440 ON THE 1.ANGUAGE 



vered that the Sliilha and the Showiah, the idioms of the 

 Amazirg and Kabyles, were with little difference tlie same. 



Mr. Hornemann having sent a scanty vocabulary of the 

 Siwah dialect to Sir Joseph Banks, the late President of the 

 Royal Society of London, it was by him communicated to 

 the learned William Marsden, who, after comparing it with- 

 out success with various oriental and other languages, at last 

 betliought himself of comparing it with the language of the 

 Amazirg, wliich is called Shillah by the Arabs, and by them- 

 selves Amazirg, and to his great surprise and delight, he 

 found a very great affinity between those two idioms, so 

 much so, that he did not hesitate to express his opinion, 

 " that the languages of those countries of Siwah and Shillah, 

 distant from each other by the whole breadth of Africa, were 

 one and the same ; whence he presumed that the Shillah or 

 Berber extends across the whole African continent, in a di- 

 rection between the Negro dialects on the southern side, and 

 the Moorish or Arabic of the Mediterranean coasts, and that 

 it was the language of the whole of northern Africa before 

 the period of the Mahometan conquests." 



This hypothesis being once afloat, other philologists set 

 themselves to work, and made profound researches to de- 

 stroy or confirm it : the latter conclusion appears to have 

 been the result of their investigations. The celebrated Vater, 

 whose profound learning is only equalled by his astonishing 

 sagacity, discovered this ancient African language in that of 

 the Guanchos, who still inhabit the Canary Islands, of which 

 they are considered as the aborigines. He traced also in it 

 some affinity with the Amharic and Coptic, but not sufficient 

 to lead to a satisfactory result. 



Yet this interesting phenomenon of one nation and one 

 language, extending across Africa from the Canary Islands 

 and tiie coast of the Atlantic Ocean to the Ked Sea, is only 

 evidenced by about twelve words of the Shillah and Siwah 

 dialects compared together by Mr. Marsden. by a lesser num- 

 ber com|)ared by Vater with that of the Guanclios, and hy the 

 assertion of Hornemann that the Tuarycks speak the same 



