216 ENGLISH LANGUAGE 



dialects, the Rev. Dr. H. F. Feilberg. The structural contrast to West 

 Jutlandish among the Scandinavian languages is Icelandic, which 

 has preserved the old endings and inflections with wonderful fidelity; 

 this conservatism is combined with an extremely small number of 

 loan-words, and no race-mixture has ever taken place. 



We proceed to South Africa, where we find a language which has 

 perhaps thrown off more of the old fiectional complexity than any 

 other Germanic language, English not even excepted, namely Cape 

 Dutch or " Afrikaansch," " de Taal." The total absence of distinction 

 of gender, the dropping of a great many endings, an extremely 

 simple declension and conjugation, which has given up, for instance, 

 any marks of different persons and numbers in the verbs, and other 

 similar traits, distinguish this extremely interesting language from 

 European Dutch. As for loan-words, the number of English words, 

 which is now very considerable, can have nothing to do with the 

 simplification, for the English did not come to the Cape till after 

 the grammatical structure had undergone most of its changes. 

 French loan-words are not so plentiful as might be expected from 

 the number of Huguenots among the original stock of immigrants, 

 but Malayo-Portuguese has contributed quite a considerable number 

 of words. In the latest book on Cape Dutch the simplification 'is 

 attributed, not to any particular foreign tongue, but to the fact that 

 the language has been largely spoken by people having originally 

 had a different mother tongue, no matter what that tongue was in 

 each individual case. 1 



Among the Romance languages, Roumanian evidently is the one 

 which has undergone the strongest foreign influence; it has a great 

 many loan-words from various sources, and the people also is largely 

 mixed with alien populations. But here, the structure of the lan- 

 guage is rather less simple than that of the sister tongues ; Roumanian 

 has, for instance, preserved more of the old declension than other 

 Romance languages. Its neighbor, Bulgarian, has in some respects 

 the same position among Slavonic languages as Roumanian among 

 Romance. The same causes have been at work among both popula- 

 tions and have produced race-mixture as well as a large proportion of 

 loan-words from Turkish and other languages. But with regard to 

 simplification, Bulgarian stands on a different footing from Rou- 

 manian, as it has given up very much of the old Slavonic complexity; 

 the case-system has nearly disappeared, and prepositions are used 

 very extensively instead of the old endings. 



In the Balkans we meet with still another language which has to 

 be considered here, namely, Modern Greek. The extremely artificial 

 form in which this language is written does not concern us here, 



1 H. Meyer, Die sprache der Buren. Gottingen, 1901. Compare also D. C. 

 Hesseling, Het Afrikaansch. Leiden, 1899. 



