350 TUB LATIN VERB JUBERE. 



bib-o, "I drink," K. faic, "to see." As to their number, it is 

 impossible now to hazard even a guess, but I imagine they were 

 few. Still, it would be interesting to know what were the originals 

 of human speech ; if we had them all collected before us, we 

 might look on them with reverence not unmixed with curiosity, 

 as the prolific patriarchs, now thousands of years old, whose 

 offspring in countless millions have spread themselves throughout 

 the whole earth, and, like obedient genii, now come forth to work 

 wonders at the bidding of the brain and tongue of man. If an 

 etymologist had leisure and industry enough, it might be possible 

 to make such a collection of root-words in the Aryan family, and 

 much easier to do so for the Shemitic family where the languages 

 are not numerous nor the literature so extensive. In the Shemite 

 tongues, the form of the roots will be found to be essentially 

 triconsonantal, the vowel points being used to facilitate pronunci- 

 ation ; and many of these stem-words are formed from biconsonantal 

 primitive roots by affixing a third consonant. For example, our 

 Aryan root gab, "to speak," is also called dab (6) or dabh, and 

 this, by the addition of the letter r, becomes the H. verb dabhar 

 " to speak." There is, no doubt, a number of monosyllabic roots 

 in the Shemite tongues, but many of these are really dissyllables 

 contracted, as kam for kavam ; thus also dabhar might become 

 dar. I have said that the original words in human speech were 

 probably few in number; and, by numerous figurative applications 

 of the primary meaning of each root-word, the varying wants of 

 man were expressed. This process still goes on in language, 

 although only to a limited extent ; for instance, we have recently 

 learned to say, Will you "wire" to London? where the noun wire 

 remains unaltered in form, and yet has undergone two changes, 

 for it has become a verb and has received an artificial application 

 of its meaning. In further illustration of these principles I will 

 return to our root gab, " to speak." The b on Oriental lips is 

 scarcely distinguishable from m ; both are labials, and are so good 

 friends that they quietly slip into one another's places, often 

 unobserved. So gam is the same as gab. Now there are in the 

 Aryan languages about a dozen root words all sounded gam ; 

 there is 1. gam to speak, 2. gam to seize, 3. gam to hollow out, 

 to dig, 4. gam to bow down, 5. gam to cover, protect, 6. gam to 

 love, desire, 7. gam to go, 8. gam to leap, 9. gam to twist, 10. 

 gam to tame, subdue, 11. gam to marry, 12. gam with, together, 

 and 13. gam to join.* You may ask me how it was possible for a 

 hearer to know in conversation which gam the speaker meant. I 



* Even the best dictionaries confound these roots. Benfey has S. 

 "kams, kag, or kas, to go, to command, to destroy." The second and 

 third of these meanings belong to onr root gam (see page 354), but the 

 first is from gam, to go. 



