A PRIMEVAL MOTHER TONGUE 



of the first importance. There is a certain sense 

 in which we may admit community of origin 

 for languages that are now quite dissimilar ; but 

 the sense is one that is foreign to philological 

 usage, and has no real philological significance. 

 No doubt all the yellow races of Asia are de- 

 scended from some small group of yellow pro- 

 genitors, and no doubt this ancestral group pos- 

 sessed the faculty of articulate speech. Most 

 likely the group was at the outset small enough 

 to use but one language, and as the group in- 

 creased in size and became subdivided into a 

 number of tribes, the common language would 

 soon get broken up into dialects. So far very 

 good ; but what we have to notice is that under 

 such circumstances the breaking up of the com- 

 mon language would not in any way resemble 

 the breaking up of Latin into the dialects of 

 France and Italy. On the contrary, the several 

 dialects would change so rapidly as to lose their 

 identity : within a couple of centuries it would 

 be impossible to detect any resemblance to the 

 language of the primitive tribe. The speech of 

 uncivilized tribes, when not subject to the power- 

 ful conservative force of widespread custom or 

 permanent literary tradition, changes with as- 

 tonishing rapidity. Such languages usually con- 

 tain but a few hundred words, and these are 

 often forgotten by the dozen and replaced by 

 new ones even in the course of a single genera- 

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