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Show 66 ON TIIE DISTRIBUTION AND to hs hicroglyphicol system of writing, of which tho employment mounts up to at least 3500 years before our era. This wriLing,-whcrcin arc bcl1cld the :fi()'mcd and metaphysical r pr sontations of objects (moE~tly indigenous to tho Nile) gradnn.lly passed into tho state of signs of articulationpermits us to assist, as it were, at the formation of speech. Through tho use of those signs, one seizes tho first apparition of verbal forms, as well as of a host of propositions. Tho basis of EGYPTIAN seems to be monosyllabic; but the employment of numerous particles very soon created many dissyllablos. This language recognizes two articles, two g ndors, two numbers. The verb through its conjugations,- which is are maclo by the aid of prefixes and suffixes, and that counts many changes,- participates more of tho Im1o-Europoan grammatical system than of tho Semitic. J~gyptian 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. Tho BERBER, vulgarice KABYLE, now almost reduced to the condition of a "patois," has a tolerably rich li.toraturo, and comprehends several very distinct dialects, VlZ: tho ALGERIAN BERBER, spoken by the Kabd~l- mountain tribes of the Atlas- imbued with Arabic words; the MozAmm, tho SmLLoun, the ZENATiYA of the province of Constantine, and the TowERGA, or Tou.ARIK. XIV.- 'l'ho HOTTENTOT fh.mily of tongues- or "LANGUES a KLIK. ," OLICRING languages- is characterized by tho odd aspiration, so designated, which mingles itself (as a sort of gluclcing) in tho pronunciation of the greater number of wo~ds. lloT~ENTOT languages bear, above all in the conjugatlOn of thmr verbs, the character of agglutination. Like Semitic tongues, they are deprived of the relative pronoun. They distinguish two plurals for the pronoun of tho first person, tho one exclusive and the other inclusive· the former excluding the idea of the person to whom ~ disc. our~c is addressed; and tho latter, on the contrary, inclosmg 1t. In their nouns, there exist two genders in the singular, and throe in the plural number, -this third ono, called common, has a collective value. It follows that when an object .be .designated in tho singular, its gender always becomes mchcatcd. These tongues distinguish throe numbers, but they are unacquainted with tho case; whilst the CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. ()7 adjective remains compl tcly indcdioablc, and takes neither the mark of gender nor of number. 'l'hi.s family of clicking lungua<rcs comprehends the liO'l"l'EN'ro·r, or QuAlQUAI,- and the Bosjcsman dialects, N AMAQUA and KoitANA. Notwithstanding its strange phonological system, the family of llotteutot tongL1es is not altog thor so profoundly distinct from African languages, as one might be tempted to suppose at iirst sight. It is incontrovertible that the e sounds, in uaLuro at ouo and tho s,uuo time nasal and guttural, which wo term ](lilcs, constitute a r:;pocial char·ueteristic; but the foundation of tho grammatical forms in llottontot idioms is mot with among the tongues of Africa. Thus, the verb pr scnts, like them., a gr •at richness of changes: it bas n form direct, negative, rcciproeal., causative; and all those voies are produced by th' addition of a particle to the end of tho verbal radi al. Their d ublo plural, a common and a parLicular, is~ trait wl1ich assimilaLos them to the Polynesian and oven to the Ameriean langnages. The double form of the .first person plural, indicaLing if the personage addressed be comprised in t.be "we," or is cxcludod from it-writes W lLIIELM voN lluMBOJ,JYr-has been again met with in a great number of American tongues, and had been assumed until now to be an especial chara.cteristic of those lauguages. This character is encountered, however, in the majority of the languag s that we arc here considering; in that of tho Malays, in that of tho .E hilippine 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, wor·e we to guide ourselves by logical considerations merely, it would become necessary to view these tongues, as being the cradle and Lhe veritable father-land of this grammatical foem. Outside of the South Sea, and of America, I know· of it nowhere else than among the Mandchonx. Since Wilhelm von llumboldt penned th se words, the same O'rammaLical peculiarity, which exists in the MaLGACHE (of Madagascar), has been discovered in an African tongue,-tLc Vm-langua•re. Mrican languages present, therefore, to speak pr pcrly, but a very feeble homogeneity. 'l'ho same multiplicity of shades, that is particularly observed among tho Blacks, reappears in their idioms. On studying tho grammars and the vocabnJarics of tho latter, one seizes the traciug-thread of those numbed ss |