OLD ARYAN WORDS 



tence together are still Teutonic, as before. So 

 when we say, " I have, thou havest or hast, he 

 haveth, hath, or has," the Teutonic shibboleth 

 comes out in this style of inflection. In short, it 

 is easy enough for us to acquire new words, but 

 we cannot abandon our habits of sentence-mak- 

 ing without giving up our language altogether. 

 Now the demonstrated community of the Aryan 

 languages rests not merely on their possession of 

 a common vocabulary, but on their retention, in 

 various degrees, of grammatical forms originally 

 common to all. We can hardly find a better in- 

 stance than in the conjugation of the verb just 

 alluded to: 1 



"TO HAVE." 



Gothic, haba, habai-s, habai-th ; haba-m, habai-th, haba-nd. 

 Pen. -m, -d ; -m, -d, -nd. 



Kelt. -m, -d ; -m, -d, -t. 



Lith. -mi, -si, -ti ; -me, -te, -d. 



Slav. -mi, -si, -ti ; -mu, -te, -nd. 



Lat. habeo, habe-s, habe-t ; habe-mus, habe-tis, habe-nt. 

 Gr. -mi, -si, -ti ; -mes, -te, -nti. 



Str. -mi, -si, -ti ; -masi, -tha, -nti. 



Community of vocabulary is, however, a very 

 important matter, when rightly considered. It is 

 true that any language may borrow a large pro- 

 portion of its words from an entirely alien source, 

 as Persian has borrowed from Arabic. But in 

 comparing the various forms of Aryan speech we 

 1 Whitney, Study of Language, p. 1 99. 

 101 



