72 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



on which the Vandals and Goths made Httle impression, with 

 only a modern and slight intermixture of other races, chiefly 

 Moorish and African. 



The Portuguese are literally the longest-headed people in 

 Europe ("Cranial Index" 75, yj), and they are below the aver- 

 age height. Blond-haired Portuguese are practically unknown, 

 while ordinary dark or black hair is found among about a 

 fifth of the population ; very jet-black hair is the rule. This 

 at once differentiates them from their neighbors, the Spanish ; 

 and their language does so even more. To an English-speak- 

 ing person the Portuguese language seems like sloppy Spanish 

 pronounced in a French fashion. It is so much like Spanish 

 as to be deceptive, and differs from it widely just when one 

 thinks they ought to be alike. The Portuguese language shows 

 signs, even more than the French, of the influence of that 

 strange Gaelic habit of ellipsis, or the dropping of a letter in the 

 middle of a word. 



Of course, the very name, Portugal, indicates that it was a 

 country of the Gaels, for the name is derived from the ancient 

 Latin name for the present city and province of Oporto, which 

 was in Latin Partus Cale, or Partus Gale, that is, the Port 

 of the Gaels. From this city the name spread to the whole 

 country, and it was accordingly called Portugal. Notwith- 

 standing the original inhabitants and their descendants talked 

 a Latin jargon acquired from their Roman conquerors, which 

 finally developed into the present Portuguese language, they 

 could not forbear the Gaelic habit of ellipsis. The French, or 

 Gauls (who were really Gaels), did this, as in the Latin words, 

 pater, mater, from which they made pcre and mere. So the 

 Portuguese, for example, when they used the Latin generalis 

 (general), plural generates, first dropped the "n" and said 

 geral, and in the plural they also dropped the "1" and said 

 geraes, a regular nasal telescopic way of pronouncing a word. 

 Thus the genius of the Portuguese language has differentiated 

 it more and more from the Spanish, and, while the two are 

 derived from the same colonial Latin, the result has been 

 curiously different, yet sufficiently alike to be perplexing to 

 the student. 



Spain and Portugal were not originally separated, any more 

 than they are geographically separated to-day. Portugal, after 

 Roman times, and when the Gaelic and Gothic tribes descended 



