to its hieroglyphical system of writing, of which the employment
mounts up to at least'8500 years before our era. This
writing,—wherein are beheld the figured and metaphysical
representations of objects (mostly indigenous to the Kile)
gradually passed into the state of signs of articulation—
permits us to assist, as it were, at the formation of speech.
Through the use of these signs, one seizes the first apparition
of verbal forms, as well as of a host of prepositions.
The basis of E gyptian seems to be monosyllabic; but the
employment of numerous particles very soon created many
dissyllables. This language recognizes two articles, two
genders, two numbers. The verb through its conjugations,—
which is are made by the aid of prefixes and suffixes,
and that counts many changes, — participates more of the
Indo-European grammatical system than of the Semitic.
Egyptian vocalization seems to have been very rich in
aspirates.
This linguistic family, to which the Egyptian belongs,
would appear to have been very widely extended at the
beginning. The B e r b e r , vulgaricé K abyle, now almost reduced
to the condition of a “ patois,” has a tolerably rich
literature, and comprehends several very distinct dialects,
viz: the A lg er ia n B e r b e r , spoken by the Kabtiifí*- mountain
tribes of the Atlas — imbued with Arabic words; the
M ozI b e e , the S h il lo ü h , the Z enatíya of the province of
Constantine, and the T owerga, or T o ua rik .
. — The HOTTENTOT family of tongues — or “ l a n g u e s 1
K l i k s , ” c l i c k i n g languages — is characterized by the odd
aspiration, so designated, which mingles itself (as a sort of
glucking) in the pronunciation of the greater number of
words. H o t t e n t o t languages bear, above all in the conjugation
of their verbs, the character of agglutination. Like
Semitic tongues, they are deprived of the relative pronoun.
They distinguish two plurals for the pronoun of the first
person, the one exclusive and the other inclusive; the
former excluding the idea of the person to whom a discourse
is addressed; and the latter, on the contrary, inclosing
it. In their nouns, there exist two genders in the singular,
and three in the plural number,-—this third one,
called common, has a collective value. It follows that when
an object be designated in the singular, its gender always
becomes indicated. These tongues distinguish three numbers,
but they are unacquainted with the case; whilst the
adjective remains completely indeclinable, and takes neither
the mark of gender nor of number.
This family of clicking languages comprehends the H ottentot,
or Q uaiqüai, and the Bosjesman dialects, N amaqua and
K orana.
Notwithstanding its strange phonological system, the family
of Hottentot tongues is not altogether so profoundly distinct
from African languages, as one might be tempted to
suppose at first sight. It is incontrovertible that these
sounds, in nature at one and the. same time nasal and
guttural, which we term Kliks, constitute a special characteristic;
but the foundation of the grammatical forms in
Hottentot idioms is met with among the tongues of Africa.
Thus, the verb presents, like them, a great richness of
, changes: it has a form direct, negative, reciprocal, causative;
and all these voies are produced by the addition of a particle
to the end of the verbal radical. Their double plural,' a
common and a particular, is a trait which assimilates them
to the Polynesian and even to the American languages.
The double form of the first person plural, indicating if the
personage addressed be comprised in the “ we,” or is excluded
from it—writes W ilh e lm von H umboldt— has been
again met with in a great number of American tongues,
and had been assumed until now to be an especial characteristic
of these languages. This character is encountered,
however, in the majority of the languages that we are here
considering; in that of the Malays, in that of the Philippine
isles, and in that of Polynesia. In Polynesian tongues,
'it extends even to the dual; and such, moreover, is its
particular form, in them, that, were we to guide ourselves
by logical considerations merely, it would become necessary
to view these tongues, as being the cradle and the
veritable father-land of this grammatical form. Outside
of the South Sea, and of America, I know of it nowhere
else than among the Mandchoux. Since Wilhelm von
Humboldt penned these words, the same grammatical peculiarity,
which exists in the M algache (of Madagascar), has
been discovered in an African tongue, —the Vsi-Ianguage.
African languages present, therefore, to speak properly, but
a very feeble homogeneity. The same multiplicity of
shades, that is particularly observed among the Blacks,
reappears in their idioms.
On studying the grammars and the vocabularies of the
latter, one seizes the traeing-thread of those numberless