CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES.
Modern philologists have made different classifications of the various languages of the world, one of which divides them into three great classes: the Monosyllabic, the Agglutinated, and the Inflected.
—The first, or Monosyllabic class, contains those languages which consist only of separate, unvaried monosyllables. The words have no organization that adapts them for mutual affiliation, and there is in them, accordingly, an utter absence of all scientific forms and principles of grammar. The Chinese and a few languages in its vicinity, doubtless originally identical with it, are all that belong to this class. The languages of the North American Indians, though differing in many respects, have the same general grade of character.
The second class consists of those languages which are formed by agglutination. The words combine only in a mechanical way; they have no elective affinity, and exhibit toward each other none of the active or sensitive capabilities of living organisms. Prepositions are joined to substantives, and pronouns to verbs, but never so as to make a new form of the original word, as in the inflected languages, and words thus placed in juxtaposition retain their personal identity unimpaired.
The agglutinative languages are known also as the Turanian, from Turan, a name of Central Asia, and the principal varieties of this family are the Tartar, Finnish, Lappish, Hungarian, and Caucasian. They are classed together almost exclusively on the ground of correspondence in their grammatical structure, but they are bound together by ties of far less strength than those which connect the inflected languages. The race by whom they are spoken has, from the first, occupied more of the surface of the earth than either of the others, stretching westward from the shores of the Japan Sea to the neighborhood of Vienna, and southward from the Arctic Ocean to Afghanistan and the southern coast of Asia Minor.
The inflected languages form the third great division. They have all a complete interior organization, complicated with many mutual relations and adaptations, and are thoroughly systematic in all their parts. Between this class and the monosyllabic there is all the difference that there is between organic and inorganic forms of matter; and between them and the agglutinative languages there is the same difference that exists in nature between mineral accretions and vegetable growths. The boundaries of this class of languages are the boundaries of cultivated humanity, and in their history lies embosomed that of the civilized portions of the world.
Two great races speaking inflected languages, the Semitic and the Indo- European, have shared between them the peopling of the historic portions of the earth; and on this account these two languages have sometimes been called political or state languages, in contrast with the appellation of the Turanian as nomadic. The term Semitic is applied to that family of languages which are native in Southwestern Asia, and which are supposed to have been spoken by the descendants of Shem, the son of Noah. They are the Hebrew, Aramaeic, Arabic, the ancient Egyptian or Coptic, the Chaldaic, and Phoenician. Of these the only living language of note is the Arabic, which has supplanted all the others, and wonderfully diffused its elements among the constituents of many of the Asiatic tongues. In Europe the Arabic has left a deep impress on the Spanish language, and is still represented in the Maltese, which is one of its dialects.
The Semitic languages differ widely from the Indo-European in reference to their grammar, vocabulary, and idioms. On account of the great preponderance of the pictorial element in them, they may be called the metaphorical languages, while the Indo-European, from the prevailing style of their higher literature, may be called the philosophical languages. The Semitic nations also differ from the Indo-European in their national characteristics; while they have lived with remarkable uniformity on the vast open plains, or wandered over the wide and dreary deserts of their native region, the Indo-Europeans have spread themselves over both hemispheres, and carried civilization to its highest development. But the Semitic mind has not been without influence on human progress. It early recorded its thoughts, its wants, and achievements in the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt; the Phoenicians, foremost in their day in commerce and the arts, introduced from Egypt alphabetic letters, of which all the world has since made use. The Jewish portion of the race, long in communication with Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylonia, and Persia, could not fail to impart to these nations some knowledge of their religion and literature, and it cannot be doubted that many new ideas and quickening influences were thus set in motion, and communicated to the more remote countries both of the East and West.
The most ancient languages of the Indo-European stock may be grouped in two distinct family pairs: the Aryan, which comprises two leading families, the Indian and Iranian, and the Graeco-Italic or Pelasgic, which comprises the Greek family and its various dialects, and the Italic family, the chief-subdivisions of which are the Etruscan, the Latin, and the modern languages derived from the Latin. The other Indo-European families are the Lettic, Slavic, Gothic, and Celtic, with their various subdivisions.
The word Aryan (Sanskrit, Arya), the oldest known name of the entire Indo-
European family, signifies well-born, and was applied by the ancient
Hindus to themselves in contradistinction to the rest of the world, whom
they considered base-born and contemptible.
In the country called Aryavarta, lying between the Himalaya and the Vindhya Mountains, the high table-land of Central Asia, more than two thousand years before Christ, our Hindu ancestors had their early home. From this source there have been, historically, two great streams of Aryan migration. One, towards the south, stagnated in the fertile valleys, where they were walled in from all danger of invasion by the Himalaya Mountains on the north, the Indian Ocean on the south, and the deserts of Bactria on the west, and where the people sunk into a life of inglorious ease, or wasted their powers in the regions of dreamy mysticism. The other migration, at first northern, and then western, includes the great families of nations in Northwestern Asia and in Europe. Forced by circumstances into a more objective life, and under the stimulus of more favorable influences, these nations have been brought into a marvelous state of individual and social progress, and to this branch of the human family belongs all the civilization of the present, and most of that which distinguishes the past.
The Indo-European family of languages far surpasses the Semitic in variety, flexibility, beauty, and strength. It is remarkable for its vitality, and has the power of continually regenerating itself and bringing forth new linguistic creations. It renders most faithfully the various workings of the human mind, its wants, its aspirations, its passion, imagination, and reasoning power, and is most in harmony with the ever progressive spirit of man. In its varied scientific and artistic development it forms the most perfect family of languages on the globe, and modern civilization, by a chain reaching through thousands of years, ascends to this primitive source.