88 REPORT—1852. é 
On the Forms of the Personal Pronouns of the Two First Persons in the 
Indian, European, Syro-Arabic, and Egyptian Languages. By the Rev. 
Epwarp Hincks, D.D. 
Dr. Hincks began by saying that he now only threw out suggestions, which 
might be followed up by others. The question, of which he took a novel view, could 
not be settled by considering the pronominal forms exclusively. Many other points 
would have to be considered ; and whether the conclusions which appeared to him 
to follow with a high degree of probability from these forms, would be confirmed or 
proved to be erroneous by the examination of other forms, was what he could not 
now say. He only wished to set persons to think. It appeared to him that a cer- 
tain theory had been taken for granted, and he wished that it should be subjected to 
examination. 
The affinity of the personal pronouns in all the Indo-European languages was not 
to be disputed; nor did Dr. Hincks mean to challenge any reasonable opinion re- 
specting the absolute antiquity of the Sanskrit. What he called in question was its 
antiquity relative to the European languages akin to it. The case with respect to 
the pronouns of the two first persons might be briefly stated. The Asiatic members 
of this family have a final am which is wanting in the European numbers. Was this 
am omitted by the Europeans, or added by the Asiatics? The former is the received 
opinion ; the latter seems more probable to Dr. Hincks. Examples of both processes 
are common. The English pronoun we is nearly the same with that in many lan- 
guages of Northern Europe. It is admitted by all philologists that this has been 
shortened from a more ancient form, wir or wis. This abbreviation has been made 
in Swedish within the historic period. In other languages it was made in the pre- 
historic period ; that is, we have no written documents of an age before it was made. 
Philologists are, however, agreed that the s or r at the end of this form was an ad- 
dition, and that there must have been an older form without it; and the received 
opinion is that this form wi or vt was an abbreviation: of the Sanskrit wiyam. Dr. 
Hincks considered this to be a false view. He assumed a form anwis or anus (and 
that wi and wu pass into one another appears from a vast number of instances; as the 
Latin termination vis, where the Greek and Sanskrit have us; the Semitic copulative 
conjunction, &c., &c.), from which wis and nus (nos) would both arise. -This anus 
was the Semitic pronoun anu, which was common to the Indo-Europeans and Semitic 
races before their separation, in the same manner as anaku and anta or aniu; and 
the Indo-Europeans added s under a false impression that a plural termination was 
necessary, the fact being that anu was itself plural. As it is not likely that this mis- 
take would be made simultaneously by unconnected nations, Dr. Hincks argued that 
the addition of s must have taken place while the Indo-Europeans were one people ; 
and hence the necessity of assuming an ancient form which would account for both 
weis and nos. It was observed that n was peculiarly liable to be attached to words be- 
ginning with a vowel. The Irish names of Newry and of the river Nore, the English 
noun newt, in which the 7 has etymologically no place, and the abbreviations, nan, 
ned, nol, are proofs of this. 
At first, it was assumed that the pronoun of the first person singular in the Euro- 
pean languages showed traces of the Indianam. ‘The o in ego might be for om, as the 
o in lego certainly was. A trace of this 0 remained in Sclavonic, and its omission in 
Lithuanian and Gothic was evidently a degradation. Dr. Hincks maintained, how- 
ever, that this o might be otherwise accounted for, the Assyrian form of the pronoun 
being an-aku. According to this view, the Indian pronouns aham and viyam are so 
far from being the original forms that they are obtained from late European forms ; 
not from the more ancient aku and vis, but from the abbreviated ak and vi. 
If this philological view be correct, it tends to an ethnological view, which re- 
sembles what has been advanced by Dr. Latham. The Indo-European race pro- 
ceeded westward through Asia Minor, and over the Hellespont and Bosphorus. 
They then dispersed through Europe, and at length an offset from the Sclavonic 
branch returned to Asia between the Caspian and Black Seas, overrunning some 
countries eastward of Assyria and at length penetrating to India. 
The Semitic and Indo-European pronouns of the second person plural are distinct, 
having been developed in different manners after these races separated. 
The Egyptian pronouns of all these persons take that an at their commencement 
which the Semitic pronouns of the first two persons have. 

