18 



but as the Danish and the German, the Chal- 

 dean and the Arabic, the Greek and the 

 Latin. In proportion as we penetrate into 

 the labyrinth of American idioms, we dis- 

 cover, that several are susceptible of being 

 classed by families, while a still greater 

 number remain insulated, like the Biscayan 

 among European, and the Japanese among 

 Asiatic languages. This separation may, 

 however, be only apparent ; for we may 

 presume that the languages, which seem to 

 admit of no ethnographical classification, 

 have some affinity, either with other lan. 

 guages which have been for a long time 

 extinct, or with the idioms of nations which 

 have never yet been visited by travellers. 



The greater part of the American lan- 

 guages, even such as have the same differ- 

 ence with each other as the languages of 

 Germannic origin, the Celtic and the Scla- 

 vonian, bear a certain analogy in the whole 

 of their organization : for instance, in the 

 complication of grammatical forms, in the 

 modification of the verb according to the 



