'104 DIFFERENCES OF LANGUAGE. 



organs concerned in the process will easily explain. The 

 pronunciation of the Hottentots has generally been deemed 

 very singular by European observers * ; who compare it to 

 the clucking of a turkey, or the harsh and broken noises 

 produced by some other birds. They have numerous gut- 

 tural sounds, produced deep in the throat, and pronounced 

 with a peculiar clack of the tongue, which is quickly struck 

 against and withdrawn from the teeth or palate. They 

 combine their aspirated gutturals with hard consonants, 

 without any intervening vowels, in a manner that Europeans 

 cannot imitate ; it is never acquired, except occasionally by 

 the child of a colonist when accustomed to it from youth. 

 Adelung represents that their honey palate is smaller, 

 shorter, and less arched than in the other races ; and that 

 tlie tongue, particularly in the Bosjesmen, is rounder, 

 thicker, and shorter f. 



One of the most curious points \n ihe subject of lan- 

 guage is the continued existence in a large portion of Asia, 

 very anciently civilized, and considerably advanced at least 

 in the useful arts, of simply monosyllabic languages. Their 

 words are merely radical sounds of one syllable, not admit- 

 ting of inflexion or composition, so that all modifications 

 and accessory ideas must be either overlooked or imper- 

 fectly expressed by tedious and awkward circumlocution. 

 Such are the languages of Thibet, the contiguous immense 

 empire of China, and the neighbouring countries of Ava, 

 Pegu, Slam, Tungquin, and Cochin-Chlna. " These exten- 

 sive regions, and these only in the whole world, betray in 

 their present language all the imperfection of the first 

 attempts at speech. As the earliest efforts of the InfLuit 

 are merely sounds of one syllable, so the first adult children 

 of Nature stammered out their meaning in the same way : 



* Barrow's and Lightens ikix's Travels in Southern Africa. 



Similar descriptions are given by Sparmann, Thunburg, and Le Vail- 

 LANT. Dr. SoMERViLLE observes the peculiarity of the Hottentot utterance, 

 to which, he s:iys, nothing similar is heard in any other part of the worlds- 

 Medico-Chir. Trans, v. vii. p. 135. 



+ Milhridatcs; 3r. Theil ; 1°. Abtheilung, p. 292-3. 



