LAURA BRIDGEMAN. 23 



In almost all languages the word for the female breast, the mother or the 

 nurse, is derived from this sound. The Latin mamma and m,ater^ the Greek 

 juciftfta,, the modern mama, the Hebrew Emm, the Persian and Hindoo Ma for 

 breast, the Greek luarj^p, our mother, the German Mutter and Amme, (for nurse,) 

 the Gaelic mam, the Sweedish m,am,ma, the Albanian mam,, the Wallachian 

 m.am.a, and innumerable others, are all in point. We meet with it again in the 

 Polynesian languages, as the philological part of Capt. Wilkes' Exploring Ex- 

 pedition shows. 



I make no doubt but that Laura, too, has breathed forth this elementary and 

 sacred sound, in her earliest infancy, but it could not ripen into a definite word. 



All other words are, probably, formed by composition, contraction, expansion, 

 repeated transformation, and certain changes which gradually come to designate 

 a general or peculiar relationship subsisting between certain ideas, or between 

 the forms of words themselves in a purely grammatical point of view, the whole 

 being essentially affected by the peculiar formative spirit with which a tribe 

 shapes its words, whether, for instance, it is analytical, whether monosyllabic, as 

 with the Chinese, or holophrastic, as with the American Indians. While these 

 changes are going on with the formed words, their meaning alters accord- 

 ing to the endless association of ideas, real or imagined affinities, the gradual 

 expansion of the mind, the constant generalization and abstraction, or a retro- 

 gressive degeneracy, and many other causes, mental and physical. It will have 

 been observed that I have spoken only of the origin of words and of their pho- 

 netic formation. The meaning which they acquire constitutes a different sub- 

 ject, which demands attention to all the laws of psychology, of the gradual pro- 

 gress of civilization, to the laws of intellectual and philological degeneracy, (for 

 this has its laws like all disintegration or corruption,) to the changes of history, 

 and, in short, to all the altering conditions and relations which take place within, 

 under, and around Man, individually and collectively, by tribes and nations, by 

 concentration and tribal separation, by mixture, fusion, and by emigration — in 

 politics, religion, the arts, and every advancement and debasement.* 



* If, on the one hand, it is true that etymological inquiries may lead to very fanciful conclusions, if 

 they are not conducted with the utmost caution, it is no less true, on the other hand, that etymologi- 

 cal connexions may actually exist, which would appear as most extravagant could they not be proved; 

 and no word, in its present state, can fairly be assumed to prove that its origin is not owing to one of 

 the enumerated causes. Who would believe that the Hindostanee words, used by the native soldiers 

 in the British dominions of the East, Gourandile, Ordulram, and Tandellis, are the corruptions of the 

 words grenadier, order arms, and stand at ease ? Yet such is the case. Many words change, in one 

 transformation, their vowels, and in another their consonants, so that nothing of the original remains. 

 The following is an instance. The Sard word for voice is Boghe, derived from the Latin, vox, vocis, 

 of which the Italian word voce is formed. The c constantly changes into g, (having first a slightly 

 guttural sound,) and v and b are equally related to each other, as every Spanish scholar well knows, 

 so that at last the word boghe is formed. But in some parts of Sardinia the people pronounce this 

 word very much like baghe; so that we have baghe from vox. Who but the sifting scholar would 

 believe that the words voice and baghe are derived from the same original word vox, which, again, 

 may be derived from an original sound, consisting merely in a strong breathing forth of Ah, or Oh; 

 for V and c are but hardened aspirates, or solidified breathings. The history of many a word — both 

 of its form and its meaning — is as significant and instructive as that of many institutions. 



