ENGLISH ETYMOLOGY. 4. The area over which extends the tribe of languages termed Indo-European, stretches from India to Ireland. This tribe includes, 1. The Gentoo or Sanscrit stock, embracing most of the dialects of India. 2. The Iranian, (from Iran the native name of Persia,) comprehending the tongues of Affghanistan, Beloochistan, Curdistan, Bocharia. 3. The Armenian. The Classical, (called also the Pelasgian, Thracian, or Phrygian), comprising the Ancient Greek and the Modern Romaic, the Latin, and the Romanic languages derived from it, viz., Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. 5. The Slavonic, including the tongues of Poland, Bohemia, Servia, &c. 6. The Lithuanic in south-western Russia. 8. The Gothic, including the Scandinavian branch in the languages of Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the Teutonic branch, embracing the various dialects of Germany and the Netherlands. 8. The Celtic stock, comprising the British or Cambrian branch in the language of Wales, Cornwall, and Bretagne, and the Erse or Gaelic, the language of Ireland, of the Scottish Highlands, and of the Isle of Man. These languages, from analogies among their vocables, and in their structures, have evidently one common source. Whether the Sanscrit, the ancient sacred language of India, is the original shape of the tongue whence they all originated, cannot be told; it is at least apparently the earliest of the tribe. The migration of mankind in the pre-historic ages westward from their original seats, the settlement of tribes in particular localities, and the varied changes of history, custom, and climate, during thousands of years, have broken up the original language into the different stocks which have been enumerated; so wide in their dissimilarity as to constitute different tongues, yet retaining minute features of resemblance which demonstrate a common origin. Till recent times the classical languages of Greece and Rome, spoken by the nations most early conspicuous in European history, were regarded as the roots of the European languages. But a word in German, evidently the same with a Greek vocable, may have been familiar to Her 1 The languages in Europe, not Indo-European, are the Basque of Northern Spain, the Turkish, the Maltese, the Calmuck of the Crimea, the Magyaric, or Hungarian, the Esthovian in Russia, the Finlandic, and the Lappronic. The classification of the connected languages is taken from Hallam's "English Language." mans and Frederics, cotemporaries of Hercules or Agamemnon, ages before Greece or Germany dreamed of each other's existence. In the study of English Etymology, therefore, it is important to distinguish between words whose forms occur in another language, which are nevertheless not derivations from that language, but parallel terms, indicative of two tongues springing from the same roots,—and words that are evidently derivative, nay, the very period of whose introduction can sometimes be pointed out. When we find brook in English, and brecho (I moisten) in Greek, the former is not a derivative from the latter; the terms are brethren of the same family of languages: the same is the case with the words meal, mill, and the Latin mola; but the word immolate is a direct derivative, introduced in a late age of English. The English language contains no structural remnant of the Celtic tongue1 of the ancient British people. The basis of English is Anglo-Saxon ;2 the Danish and Norman conquests infused somewhat of Scandinavian and French elements. Latin, the universal literary language of the dark ages, contributed many words directly; especially during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries-the age of "The Revival of Learning." In the times of the Reformation a "flood of Latin terms deluged the English tongue." The recency of this importation of Latin phraseology, and its necessary infamiliarity to the common people, is indicated in the English Book of Common Prayer, where a Latin vocable is often coupled to its more generally intelligible Saxon synonyme.3 Some of these words have dropt from the language, or their use is confined to poetry. They are generally transcripts of Latin terms with the apocope of the termination; but when a Latin word has reached us through a French medium, it frequently has undergone changes that render it almost irrecognizable. The few words adopted directly from the Greek are chiefly scientific or technical terms. Those taken directly, in later times, from the Italian, Spanish, or French, retain their foreign forms, as conversazione, Armada, rendezvous. The Oriental Indo-European languages exhibit a miraculous complexity of minute inflection of mood, tense, number, Topographical names, which custom fixes too firmly for removal, form nearly the whole remnant of the British tongue which the Saxons extirpated. 2 To the extent of about three-fifths; the remaining two-fifths are chiefly Latin, with a small admixture of Greek and of modern languages. 3 For example" to acknowledge and confess;" "humble and lowly;" "erred and strayed;" "pardoneth and absolveth;" vanquish and overcome;" "not dissemble nor cloke." " case, and other grammatical relations, expressive of innumerable shades of delicacy of idea. Of the western languages, the Greek exhibits this feature in its greatest richness. The Latin possesses it in less remarkable degree, and in the modern tongues derived from Latin during the medieval centuries, inflections become still more rare. This circumstance, while it adds to the facility of acquisition, detracts materially from the picturesqueness, vigour, and applicability of modern languages; the sense is thrown more upon the direct arrangement of the words, and less upon the harmonious combination of verbal forms. In English the picturesque inflections of the German and Anglo-Saxon have totally disappeared: our few pronouns, irregular nouns, verbs, and adjectives, alone relieve the unbroken sameness of our lingual forms. Poetry only deigns to cull the wild flowers of the obsolete Anglo-Saxon for the ornament of her lines; the tendency