218 ENGLISH LANGUAGE 



makes it a difficult matter to speak of the history of these languages; 

 still, we may say that Esthonian, which has undergone a strong 

 German influence, shows a more worn-down state of the old grammar 

 than Finnish, and that the same is the case with Livonian, which has 

 been so strongly influenced by Lettic that nearly half of the vocab- 

 ulary is borrowed from that language. As for Magyar, or Hungarian, 

 its vocabulary presents a highly variegated appearance: Persian, 

 Turkish, Slavonic, Latin, and German elements are freely mixed with 

 the original stock. Phonetic development has worn down the forms 

 of the words to a considerable extent, and many of the old gram- 

 matical forms have disappeared. The case-endings now used are 

 quite modern developments and are joined to the words in a much 

 looser way and also much more regularly than those of Finnish, for 

 example; in fact, they can hardly be termed anything but post- 

 positions. On the whole its grammatical structure seems to be really 

 simpler than that of the other languages of the same group. 1 



In the Semitic group, Hebrew even in the oldest period known to 

 us is much simpler in its grammatical structure than Arabic. Whether 

 this is due to speech-mixture or not is a question which I must leave 

 to others to decide; but I am told that scholars are now beginning 

 to recognize more and more Assyrian loan-words in Hebrew. Ara- 

 maic is still simpler, and here foreign influences seem to be much 

 easier to trace. 



Outside the three great families of languages which I have here 

 spoken about, very little is known to me that might serve to clear 

 up our question. Malayan has a very simple grammatical structure 

 and a very great number of foreign words. Chinese is still less com- 

 plicated in its structure, but is its vocabulary to any great extent 

 made up of loan-words ? On the other hand, are the American Indian 

 languages, with their intricacies of grammar, completely free from 

 foreign mixtures ? It is surely permissible to entertain some doubt 

 on both of these heads. 



I am painfully conscious that what I have been able to do here is 

 only a very imperfect sketch. I dare draw no definite conclusion 

 from the somewhat conflicting evidence I have been able to adduce, 

 but I have thought it might be well to throw out a few suggestions 

 for a future work, which ought certainly to be done by some one 

 possessed of a deeper knowledge of the languages I have mentioned, 

 and, if possible, of all the other languages that might throw light on 

 the subject. This scholar of a, let us hope, not too remote future, 

 I should venture to recommend to pay especial attention to chrono- 

 logy* for it is not enough to state mixture and simplicity, but it 



1 With regard to the Finno-Ugrian languages, I am largely indebted to the 

 lectures and writings of Vilhelm Tnomsen. 



