SECT. V.] CHANGE OP LANGUAGE. 253 



according to Pott's assumption, 1 the Parthian, i. e. the Scythian 

 conquerors of Iran, found themselves, by losing the gramma- 

 tical structure of their own language, which was replaced by a 

 very simple one, that of the Pehlwi, which belongs to the 

 Iranian languages. Thus, in Sicily, the non-Greek peoples 

 forgot their own language in consequence of intermixture of 

 the natives with the Sikeliotes, and the forced transportation 

 of whole communities ; the whole island became a Greek ter- 

 ritory, and remained so to the middle ages. 2 Where, however, 

 such a case is not proved by history, we are not justified in 

 adducing such rare exceptions in support of assumed theories. 

 Such an error is committed by Berthelot, 3 in asserting that the 

 present inhabitants of the Canary islands are still, physically 

 and morally, the ancient Guanches, having only lost their lan- 

 guage ; though he confines himself merely to some similarity of 

 both in customs and mode of life, and describes two different 

 types of Guanche mummies, without even maintaining that 

 they are the types of the present natives. Retzius commits a 

 similar error, 4 in stating that the Kareles have lost their 

 own language and appropriated the Finnish, because they 

 possess oval heads, while the Savolax is globular-headed, and 

 the Tavastlander square-headed. Such assumptions, without 

 historical evidence, are inadmissible. Pott says justly, 5 "If 

 colonies are to be able to suppress languages, or essentially to 

 alter them, they must possess a lasting power which must be 

 concentrated in important cities, otherwise they will, with their 

 own language, perish in the mass of the subjected peoples." 



In contrast to the phenomenon of the loss of a language of a 

 people, or rather, as is most generally the case, of the extinction 

 of the same as a people, together with its language, stands the 

 not less frequent phenomenon of individual languages which 

 sustain their independence. The Spanish language in Manilla 

 has, in spite of the secured possession of the Spaniards, made 

 in that part as little progress as the English language in the 



1 Art. " Indogerm. Sprachstamm," Ersch. u. GK, p. 52. 



2 Niebuhr, " Rom. Gesch.," i, 174. 



3 "Mem. de la Soc. Ethnol./' i, p. 146. 



4 MiOler's " Archiv," p. 395, 1848. 



5 Loc. cit., p. 81. 



