276 
REPORT- 1847. 
stock, Persian in the one, Turkish in the other. But the moden. Pe^lan b 
one-half of Arabic words, and the elegant Turkish still more foreign elements 
Persian or Arabic. 
Tlie mixture in the Romanic languages is between two tongues 
same Iranian family; that in the Persian is lx>tweca an Iranian and a ^ 
finally, that of the Turkish has besides the admixture of a third lauiiij, 
different from either. . . 
Ill all of them we find that the new tongue was created througn _ 
may call a secondary formation, having as substratum a decaying 
guage. which we may consider as the primary one. ^ 
tion discardt’tl the ancient grammatical forms, and most nl the pa • 
it kept the radical part of the nouns and verbs, introducing imm ^ 
trading dements only substantial words. Tiiat portion ot ^ •' 
had nil longer any definite or subsUuitial, but only a formal or idea - S ^ 
tion, disappeared almost entirely. The want was supplied by a 
act, which, operating upon a highly organized language, produc 6 
decomposition of ancient forms. 
This was more especially the case with the Romanic langu^ GerHur 
quite othunvise with the. Teutonic languages in Germany. 
found there jiartly the Celtic, partly the Slavonic elements. 
the vitality of the formative process of the rising Germanic 
sporadic old dements, that only single words entered from .rLtjd 
even rroiii the Latin, tlic language of civilization and ot 
only a few single nouns and still fewer verbs. A comparisou ot c 
languages with the old .Scurniitiuvian and the Gothic, combined 
profound study of the Slavonic, aiitl particularly of the jai- 
the safest method of detecting their Slavonic and Celtic roots; 
dinavian and Gothic are cither entirely or in a great degree free 
But all these roots have been prolific, having admitted 
flexions, and lent themselves to derivations and compositions like . 
Teutonic roots, 'rhesc foreign eleinents have not therefore exerc -^^ 
organising inHuonce upon the German language. How then has • 
of Goethe grown out of tluvt of Dlphilas, by a development 
since the year 600, and still so different from the old form, that 
can, without a study like that of the classical languages, 
of Ulphilas' translation of the Bible in 380, nor even is able 
effort to comprehend (although that is a comparatively easy task) ^ 
epic, the Nibelungen, in its most modern text of 1200 ? Charlem 
not have understood one word of the speech which his fiftieth 
the throne of tlie German empire made a thousand years after , 
tion, that is to say, after the native tongue had passed tlirough ^ ^ 
mothers. Many words of the ancient idiom are lost in ® pfRijv 
the grammatical forms have been undergoing a continual ^ 
tion. Instead of our present periphrastic conjugation | 
had in the Gothic, as in the Icelandic, an organic form. 1^ 
in the ancient idiom of tlic Francs, instead of our periphraitic 
pressing after the verbs of perception and thought, the 
(substantive and verb) by the particle t/iai, we find the direct con- 
the accusative with the infinitive, or the still more intuitive jnE 
tion through the participle. On the whole, the abstractions 
css of the language In the same way, the roots and nipt< ’' 
process 
the verbs) receive more and more a less iiiaterial, therefore 
tellectual or metaphorical sense; and the original material sign* 
appears. ® 
