124 The Rev. Dr. Wall on the Nature, Age, and Origin of the 



with what was to be expected from the nature of the case, that great irregularities 

 should occur in a verb which, in all languages, must have been one of the first 

 inflected, and in most of them probably was brought into use before their models 

 for uniformity of inflexion had been established. But that the common sense of 

 mankind is opposed to the employment of this verb in more voices than one, is 

 proved by the circumstance, that, although they would not give up irregular 

 inflexions of it to which they had been once habituated, they yet never completed 

 those inflexions throughout the moods and tenses of a second voice. The very 

 striking difference in this respect between the Sanscrit and all other languages, 



pronouns, as they are used on other occasions in an abbreviated form." — PritcJiard's Supplement, &c. 

 p. 133. But the structure of the formative additions to the root of the verb is more clearly dis- 

 cernible in Hebrew than in Welsh combinations, in this respect, that, in the former language, the 

 case of the pronoun of which part is employed, can be frequently distinguished ; and then, in accor- 

 dance with strict correctness of expression, it is found to enter the formative in the nominative case, 

 while on the other hand, the modification of it appropriated to oblique cases, is that which is used as 

 an affix. Thuspakad-ta (thou hast visited) has the termination of the pronoun of the second person 

 singular masculine in the nominative case; hut pekod-ka (thy visiting, or to visit thee) and pekad- 

 nu-ka (we have visited thee) exhibit, each of them in its last sj'Uablc, the termination which belongs 

 to this pronoun in oblique cases. Still, however, there is a far greater distinctness of the elements of 

 inflexion in Welsh than in any of the other ancient European tongues ; whence it would appear, that 

 the progress of amalgamation which takes place after the formation of a new dialect, lasted a shorter 

 time, and by the use of alphabetic writing — the only conceivable means of producing such an effect, — 

 was sooner stopped in this tongue than in the rest ; and, consequently, that it has been transmitted 

 to us in an older state than any other of the North-European languages which have sprung up from 

 the same stock. This inference from the structure of the Welsh dialect is, to some extent, supported 

 by historic evidence; for the ancient Britons, from their close connexion with the Romans, early got 

 the benefit of alphabetic writing, and were comparatively civilized at the period when their Saxon 

 oppressors were in a state of the grossest barbarism. Hence it is probable that Welsh is older than 

 any form of the German language now extant ; though it falls short of the age of Latin by near a 

 thousand years, and of that of Greek by a still greater interval. The claims, therefore, which the 

 Germans set up for the antiquity of their language are wholly inadmissible ; indeed one can hardly 

 avoid smiling at the extravagance of those claims. Thus one of their writers, Jakel, in a work pub- 

 lished so lately as the year 1830, under the title " Der germanische Ursprung der lateinischen 

 Sprache," has seriously endeavoured to prove that Latin was derived from German. He might just as 

 rationally have attempted to prove that the Roman alphabet was derived from the German one ; or 

 rather, indeed, he should have commenced with this latter notable point, and have shown the German 

 graphic system to be the older of the two ; for nothing can now be known of the language of any 

 people before the epoch of their first use of letters. 



