OF LANGUAGES. 



15 



he assumes its pronunciation, grammar and syntax ; he loses 

 indeed, to a certain degree, his personal independence, while 

 he accommodates himself to the whims and caprices of his 

 new mistress. Whatever previously to the commencement 

 of his studies, he ridiculed as abstruse in expression and 

 disagreeable in sound, he now will endeavour to imitate as 

 closely as possible, and he will feel a particular delight in being 

 able to pronounce rightly all nasals, sibilants, gutturals and 

 cerebrals, to accentuate like a Chinese and to click like a 

 Hottentot. 19 But occasionally the old Adam will break out, 

 and he will violate, in a more or less atrocious manner, the 

 laws of the language he has assumed, either by his pronun- 

 ciation or by faulty syntactical construction. His vagaries 

 do not influence, however, the development of the language he 

 learns, for it pursues uninterruptedly the course of its destiny. 



The real point at issue is, therefore, not whether the 

 language one speaks indicates the race to which one belongs 

 — as long as that race has been preserved in its purity — 

 which it surely does not ; but whether a language, if used 

 by foreign individuals and nations, retains its original 

 character. There is no doubt of it. The very mistakes of 

 pronunciation and of expression testify to the attempts of 

 mastering a certain idiom, though the ability of doing so 

 successfully depends on the capacity and intelligence of the 

 student. A language preserves as it were instinctively its 

 peculiar construction, and if it does not always coincide 

 either with the particular nation or person who speaks it, it 

 certainly indicates the race of those who spoke it first, and 

 this in spite of all apparent change, and it retains the mode 

 of thought of those among whom it first sprung up as their 

 natural means of communication, though that race itself 

 might exist no longer. 



(19) The Hottentots do not stand alone in using clicks. The Kaffirs do the 

 same, though to a smaller extent. Clicks are also ascribed to the Circassians. 

 The Apache and the Chinook in North America appear to be peculiarly fond 

 of them. 



