LANGUAGE. 



circulation. It was this concurrence of circum 

 stances that decided that High-German should 

 in future be the spiritual bond among the wide 

 spread German people. For there were othe 

 dialects whose claims to the distinction were a 

 that time equal, if not higher. 



When a dialect has thus become the vehicle o 

 written communication, and of the higher kinds o; 

 oral address, its character and position become 

 changed ; and it stands henceforth in a sort o: 

 antagonism to the other dialects, and even to that 

 out of which itself sprung. After a time these dia- 

 lects become the exclusive possession of the un- 

 educated classes, in which position they preserve 

 many relics of old grammatical forms long after 

 these have disappeared in the language of litera- 

 ture. It is thus to take an erroneous view of dia- 

 lects, to treat them as corruptions of the standard 

 language ; they had an independent origin, and 

 they and the written standard continue to act and 

 react on one another. The genius of a national 

 language cannot be fully understood without taking 

 into account its provincial varieties. 



It is obvious that dialect is entirely a relative 

 term, and that what we call by that name in one 

 connection, we may call a language in another 

 connection. Thus, the most casual observer must be 

 struck with the family likeness of Italian, French, 

 and Spanish ; indeed we know, as an historical fact, 

 that all three were formed out of the same material, 

 narnely, the language of the ancient Romans. We 

 might therefore speak of these languages as sister 

 dialects, sprung from one common mother. But 

 in ordinary usage, however nearly related the 

 speech of two peoples may be, we do not apply 

 the term dialects, unless the peoples are mutually 

 intelligible, and have a common literary standard. 

 Intelligibility does not go for much, but political 

 relations enter more or less into the notion. Thus, 

 Scotch is sometimes spoken of as a distinct lan- 

 guage from English ; and yet in no part of Scotland 

 is the common speech so unintelligible to an Eng- 

 lishman as is that of Somerset, which is always a 

 ' dialect.' This arises from Scotland being thought 

 of as a separate country, which it once was ; and 

 its speech as the vehicle of a peculiar literature. 



FAMILIES OF LANGUAGES. 



The idea of groups or families of allied lan- 

 guages is thus an extension of the idea of dialects 

 or varieties of one language ; the differences are 

 perhaps more numerous and profound in the one 

 case than in the other, but they are of the same 

 kind. The relation is the same in both cases 

 namely, that of sisters sprung from a common 

 mother. The most important of the groups as 

 yet established is that already named, the Indo- 

 European. This great family embraces seven 

 stocks, each with its ramifications. 



1. The ancient Sanscrit, with its modern de- 

 scendants, the Hindu dialects spoken all over 

 Northern Hindustan. 



2. Persian, ancient and modern, along with 

 Armenian, Kurdish, and Afghan. 



3. Greek, ancient and modern. Notwithstand- 

 ing the important part played by the Greek people 

 in the intellectual history of mankind, their lan- 

 guage now occupies but a small area, being 

 mostly confined to Greece itself, and to the 

 islands of the vEgean. Modern Greek is much 



less changed from classic Greek than Italian is 

 irom. Latin. 



4. Latin <.. The modern representatives of Latin 

 form a sub-family called the Romanic languages, 

 consisting of Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese! 

 Rhaeto-Romamc spoken in several dialects m 

 the valleys of the Rhaetian Alps-ami Walachian. 



Fig. I. Outline Genealogical Tree of the Aryan 



Tongues. 

 From Farrar's Families of Speech. 



TEUTONIC BASIS 



Fig. 2. Ramifications of the Teutonic Stock. 

 From Farrar's Families of Speech, 



5. The Teutonic stock, divided into two 

 jranches, the Germanic and the Scandinavian. 

 The Germanic branch embraces the various 

 lialects, High and Low, spoken in Germany proper, 

 ogether with the Dutch or Netherlandish of 



