NOTES. 



295 



have seen above, that American nations, the languages of 

 which have a very different structure, denote the Sun by the 

 same name; that the Moon is sometimes called Sun to sleep> 

 Sun of night j light of night ; and that sometimes the two orbs 

 have the same denomination. These examples are drawn 

 from the Guarany, the Omagua, Shawanese, Miami, Maco, 

 and Chippewayan idioms. (See above, p. 126, 149.) Thus, on 

 the ancient continent, the Sun and Moon are denoted in Arabic 

 by niryn, " the luminaries j" thus in Persian, the most com- 

 mon words, afitab and chorschid, are compounds. By the 

 migration of tribes from Asia to America, and from America 

 to Asia, a certain number of roots have passed from one lan- 

 guage into others j and these roots have been transported, 

 like the fragments of a shipwreck, far from the coast into the 

 islands. (Sun, in New England, kone ; in Tschagatai, kounj 

 in Yakout, kouini. Star, in Huastec, ot ; in Mongul, oddon ; 

 in Aztec, citlal, citl ; in Persian, sitareh ; house, in Aztec, 

 calli ; in Wogoul, kuala or kolla. Water, in Azteck, atel 

 (itels, a river, in Vilele) ; in Mogul, Tsheremiss, and Tshou- 

 vass, atl, atelch, etel, or idel. Stone, in Caribbee, tebou ; in 

 the Lesghian of Caucasus, teb; in Aztec, tepetl; in Turkish, 

 tepe. Food, in Quichua, micunnan ; in Malay, macannon. 

 A boat, in Haytian, canoa ; in Ayno, cahani ; in Green- 

 landish, cayac ; in Turkish, cayic 5 in Samoyede, cayouc ; in 

 the Germannic tongues, kahn.) But we must distinguish from 

 these foreign elements what belongs fundamentally to the 

 American idioms themselves. Such is the effect of time, and 

 the communications among nations, that the mixture with an 

 heterogeneous language has not only an influence upon roots, 

 but most frequently ends by modifying and denaturalizing- 

 grammatical forms. " When a language resists a regular 

 analysis," Mr. William de Humboldt observes judiciously in 

 his Considerations on the Mexican, Cora, Totonac, and Ta- 

 rahumar, " we may suspect some mixture, some foreign in- 

 fluence 5 for the faculties of man, which are, as we may say 

 reflected in the structure of languages, and in their grammati- 

 cal forms, act constantly in a regular and uniform manner." 



