82 HOEATIO HALE ON LANGUAGE 



he adds, " how many other vices commonly ascribed to savages are uukuown to them ! " 

 They are humane and gentle to their equals, — are sober and averse to strong liquor ; they 

 are not vindictive ; theft, rage, and violence are unknown among them. They are eager 

 for instruction, and inquire about everything, like children. They do not lack sagacity 

 and penetration ; but he adds the remark which will be found significant, — " their intel- 

 ligence is evidently in the swaddling clothes of infancy ; their faculties are, so to speak, 

 benumbed or shackled by a bar, which is nothing else than that forced and abnormal 

 condition which we style barbarism." 



The language spoken by these people, as it is fully analyzed and minutely set forth 

 by the author, is one of the most remarkable emanations of the human intellect. It 

 possesses all the qualities and constituents which persons not familiar with the dis- 

 coveries of modern philology are wont to regard as peculiar to highly cultivated idioms — 

 capacity for varied expression, wealth of inflections, aptitude for word-formation, the 

 substantive verb in different forms, and many auxiliary verbs. To give even an outline 

 of this extraordinary language would take us beyond the reasonable limit of such an 

 essay as the present. A few examples, selected as fair specimens, must suffice. ' 



The primary roots of the Tinueh language, as of the Sanscrit, are all monosyllabic, 

 and usually have a signification of a general or abstract character ; thus, Ihay, sand, 

 really signifies "the minute, decomposed object"; shion signifies age, maturity; tthen, 

 bone, is understood properly to mean " the long hollow object." From these are made 

 secondary roots by prefixing or adding a particularizing A'-owel — thayé, minute, broken 

 up ; edjion, ancient ; eltluen, bone. There are other derived roots or " themes " formed by 

 prefixing to the simple roots various particles, as de, dœ, ne, kioè, in, sometimes with a 

 slight euphonic change in the root. Thus, from thay (the minute, sand-like object), we 

 have dedhay (the dli pronounced like tli in this), meaning salt (that which resembles 

 sand) ; from shion we have nelshion, grown up (that which has come to maturity) ; from 

 tlhen we have dœlthœn, hard (i.e., bone-like), and with two particles in and kwè prefixed 

 and combined, replacing the initial consonants of the root, inkivènè, hollow and long 

 (like a bone) . 



One of the most notable of these derived forms is the word for man. Ni or ne (which 

 as a monosyllable visually has the consonant duplicated, — nni or nne, — to express an 

 emphatic pronunciation, is the Tinneh root-word for " earth." The particle de (other- 

 wise in various dialects pronounced di, te, ti, tœ, thé, etc.,) which conveys the meaning of 

 " that which is of," or " that which pertains to," is jjrefixed to this monosyllable to form 

 the derivative term for man {tinnè, dènè, etc.) already referred to. Man is pre-eminently 

 the being that pertains to the earth. The word corresponds, not with the Latin vir, but 

 with homo, and in its plural acceptation means " people." It is used, like the G-erman 

 man and the French on (a contraction of homme), as an indefinite personal pronoun in 



' In the words of the aboriginal languages quoted in this paper, the " scientific orthography " has been 

 employed. The elements of this orthography may be briefly described in the phrase " vowels as in Italian (or 

 German), consonants as in English." Tlie only additions here required are the m to represv'int the short u in hul 

 (French eu, German o) ; the Spanish n to indicate the nasalized n,— sometimes weak, as in the French bon, some- 

 times stronger, like our ng in singer; and the apostrophe (') afBxed to various consonants and some vowels to give 

 them an aspirate or guttural sound, as k' to express the German ch or Spanish j, and r' to indicate a strongly 

 guttural r (r gmssi'i/e). Slight variances of pronunciation are not important in studies of the present cast. 



