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words; as the French do with us at this day. The .Medes, 

 Persians, and other Eastern nations, may have received 

 many more, from the Israelites dispersed among them. So 

 the Greek colony, established at Marseilles, it is well known, 

 communicated man}' words, Avhich still remain in the French 

 language. 



After what has been said of the ambiguity of this lan- 

 guage, it is needless to mention its uncouth guttural 

 sounds, its unsusceptibility of the varieties of position, and 

 other marks of imperfection. 



THE EGYPTIAN. 



This language exhibits the same defects as the Hebrew, 

 and still greater. The Copts neither decline their nouns, 

 nor conjugate their verbs, otherwise than by prefixing par- 

 ticles, sometimes of one or more syllables, and sometimes 

 a single letter, which denote the case, gender, number, and 

 pei-son ; several of them being joined together in one word, 

 and the primitive word usually placed last. So that the 

 difficulty of their language consists, in the incredible com- 

 bination of the words and particles, in the change of the 

 vowels, in transposing the middle parts of tlie words, and 

 adding superfluous letters, to distinguish which requires 

 great labour and skill.* 



THE 

 * Wilkins, De Lingua Captica, 1 Unlvcrs. Hist, folio, p. 22o. 



