294" Mr Beke un the Classification of' Languages, 



be applied, and which are, in reality, entitled to the appellation 

 of Hainitish alone. 



Since then the languages spoken by the descendants of Isaac 

 and of Ishmael, the sons of Abraham,— namely, the Hebrew 

 and the Arabic, — are thus found to be cognate with those which 

 are so widely spread among the descendants of Ham, il would 

 seem most reasonable to imagine that the former languages, in- 

 stead of being the representatives of the Shemitish tongue which 

 was spoken by Abraham either in Chaldea or Aram, are the 

 Hamitish languages which were vernacular in the countries in 

 which that patriarch and his descendants took up their residence, 

 and were, in fact, acquired by them during their residence there- 

 in, to the exclusion of their paternal tongue. This hypothesis has 

 fceen advocated at length in the Origines Biblicce. In the same 

 work it has also been attempted to be shewn that the so-called 

 Chaldee is merely a corruption of the Hebrew spoken by the 

 Jews during their captivity in Babylon, and not the native lan- 

 wuaoe which at that epoch was vernacular in Babylon itself ; 

 which language, from the few proper names met with in the 

 Hebrew Scriptures, and the remains of it preserved in the cu- 

 neiform characters (if rightly interpreted), was of Japhthitish 

 origin, and closely related to, if not identical with, the Zend. 

 In like manner is the Syriac to be regarded as only a further 

 degradation and corruption of the Hebrew. Under no circum- 

 stances, indeed, can it claim to be the primitive native tongue 

 of the countries in which it was spoken about the period of the 

 commencement of the Christian era ; for, subjected as they had 

 been to repeated and continued foreign invasion and occupation; 

 it is impossible that any native language should, during niore 

 than twenty centuries, have continued to exist without very con- 

 siderable alterations, if, indeed, it must not have been aliogether 

 extirpated. 



The appellation of Semitic or Shemitish, as applied to these 

 languages, must therefore be superseded by that of Hamitish ; 

 under which designation will have to be comprised not only the 

 Canaanitish, Arabian, and African languages which have been 

 enumerated, but also the whole of the native dialects spoken 

 throughout the continent of Africa ; all the inhabitants of which 

 continent must, agreeably to the hypothesis advocated in this 



