EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. 61 



in pronunciation, are therefore joined to the following word. The 

 French have a peculiar class of sounds, called nasal; expressed by 

 one or more vowels prefixed to m or n ; these last letters being, as it 

 were, only half pronounced ; and partly through the nose. Thus, 

 am and an, em and en, have the vowel sound of a in far , aim, ain, 

 ein, im, in, ym, and yn, have the sound of a in fat ; om, on, and eon, 

 the sound of o in on ; and um, un, and eun, the sound of u in dun ; 

 but all ending with the peculiar nasal sound. The diphthong oi has 

 the sound of waw in English, as in the word loi, law, pronounced 

 Iwaw. The French pronounce, ai and ei like a in fate ; ou like oo 

 in moon ; au, and eau like o in note : and to eu they give a peculiar 

 sound, between that of ew in few, and u in fur. They sometimes 

 pronounce 9, before a, o, and u, like s, always in these cases writing 

 a cedilla underneath it; ch, they pronounce like sh, except in words 

 from the Greek ; g soft, andj like zh or s in pleasure ; gn, and some- 

 times / at the end of syllables, liquid, as in the Spanish ; qu often like 

 k; r with a strong aspirate sound; th like t ; and x sometimes like 

 s or z : while final consonants are often silent. 



The French articles un, a or an, and le, the, become line, and la, 

 before nouns in the feminine gender ; and the latter becomes /', (/, 

 with an apostrophe), before a vowel ; and les in the plural. The 

 prepositions de, of, and a, to, coalesce with the articles, in some of 

 their forms; as in the Italian. The adjectives, change their termina- 

 tions, for the feminine, and the plural ; as un bon homme, a good 

 man ; une bonne femme, a good woman ; les bons gar$ons, the good 

 boys ; les bonnes filles, the good girls. As examples of the pro- 

 nouns and verbs, we may present the following. Eire, to be ; etant, 

 being : je suis, I am ; tu est, thou art ; il est, he is ; nous sommes, 

 we are ; vous etes, you are ; Us sont, they are. J'etais or je fus, 

 I was ; fai ete, I have been ; f avals ete or feus ete, I had been ; 

 je serai, I shall be ; je serais, I should be ; sois, be thou ; que je 

 sois, that I may be ; que jefusse, that I might be ; que j'ai ete, that 

 I may have been ; and quej'euse ete, that I might have been. 



The following is the Lord's Prayer in French ; from which it will 

 be seen that this language, like our own, is highly analytic ; express- 

 ing by particles, or separate words, those modifications, which the 

 Greek and Latin express chiefly by terminations. 



Notre pere qui etes dans les deux, que votre nom soit sanctifie : 

 que votre regne arrive : que votre volonte soit faite en la terre, 

 comme dans le del: donnez nous aujourd'hui notre pain de chaque 

 jour ; et pardonnez nous nos offenses, comme nous pardonnons a 

 ceux qui nous ont offenses ; et ne nous abandonnez pas a la tenta- 

 tion, mais delivrez nous du mal: parcequ 1 a toi est le regne, et le 

 pouvoir, et le gloire, a tous les siecles. Amen. Its correspondence 

 with our own version, will easily be perceived, by a comparison of 

 the words. The Basque, language, is a peculiar one, spoken by the 

 Gascons, in the S. W. of France ; and supposed to have come from 

 the Cantabri, or Biscayans, who once inhabited the north-eastern part 

 of Spain. 



2. The Gothic Family of languages, includes the English, Ger- 

 man, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic languages ; with some 



F 



