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Show 50 ON TilE DISTRIBUTION AND Iberian peoples repulsed to the south-west., have remained absolutely stationary. Their languages toll us the contrary; because these lan· guagos have improved: but such pcrfcctioning has not been able to step beyond certain bounds. Tho Finnic spoken in Finland, for instance, has drawn nearer to tongues a flexions (with flexions); but never has it been able to atiain that degree of force, of clearness and energy, which makes the merit of our Indo-European idioms. As concerns sounds, notwithstanding their homogeneity, tho Finnish tongucs,-or, to qualify them more exactly, the Ougro-Tartar languages-vary considerably. There are some very soft ones, like the Suomi or ] inlandish ; and some very harsh, like tho Magyar; but a principle of harmony dominates them. This principle is especially perceptible in tho Suomi. Indeed, this idiom seeks above all for sweetness and euphony. It avoids, in consequence, monosyllabic radicals, and nearly always attaches to tho root a :final vowel that bears no accent. llcncc M. SciiLEICIIER has remarked how this gives to tho words of this tongue the measure of a "trochee." 17 W c meet again with this harmonic tendency equally in tho Tartar tongues, which the "ensemble" of their characteristics and words attaches also as closely to the Ougro-J aponic languages, as tho Tartar typo attaches itself to the Finnish, or Ougrian, through the intermediacy of the Tungouse type. The separation is not more decided (trancMe) between tho races of Siberia and those of central Asia, than between tho idioms which they speak. The Mongol, the Mandcltou, the Ou'igour, the TU?·lcislt, are not fundamentally distinct from the Finnish tongues; and this explains why some philoloo-ers had been struck with the resemblance between Turkish and u:ngarian. We are here referring to the primitive Turkish, to that which was spoken in Turkestan, and of which some dialects yet subsist in cor. tain parts of Russia and of Tartary; because, as to that which is now European Turkish, it is altered almost as much as the Turkish blood i~clf. It is imbued with Arabic and Persian words; it has become smgularly softened down : in the same manner that the Asiatic ~~rks, ?Y dint of crossing them~olves thro?gh marriage with Georgian gnls, w1th Greek, Arab, Pers1an (occaswnally with an Abyssinian or n?gress), Sclavonian a~d other women, have ended by taking a physwgno~y altogether d~~eren.t from that of their ancient progeni. tors,--:-wh~ch has. been gammg m nobleness and regularity what it ~oses m smgulanty. European blood has so well infiltrated itself mto that of the Hunnic hordes which conquered the country sijuate between the Danube and the Theis, that it is now-a-days impohsible 17 The Greeks nnd the Latina called trochee n foot composed of n long nnd n short syllnbl: CLASSIFICATION Ol' TONGUES. 51 to descry any more of the Mongol, anything of that hideousness so celebmted among the IInns, in tho expressive traits of the present Magyar. One may, then, designate this vast family of languages under the denomination of OufJ?·o- Tartar. All of them, at divm·s degrees, are subject in their words to the law of euphonic transformations of vowels in the particles suffixed, that is to say, joined on at tho ends of words. In order that nothing should come to injure tho clearness of tho radical's pronunciation, everything is combined so that its vowel remains immutable; and hence, accol'dingly as this vowel is hat·d, soft, or intermediary, the vowels of tho soflixcs arc submitted to modifications having for object to prevent tho asperity or tho heaviness of the lattors' sound from smothering the sound of the radical. This law, so remarkable, is precisely tho reverse of what happens in languages a flexions (with flexions), for tho case; because in them it is the suffixes that act upon and i11Uuonce the vowels of the radical. AU these tongues proceed equally through the path of agglntination. The radical is, indeed, at bottom monosyllabic. Its almost constant junction to a pal'ticle-suflix makes it, in reality, a dissyllable, whose monosyllabic origin is nevertheless recall d by the presence of tho accent upon tho fir t syllable. Never does the radical suffer any foreign syllables to place themselves at its head (or commencement); and we still behold in Magyar how, notwithstanding that it has largely undergone the influence of the Indo-l~uropean tongues by which it is surrounded-as in Finnish, as in Turkish, as in Mongol,-a word can never begin with two consonants; an<llastly, the gcncrical employment of the postposition to designate tho relations of tho substantive. The number of these postpositions varies according to the development and tho richness of the tongue. In Suomi, for example, the adjunctive particles arc very numerous, not less than fifteen being counted, which mal(CS in reality fifteen cases; without includino- the nominative, that forms itself without suffix : and still, notwithstanding, the Finnish docs not recognize the distinction of one of the most natural cases, viz: tho accusative, which it renders through indirect cases. The whole of these langnagcs, mangro their apparatus of forms, arc nevertheless poor. It is clear that this heap ofpostposUions results, in reality, from a powerlessness of the min€! to roduco to simple and rcgnlm· expressions the relations of words betwixt each other. W c must not, therefore, wonder at finding, in the OnO't·o-Tartar tongues, almost always tho same terminations, as well in the plural as in tho singular. |