue »