A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. LANGUAGES KINDRED TO THE ENGLISH. § 1. Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, Indo-European. The English language is the descendant and representative of the Anglo-Saxon. It has lost very much of the inflexion, and very many of the words, which belonged to the parent language; and, on the other hand, it has borrowed words very largely, to the extent even of half its vocabulary, from other languages, especially the French and the Latin. Yet all the inflexions that remain in it, and most of its formative endings, the pronouns and particles, and, in general, the words which are in most frequent and familiar use, have come to it from the AngloSaxon. With all its mixture of foreign elements, it is still a Teutonic language, like the German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and others. These again make one great branch in that great family of languages, which, as it extends from India westward, and covers nearly the entire area of Europe, is called Indo-European. Among all families of kindred tongues, the Indo-European is pre-eminent, both for the perfection of its organic structure, and for the value of its literary monuments. The parent of the whole family, the one primitive Indo-European language, has left no such monument of itself; but its forms and roots may be made out, to a great extent, by the scientific comparison of the languages which are descended from it. The main branches of the Indo-European family are the following: § 2. I. The INDIAN. The Sanskrit of the four Vedas, the sacred books of the Brahman religion, is more ancient than the common or classical Sanskrit. Even the latter had ceased to be the language of common life as early as the third century before Christ. It was succeeded by the Prakrit dialects, one of which, the Pali, is the sacred language of the Buddhists in Ceylon and Further India. These, in their turn, were succeeded by the modern idioms of Northern Hindustan, the Bengali, Marathi, Guzerathi, and others. The Hindustani (or Urdu), formed in the camps and courts of the Mohammedan conquerors of India, is largely intermixed with Persian and Arabic. The widely-scattered Gypsies speak, with great diversity of dialect, a language which is clearly. of Indian stock. § 3. II. The IRANIAN. To this branch belong, 1. The Zend, which is believed to have been the language of ancient Bactria, and is preserved in the Avesta, or sacred writings of the Parsis. 2. The Old Persian, which is seen in the cuneiform (or arrowheaded) inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes. The modern Persian has lost nearly all the ancient inflexion, and with the Mohammedan religion has adopted a multitude of words from the Arabic. Other languages belonging to this branch are those of the Kurds, the Afghans, the Ossetes (in the Caucasus), and the ancient and modern Armenians. The Indian and Iranian are often classed together as forming the Indo-Persian or Aryan branch of our family. § 4. III. The GREEK. Of its numerous dialects, the first to receive literary culture was the Old Ionic or Epic, followed by the Eolic, the Doric, the New Ionic, and finally the Attic, which became at length, though with some change of form, the common language of literature and society. It is represented now by the Romaic, or Modern Greek. The Albanian, spoken in a large part of modern Greece, is supposed to be a descendant of the ancient Illyrian. § 5. IV. The LATIN. This is often joined with the preceding, as the Greco-Latin, or Classical branch. Closely akin to Latin were the other Italican languages the Oscan, Umbrian, etc.-in Central Italy. The modern descendants of the Latin are called the Romance languages. They are the Italian, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Provençal (of Southern France, used in the middle ages as a literary language), and the French (originally the popular dialect of Northern France). All these contain a small proportion of Teutonic words, brought in by the barbarian conquerors of the Western Roman Empire. But another Romance language-that of the Wallachians, the descendants of the Romanized Dacians-is largely intermixed with borrowed words, taken chiefly from the neighbouring Slavonic tribes. § 6. V. The CELTIC. This branch is divided by strongly-marked differences into two sections: 1. The Gaelic, including the Irish (or native language of Ireland), the Erse (or Highland Scotch), and the Manx (the corrupt idiom of the Isle of Man). The last two are little more than dialects of the Irish. 2. The Cymric, including the Welsh (or native language of Wales), the Cornish (which was spoken in Cornwall, but went out of use in the last century), and the Armorican (spoken in the French province of Brittany, the ancient Armorica). The oldest manuscript specimens of the Gaelic belong to the close of the eighth century: for the Cymric, the oldest which are at all copious, are three or four centuries later. § 7. VI. The SLAVONIC. The earliest monument is the version of the Bible made in the ninth century, by the Greek missionaries Cyril and Methodius, into the Old Slavonic, the idiom spoken by the Bulgarians of that time. This widely-diffused class of languages divides itself into two principal sections: 1. The eastern and southern Slavonic, including the Russian, the Bulgarian, and the three Illyrian idioms, Servian, Croatian, and Slovenic. 2. The western Slavonic, including the Polish, the Bohemian (with the Moravian and Slovack dialects), the Lusatian or Wendish, and the extinct Polabian. The language of § 8. VII. The LITHUANIAN. Lithuania has no monuments older than the middle of the sixteenth century; but it has preserved in a surprising degree the ancient inflexion and structure. To the same stock belong the Lettish of Courland and Livonia, which is much less ancient in its form, and |