HINTS AND EXPLANATIONS. 63 
any Indian language, or a few selected words and phrases translated from it to English, 
will give a better insight to its structure and do more to determine its relationship to 
other American languages than long lists of concrete names or verb-forms compiled on 
the usual plan. But something more than translation, however accurate, is wanted. 
These languages must be studied in their roots, for these are the elements of synthesis. 
The possible forms of synthesis are infinite, but the radicals or primaries are, in any 
language, few. The forms, both inflectional and syntactic, are subject to change from 
year to year and in passing from tribe to tribe; and these changes, it is said, have in 
some instances been surprisingly rapid and extensive. We are told of a vocabulary 
compiled by missionaries to a Central American tribe in 1823 which had become use- 
less in 1833, so greatly had the language changed in the ten years which intervened.* 
With better knowledge of the structure of these languages such changes would prob- 
ably have been found to be for the most part only superficial—the synthesis being 
differently constructed, while its elements, the predicative and demonstrative roots, 
remained the same. Of such changes some further notice will be taken in another 
part of this paper. 
To single out and fix the primary meanings of the verbal roots should be the ulti- 
mate aim in the study of every Indian language. What excessive synthesis has done, 
searching analysis must undo. The task is not so difficult as at first sight it may seem 
to be. As I have before remarked, the roots or primaries are few and constant, or 
nearly so, in all dialects and languages of the same family, allowance being made for 
recognized differences of pronunciation and accent. They preserve their independent 
signification, however combined. They enter into composition without undergoing 
change of form, while their affixes and formatives obey laws of harmonious sequence 
of vowels as nicely adjusted as in Turkish. The five, ten, or more syllables of a ver- 
bal-synthesis do not grow out of or coalesce with one another, but each is built on ; so 
*S. F. Waldeck, Lettre @ M. Jomard des environs de Palenqué—cited by Max Miiller, Lectures on 
the Science of Language, Ist series, p. 62 (Am. ed.). I confess that, without other explanation than 
appears, I find this statement hardly credible, and suspect that the worthlessness of the vocabulary 
should not have been attributed solely to the inconstancy of the language. Professor Miiller (J. c.) 
refers also to Sagard’s Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons (Paris, 1632), for the statement ‘‘that among 
these North American tribes hardly one village speaks the same language as another; nay, that two 
families of the same village do not speak exactly the same language.” And he adds, what is important, 
that ‘their language is changing every day, and is already so much changed that the ancient Huron 
language is almost entirely different from the present.” But Sagard’s statement must not be received 
without the qualification he himself gave it. He did not intimate that the differences of dialect were 
greater or the tendency to change more apparent in the Huron language than in the French. What he 
says—in the introduction to the Dictionnaire de la langue Huronne, printed with his Grand Voyage—is in 
substance this: that there was the same diversity of accent, pronunciation, and in the use of words, in 
provinces, towns, and villages in the Huron country as in France; that the same words might be differ- 
ently pronounced or the same object called by different names even by inmates of the same cabin; one 
person would say ‘‘etseignon,” and another ‘‘ etcheignon”; one ‘‘ochahenna,” another ‘‘ochahenda,” etc. ; 
and that, as in France (comme par degad) new words were invented or brought in fashion and the pronun- 
ciation of the court had almost superseded (presque ensevely) the ancient Gallic, so ‘‘our Hurons, and 
generally all other nations, have the same instability of language, and change their words so that in pro- 
cess of time the old Huron becomes almost entirely different from the modern.” The change, as he 
conjectured, was still going on; and yet Sagard’s very imperfect dictionary of this unstable language, 
two hundred years or more after it was compiled, enabled Duponcean to make himself understood 
without apparent difficulty by the Wyandots, a remnant of the lost nation of the Hurons. (Dupon- 
ceau’s Mémoire, p. 110.) 
