CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



Holland and Belgium, and English, the last two 

 being varieties of Low-German. The Scandi- 

 navian branch occupies Denmark, Sweden, Nor- 

 way, and Iceland. 



6. The Slavic or Slavonic stock, covering 

 Russia, Poland, portions of Austria, and the north 

 of Turkey. The chief languages are Russian, 

 Polish, Bohemian, Servian, Bulgarian. 



7. Celtic. At the dawn of history, tongues of 

 this stock were spoken over a great part of Europe 

 Gaul or France, the British Islands, part of the 

 Spanish peninsula, many parts of South Germany, 

 and the north of Italy ; and judging from the names 

 of mountains, rivers, &c. the Celtic area must 

 at one time have been still more extensive. It is 

 now confined to Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, 

 Wales, the Isle of Man, and some parts of Brit- 

 tany. The remnants of the Celtic tongues present 

 two types, forming two branches. The Irish, the 

 Gaelic of Scotland, and the Manx, belong to the 

 northern or Gadhelic branch (Gaelic is merely a 

 short form of Gadhelic) ; the southern or Cymric 

 branch is represented by the Welsh, Cornish of 

 Cornwall (extinct since 1778), and the Breton of 

 Brittany. 



The evidence on which all these tongues are 

 believed to be sprung from one original tongue, 

 consists in their having a great many words in 

 common, and in their grammatical forms being 

 the same. This latter kind of evidence is con- 

 sidered a surer test of affinity than the former. 

 For when those elements of a language which 

 express the relations of things case, number, 

 tense have once become mere terminations, and 

 lost their original form and independent meaning, 

 they can only be transmitted by tradition ; and 

 when the same grammatical forms are found pos- 

 sessed in common by two or more tongues, they 

 must be an inheritance from a common ancestor. 

 It is difficult, without entering into minute details, 

 to exhibit even a specimen of the identity of the 

 inflectional endings of the Germanic tongues, for 

 instance, with those of Sanscrit ; it is more easy 

 to make the radical sameness of the individual 

 words apparent. In judging of this sameness, we 

 are no longer guided by mere similarity of sound ; 

 on the contrary, identity of sound is generally a 

 presumption that a proposed etymology is wrong. 

 Words, as we have seen, are constantly under- 

 going change, and each language follows its own 

 fashion in making those changes. Corresponding 

 words, therefore, in allied tongues must, as a rule, 

 differ, and the differences follow certain laws 

 which it is possible to ascertain ; and unless a 

 proposed identification accord with those laws, 

 it is inadmissible. We are not at liberty to 

 suppose any arbitrary omission of a letter, or 

 substitution of one letter for another, as was the 

 fashion in the old guessing school of etymology. 

 Thus, it would be inadmissible to assume Old 

 Irish athir to be identical with Latin pater, unless 

 it be the habit of the Irish to drop the initial p of 

 the original word ; but this is seen to be the case 

 by such additional instances as iasg, Old Irish tsc 

 = Latin piscis, a fish ; Ian = Latin plenus, fulL 



GRIMM'S LAW. 



Of the laws of interchange of sounds in the 

 Indo-European family, the most important is that 

 known as Grimm's Law, so called after the famous 



36 



German philologist who investigated it. It is of 

 extensive application, affecting the whole conson- 

 antal structure of the Aryan tongues, and in its 

 whole extent is rather intricate. The following 

 table exhibits the more important interchanges 

 between the ancient classic languages and the 

 Germanic : 



Labial B. Den tali. 



Greek (Latin, Sanscrit).... p b f t d th 



Gothic f P b th t d 



Old High German b (v) f p d 2 t 



Guttnrali. 

 k gch 



g Chk 



Examples. 



Sans, pad-as, Gr. pod-os, Lat. ped-is, Goth, 

 fot-us, Eng. foot, O. H. Ger. vuoz, Ger. fuss. 



Sans, pitri, Gr. and Lat. pater, Goth, fadrs,. 

 Eng. father, O. H. Ger. vatar. 



Sans, bharami, Gr. phero, Lat. fero, Goth. 

 baira, Eng. bear. 



Sans, bhrag, Gr. phlego, Lat. flagro, Goth, 

 bairht, Eng. bright, O. H. Ger. percht, Ger. 

 pracht. 



Sans, tola, Gr. talan, Lat. tolerare, Goth, 

 thulan, Scot, thole, Ger. dulden. 



Sans, damja, Gr. daman, Lat domare, Goth, 

 tamjan, Eng. tame, Ger. zahmen. 



Sans, uda, Gr. hydor, Lat. u(n)da, Goth, vato, 

 Eng. water, Ger. wasser. 



Sans, hrid (krid), Gr. kardia, Lat. cord-is, Goth, 

 hearto, Eng. heart, Ger. herz. 



Sans, kas, Gr. kos and pos, Lat. quis, Goth, 

 hvas, Eng. hwo, hwat (who, what), Ger. was. 



Sans, ganaka, Gr. gennetor, Lat. genitor,. 

 Goth, kyning, Eng. king, O. H. Ger. chunine, 

 Ger. konig. ' King' thus meant originally ' father/ 



Sans, gani (mother), Gr. gyne (woman), Lat. 

 gene-trix, Goth, qino or qens, A. S. cuen, Eng. 

 queen. 



Sans, hansa, Gr. chen, Lat (h)anser, A. S. gos, 

 Eng. goose, Ger. gans. 



There are, of course, many exceptions to the 

 law, arising from the influence of adjoining letters 

 and other incidental causes. It holds good often- 

 est at the beginning of words. It will be observed 

 that the English differs more from the High-Ger- 

 man than it does from the Gothic, which belongs, 

 like English itself, to the ' low' Teutonic group. 

 By observing the relations between the German 

 and the English exhibited in the following table, 

 the beginner of German may easily recognise the 

 English equivalent of many German words : 



It is difficult to account for such dialectic diver- 

 sifications, as the greater part of them cannot be 

 ascribed to the tendency to seek ease of utterance. 

 Max Miiller thinks it necessary to go back to a 

 time when many of the articulations were not yet 

 sharply defined ; and he appeals, in illustration, 

 to the confusion children make between such 

 sounds as tat and cat; and, what is still more 

 in point, to the analogy presented by languages 

 like the Polynesian. In the language of the 

 Sandwich Islands, the two consonants, k and t y 

 run into one another, 'and it seems impossible 

 for a foreigner to say whether what he hears is 



