Ensay towards a Grammar of the Berber Language. 183 



fact that it becomes at before a suflSx, or in construction, and in the dual 

 taim, as in the plural which ends in tim : (2) by the circumstance, that it is 

 within recent history that the very same t in the same cases has been lost 

 or retained in Arabic. Thus in older Arabic, Medinat or Medlnaton, a 

 city : but in modern Arabic, Medina, when isolated j but before suffixes, 

 or in construction, Medmat ; and indeed, whenever they affect to speak 

 finely, they still say Medinat, as in reading the scriptures. And this 

 is an universal observation on words of tliis form. (3) The termination 

 of the feminine of the tliird person preterite is in Hebrew a, though some- 

 times at ; but in the other dialects at ; which is doubtless the primitive form. 

 (4) The initial t, in the feminine of tlie third person of Vae present tense, 

 corresponding toy in the masculine, is equally unambiguous; neither t nor 

 y admitting of any pronominal derivation. It seems, pronominal marks are 

 in many languages excluded from the third person of each number. — How- 

 ever, the last mentioned use of t at the beginning of a word, to indicate 

 the feminine, is not otherwise found in Hebrew or Arabic. (5) Tiie re- 

 gular formation of the Hebrew plural of nouns that end in ut, is in uybt ; 

 as malkht, a kingdom, pi. mallmybt. Here we apprehend that t in the 

 plural, as much as the singular, indicates feminine. Whether the termi- 

 nation bt (Arabic at) is possibly a corruption of ant, a form familiar to the 

 Berbers, might admit of much speculation. The Berbers join then the 

 initial of the Copts with the final t or 6 of the Shemitic languages, as the 

 feminine index ; and we cannot but look to a common origin. Yet here 

 also we are a little embarrassed by the too great familiarity of t. For in 

 the Shemitic languages, it is successively the characteristic of the first and 

 second persons, and of the feminine of the third person j wiiile in Greek 

 and Latin it alternately represents the second and third. Lastly, com- 

 paring i?^X' P^* lioxa^, with iXSe, t\9ere, fuge, fugite ; what is to be 

 thought? T is among the very first consonants sounded by children. 

 May the last coincidence be accidental ? 



We had not intended to be thus diffuse. It is time to make some re- 

 marks on the book which has given rise to this article. The title page is 

 in French, and tiie MS. is reported to have been purchased out of French 

 hands at Algiers. It has been ])ublished in London by the Bible Society, 

 in a beautiful type ; and, it seems to us, with surprizing correctness, if we 

 are right in supposing that there could be no revision of the press. For 

 the translator we feel less respect. As (we apprehend) one object of the 

 Society, in publishing this small specimen, was to collect opinions on the 

 production, it is with the less reluctance that we venture the following 

 criticisms. 



In particular passages the text may seem to have been defective ; as in 

 the last verse of the Lord's prayer. But it is a frequent practice of the 

 translator to cut short the matter, from laziness or from false principles of 

 scriptural translation, when there is no excuse from the poverty of the 