of grammatical teaching is to repress the use of the socalled irregularities, and to level the English language into a tame uniformity of facility. We can with difficulty step out from the conventional arrangement of words, without the danger either of obscurity or of reversion of meaning. Mutation of vowel and mutation of consonant constitute, of course, the two great principles of the interchange of vocables in languages. Of these the former is used chiefly in altering the grammatical nature of words, or in indicating a change of grammatical relation; as gold, noun; gild, verb; fall, present; fell, past. The latter often answers the same grammatical purpose, but more frequently indicates the organic tendency of certain nations to particular consonantal sounds. The vowels seem interchangeable without any limitation of rule; interchanges of A, E, and o, are of most frequent occurrence in English. The consonants are interchangeable only in their organic orders of Liquids and Mutes. The liquid sounds are L, M, N, S, R. In the following table both orders are combined according to the organs chiefly concerned in pronouncing them : I. Labials (lip sounds), B, V, P, F, M, W. II. Guttural (palate and throat sounds), G (hard), GH, K, C In Gaelic and Irish. The table is extracted from Thomson's "German-English Analogies.' Besides the alteration in the internal vocalic or consonantal structure of words, inflections, in the shape of prefixes and affixes, are employed to denote a change of verbal nature, or of grammatical value, or of amount of signification in words. Of these inflections there will be found subjoined a list of those which alter the verbal nature of words, that is, which change their " part of speech," or which vary the application or the amount of meaning in vocables. These syllabic augments are of Saxon, Latin, or Greek origin: those of the French language are derivatives of the Latin. The learner must be cautioned that these syllables are not absolute or constant in their meaning, even in their own languages: and neither are the roots to which they are attached. Hence the literal meaning of a prefix and the literal meaning of a root may form apparent nonsense. If Ex be denoted by out or out of, and ploro by I wail, and thus explore be deduced to signify I wail out; this is nonsense. But if it be taken into consideration that any person or valuable object lost is sought with loud cries of lamentation, the application of er and ploro in explore becomes natural and beautiful; and is prettily illustrated in the lines of the song of Silenus in Virgil's Sixth Eclogue,— "His adjungit: Hylan nautæ quo fonte relictum Clamassent: ut littus, Hyla! Hyla! omne sonaret." No words are more various or delicate in their shades of meaning and application than the prepositions, to which class the prefixes generally belong. And in Greek especially it is impossible in one word, or even in several, to denote the fugitive delicacies of meaning of which such a preposition as kata is susceptible. In general it should be remembered that the root varies the meaning of its prefix or affix; and the latter influences the meaning of the root. One very general effect of a prefix is to intensify the meaning of the root; DEplore, to bewail greatly; ANAtomize, to cut completely. Shakspeare's Faulconbridge affords a humorous instance of this in English, "Zounds! I was never so bethumpt with words The same prefix not unfrequently is used to intensify and to negative the meaning; as loose, unloose; tie, untie. The next circumstance to be noticed respects the syllabic euphony, in which prefixes and affixes combine with Prefixes are generally unchanged before vowels, the roots. unless they end with N, as co-equal for con-equal. If their final letters do not easily combine with the initial consonant of the root, the general rule is, that the final letter of the prefix is changed into the initial letter of the root; ad-rogo, arrogate; in-lumen, illuminate, &c. Sometimes a letter is euphonically inserted or elided, sub-teneo, sustain ; re-unda, redound. The prefix sometimes alters the initial vowel of the root, as OB-AUDIRE, ob-edire, obey.1 One observation remains to be made, that foreign affixes and prefixes are often attached to words of Saxon origin. The familiarity of these syllables, and their convenience in deflecting the application of a term, has caused this phenomenon, which in strictness should be condemned as hurtful to etymological science; but what authority could now exclude such words as talkATIVE from the language? The corrupt feudal Latin of the Middle Ages may have given birth to this, as it has done to other improprieties in English. Yet this etymological monstrosity has, as in poetry, sometimes a picturesque effect: "Riches fineLESS are as poor as winter In this passage endless would be completely vapid. Sometimes the combination is used for ludicrous purposes, as shopocracy, squirearchy, mobility, &c. Much of the Latin language is derived from the Greek; accordingly in the subjoined vocabulary, probable Greek roots, or apparent equivalents, are sometimes given with the Latin words. Latin and Greek verbs are generally given in the infinitive mood; and the common forms of the latter are generally written in preference to real or supposed primary forms: limitation of space has prevented the insertion of a separate table of Greek words with their direct derivatives.2 For this last reason a number of Saxon cognates of Latin words will be found interspersed among the derivatives; with a binding twig, for example, and willow are associated with the Latin vincire, to bind: on the same principle a few French and German cognates are introduced. The English affixes will be seen to afford a key to the formation of many groups of English terms, though the vocabulary wants the 1 In Latin ab-fero, aufero, is an instance of the reverse of this canon. The barbaric appearance of Greek words in English letters is necessary for use in mixed schools; the Greek upsilon rendered generally by y in Latin and English, we have sometimes rendered by u. |