“Languages,” says the author of “The Cosmos,” “compared with each other, and considered as objects of the natural history of the human mind, being divided into families according to the analogy of their internal structure, have become a rich source of historical knowledge. Products of the mental powers, they lead us back, by the fundamental characters of their organisation, to an obscure and otherwise unknown distance. The comparative study of languages shows how races, or nations, now separated by wide regions, are related to each other, and have proceeded from a common seat; it discloses the directions and paths of ancient migrations; in tracing out epochs of development, it recognises in the more or less altered characters of the language, in the permanency of certain forms, or the already advanced departure from them, which portion of the race has preserved a language nearest to that of their former common dwelling-place.”

The coincidences between the languages of the globe have been made the subject of careful study by eminent scholars, who have established Comparative Philology upon the footing of a new science.

It has been found that mere verbal comparisons are utterly worthless in determining either the formation of groups of languages or their relations to one another. The dictionary of a nation may be borrowed, for words are soon lost and easily replaced; but the grammar of a language—that is to say, its syntax, conjugations, and declensions, the formation of new words from certain primitive forms, and those relational words which perform a similar function, as pronouns, numerals, and particles—is as constant and invariable as the nation itself. Grammatical analysis and comparison is therefore the only true method for the classification of languages according to their radical affinity; mere superficial resemblances of words prove nothing, nor have they any value unless tested and confirmed by arguments drawn from grammatical structure.

On the evidence afforded by a searching grammatical analysis, the languages of the greater part of Europe and Asia have been divided into three great families, whose grammatical forms are perfectly clear and distinct. They have been named Indo-European or Arian, Semitic, and Turanian.

(A) The Indo-European or Arian family of languages extends from the mouth of the Ganges to the British Isles and the Northern extremity of Scandinavia. The term Arian is derived from Arya, the original name of this family. It signifies honourable, or of a good family. In Asia we find two great branches of this family:

I. The Indian. This branch includes the Sanskrit (the language of the Vedas, the first literary monument of the Arian world), with its living representatives, the Hindustani, Mahratti, Bengali, Guzerati, Singhalese, &c.; the Prakrit and Pali idioms; the Siah-Posh (Kafir dialect), and the language of the Gipsies.

II. The Iranian or Persian. To this branch belong the Zend or Old Persian (the language of the Zendavesta), with its representatives; the language of the Achaemenians, written in the Cuneiform character; the speech of Huzvaresh or Pehlevi; the Pazend or Parsi; and the modern Persian. The following dialects, though not very important in a philological view, belong to this class:—the Afghan, Bokhara, Kurdian, Armenian, and Ossetian.

In Europe there are no less than six branches of the Arian family:

I. The Celtic. Though the Celts seem to have been the first inhabitants of Europe, very few of their dialects are now spoken, having been superseded by the Teutonic idioms.

Modern Celtic dialects are divided into two classes; (a) the Gallic or Ancient British, including the Welsh (Cymric), Cornish, and Armorican of Brittany; (b) the Galic, Gadhelic, or Erse, including the Irish (Fenic), the Highland Scottish (Gaelic), and Manx, the dialect of the Isle of Man.

II. The Teutonic. This branch is divided into three dialects; (a) the High German, including the Old High German, the Middle High German, and the Modern High German; (b) the Low German, including the Gothic, the Anglo-Saxon and English, the Old Saxon and Platt-Deutsch, the Frisic, the Dutch and Flemish; (c) the Scandinavian, including the Old Norsk, the Icelandic, the Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish.

III. The Italic. To this class belong the Oscan, Umbrian, and Latin dialects; the Old ProvenÇal, and the Romance languages (ProvenÇal and French, Italian and Wallachian, Spanish and Portuguese) formed during the decay of the Latin.

IV. The Hellenic. This branch includes the Greek and its dialects, the Aeolic, Ionic, Doric, and Attic.

V. The Albanian; including the Geghian and the Toskian dialects spoken in Illyria and Epirus.

VI. The Slavonic or Windic branch is divided into two dialects; (a) the Lettic, including the Lithuanian, Old Prussian, and Lettish; (b) the Slavonic Proper, which is again divided into two branches, termed the Eastern and Western.

The Eastern dialect includes the Russian (Great, Little, and White Russian), the Servian, Kroatian, and Slovenian; and the Bulgarian, or in its oldest form, the Ecclesiastical Slavonic.

The Western dialect includes the Polish, the Bohemian, the Polabian, and the Lusatian.

(B) The Semitic Family (so called from Shem, one of the sons of Noah) is not so widely extended as the Arian family, but the nations composing it were the first to appear upon the theatre of history. It comprises the following branches:—

I. The Arabic, which includes the Ethiopian or Abissinian and the Maltese.

II. The Chaldean, which includes the Old Babylonian, the Chaldee of Babylon and Mesopotamia, the Chaldee of Daniel and of the Targums, and the Syrian (Aramaic).

III. The Hebrew, the language of Canaan, which includes the Phoenician and Carthaginian.

IV. The Berber dialects, which are spoken in Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Fez. The Haussa and Galla dialects are now considered as Semitic idioms.

(C) The Turanian family of languages is distinguished from the Arian and Semitic in the total absence of inflection.

To express the variations for case, mood, &c., Turanian words undergo no inflection; but an additional word is glued, as it were to the noun, verb, &c., as the case may be, in order to express the relations of case, mood, &c. Hence these have been termed agglutinizing languages.

To connect the idea of plurality with the English word boy, we merely inflect it, and obtain the word boys; but upon the principle of agglutination, a syllable indicative of plurality must be affixed, e.g., singular, boy; plural, boy-crowd. Thus the roots are never obscured, while they admit of a vocal harmony which is altogether peculiar to this family of languages; e.g., (Turkish) aghÂ, a lord, becomes in the plural, agha-lar; er, a man becomes in the plural, er-ler, and not er-lar, as in the former case.

The vowels of the agglutinized syllables, it is easily seen, must harmonize with those of the roots; e.g., (Magyar) kert, a garden, makes kert-esz-nek to the gardener, and not kert-asz-nak.

There are two great divisions of this family:—

I. The Northern or Ural-Altaic division includes (a) the Tungusian dialects, spoken in Upper and Lower Tunguska, on the coast of Okhotsk, and by the Mantchoos or Mandshus (in China); (b) the Mongolian dialects, spoken in the North and South of Gobi, in Tibet and Tangut, in the plains on each side of the Volga (by the OlÖts or Kalmuks) and by the BuriÄts of Lake Baikal; (c) the Turkish dialects, spoken in Derbend, Krimea, Antolia, and Rumelia; (the Yakuts, the Tatars or Turks of Siberia, the Kirghis, the Bashkirs, the Kumians, the Nogais, and the Karatschais, the Usbegs, Uigurs, and Turkomans, speak Turkish dialects); (d) the Finnish dialects, spoken by the Hungarians, Lapps, Finns, Esths, Voguls, Permians, &c.; (e) the dialects of the Samoiedes and Ostiakes.

II. The Southern division comprises the Tamul, the Bhotiya, and the Malay.

The Caucasian dialects are degenerated branches of the Turanian family; they include the idioms of the Georgians or Grusians, the Suans, the Lazes, the Lesghi, the Mitsgeghi, and the Kerkessians and Abasians.