of a civilization already advanced, amid an infinitude of productions
of nature or of industry, the nouns take precedence over the verbs.
Here the richness of the cases dispenses with the rigorous sense of
prepositions, as occurs in Greek; whereas among ourselves, who in
French possess no longer any cases, the meaning of the phrase exacts
that our prepositions should he well defined. Hence, then, the life
itself .of a people has been the source of the modifications operated
in its tongue, and each idiom has pursued its development after its
own fashion,
Two causes combine towards effecting an alteration of languages,
v iz : thJlr development within themselves, and their' contact with
foreign idioms,—above all with such as belong to families altogether
distinct; but the; second, compared to the first, is of small account.
The influence of neighboring foreign tongues introduces some new
words and sundry locutions, certain “ idiotisms;’’ but it cannot, without
difficulty, inject into alien speech those grammatical forms which are
its own heritage. Its influence re-acts much more upon the style than
. on tiie grammar. If two languages of distinct families are spoken by
neighboring populations, or by those living in perpetual contact, it ordinarily
happens that the most analytical tongue forces its processes to
penetrate into that which is the less so. Thence it is that the German,
brought intq contact with the French, loses a portion of its synthetical
expressions, as well as the habitual use of those compound
phrases which it received from the Asiatic speech whence it issued;
and that the French, when spoken by Negroes, is stripped of its
grammatical richness, and becomes simplified almost to the level of
an African tongue. In the same manner the Armorican, or Bas-
Breton, whilst preserving the groundwork of Celtic, grammar, is
now-a-days spoken under a form that recans more of French than of
the ancient Armorican.
One sees, therefore, that the crossing of laiiguages, like that of
races, has really not been very deep. Once invaded by a stranger-
,tongue, one of a nature more logical in its processes, the old language
either has not undergone more than superficial alterations, or
has disappeared, entirely, without bequeathing to the idiom which
followed it any inheritance but that of a few words. Such is what
happened to Latin as regards the Gallic (Gaulois). This Celtic
tongue is completely supplanted by the idiom of the Romans, and has
left no other vestiges of its existence than a few words, together with,
doubtless, some peculiarities of pronunciation also that have passed
into the French. One perceives equally well in English, here and
there, words and locutions that appertain to the ’Welsh; and which,
in consequence, must be a heritage of the tongue whilom spoken bv
the Kelts of Albion.
If the grammatical dispossession of a language could have been
wrought gradually,, one ought to find some mixed phrases at the
living period of those tongues that have been driven out by others.
Now, such is not the case. The Basque, for example, foreign in
origin both to Freneh and Spanish, has indeed been altered through
the adoption of a few words and a few locutions borrowed from these
languages, by which it is surrounded, and, as it were, invested; but
it evermore nlings to the basis of its structure, the vital principle
of its organism; and a Franco-Basque, or a Baseo-Spanish, is not
spoken, nowhere has ever been spoken. Modem Greek has appropriated
many words from Turkish, no less than from Italian, as well
as some expressions of both tongues; but its entire construction
remains fundamentally Hellenic, notwithstanding that it belongs
to the analytical period, and that the ancient Greek was still
emerging from the synthetic. Again, the Persian, which is so
imbued with Arabic words that writers of this language often intercalate
sentences wholly Arabic in their discourses, remains, never^
theless, completely Indo-Germanie as concerns its grammar. But
we have not seen that this tongue has ever associated the Persian
declension with the Arabic conjugation, or yoked the Persian prepositions
to Semitic affixes and suffixes. Finally, the Osmànleé
Turkish, besides incorporating words of every language with which
the Turks have been in contact for more than a thousand years, has
purloined all its scientific nomenclature from the Arabs, most of its
polite_ diplomatic phrases from thé Persians; but, whilst fusing
Semitic as well as Indo-European exotic words into its copia ver-
borum, the radical structure of its so-called Tartarian [or, Turanian]
grammar, no less than its original vocabulary, is still so tenaciously
preserved, that a coarse Siberian Yakut can even now, after ages of
ancestral separation, communicate his simple ideas to the intelligence
of a Gonstantinopolitan Turko-Sybarite.
All these considerations show us, therefore, that the families of
tongues are assemblages (des ensembles) very distinct, and the results
of a diversified order of the creative faculty of speech. This faculty
does not, then, appear to us as absolutely identical in its action ; and
we must necessarily admit that it corresponds, under its different
forms to races of mankind possessing different faculties, as well for
speeph as for ideas. This is what the study .of the principal classes
l n 7 ? f tongues will make still more evident; seeing that we
® aft find them in a relation sufficiently striking to the different
numan races.