I.
Iaian.
A Polynesian dialect, allied to Lifu.
Iakon, under [J].
Iapygian.
A language spoken in the S. of ancient Italy; it was allied to Oscan, but containing a large number of Greek words. See Mommsen: “Unteritalischen Dialekte,” Leipsig, 1851. G. R.
Ibarekab.
African: a dialect of Beja. See Salt’s “Voyage.”
Ibbibby.
African: a name for the Qua or Calebar.
Ibequi, see [Hiaqui].
Iberian or Iberic.
A name for the pre-Roman dialects of Spain, and sometimes used as a synonym for Basque, which is supposed to have been derived from it. See Celt-Iberian.
Ibo or Eboe.
African: dialect of the W. coast, at the delta of the Niger.
Icelandic.
Old Icelandic is the same as Old Norse, and the modern dialect differs from it but slightly. A language of Teutonic origin, belonging to the Scandinavian branch, planted in Iceland by Norwegian settlers, circa A.D. 874. Rask’s Grammar, translated by Dasent, London, 1843; Möbius: “Altnordisches Glossar,” Leipsig, 1866; Egilsson: “Dicty. of the Poetical Language,” Copenhagen, 1860; Cleasby and Vigfusson: “Dicty. of the Prose Language,” Oxford, 1869-71, completed as far as “R.” W. W. S.
Ideographic.
Name for writing in which single characters express ideas; the hieroglyphics or picture writing of Egypt, and the languages of ancient Babylonia and Assyria are partly ideographic. G. R.
Idiom.
A native peculiarity of speech.
Igarra.
African: dialect of the Yoruba.
Igbira.
African: a dialect of the Yoruba. See [Igala].
Igbira-hima, Igbira-panda.
African: dialects of the Nufi.
Ighur, see [Uigur].
Ika.
American: dialect of L. California.
Illinois.
American: the Algonkin of the State so named after the original tribes, “Illeni,” “the men.” Vocab., “Trans. Amer. Ethnol.,” vol. ii., p. 112.
Illyrian.
Slavonic: a written dialect of Servian, closely allied to Wendish. See “Grammatik.,” by Babukic, Wien, 1839; Dicty. by Fröhlich, “Ill-Dutch,” Wien, 1853-4.
Illyric or Thraco-Illyric.
Name for a class of Aryan languages, of which the Skipetar or Albanian is the only modern representative. See [Pelasgic].
Ilmormo.
African: a dialect of Galla.
⁂ It is a name for the Galla proper, by some alleged to be Semitic or Sub-Semitic, but the relations are very remote. H. C.
Ilocana or Iloco.
Malayan: a dialect of the Philippines. Vocaby. by Carro, Manila, 1849.
Inbask or Inbazk.
Moghol: a dialect of Yeniseian or Ostiak, somewhat allied to Arini. Klaproth: “Asia Pol.,” p. 171.
Inca.
American: a name given to the Quichua language, after a dynasty of Peru. See [Quichua].
Incorporating.
A name for the agglutinative languages of America. See [Polysynthetic].
Indeni.
A dialect of Papuan, also called Nitendi.
India.
Name for Hindostan: land of the Indus, or of the Hindoos, who inhabit it.
⁂ For aboriginal languages see Hunter’s “Comparative Vocabulary of the Non-Aryan Languages of India”; Caldwell’s “Comp. Gr.”; Papers by Dr. Seth Stevenson, &c. See West Indies.
Indian.
A name given to many dialects of the aborigines of New England and other parts of America. ☞
Indian Archipelago.
Languages Polynesian: classed as Malayan and Negritic.
Indian, Old.
A name for Sanskrit.
Indians.
N. American: The Nova Scotia Indians have all decayed away. They were a people who in their habits more especially used the sea-coast, banks of lakes, rivers, &c.; the mountaineer is the country Indian, solely engaged in hunting spoils for trade and subsistence. The E. States have still a sprinkling of mongrel races, so intermixed as to leave but a slight trace of the old N. American sons of the forest. The Red Indian of Newfoundland was cannibal in his habits, and the race is utterly extinct. I have not met, on the Labrador, any mixture between the Esquimaux and the mountaineer and Mic-mac tribes, but frequently children of English and Esquimaux. J. T.
Indic.
A name for the Hindoo branch of the great Aryan family of languages, comprising Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali, Mahratta, Hindi, Bengali, &c. The country N. of the Indus was called Arya-âvarta, “abode of the Aryas.”
⁂ A S.W. branch of the great Aryan family, who in pre-historic times were settled to the N. and N.W. of Kâbul, became in the end the Brahmanic Aryans of India, and the Zoroastrian Aryans of Iran (Persia). There is no doubt that the Indian Aryans travelled mainly to the S.W., crossing first, and settling in the Land of the Seven Rivers—the Indus, Punjâb (or Five Rivers), and the Sarasvâti—and that they proceeded thence gradually along the Jumna and Ganges, till they reached the Bay of Bengal. Ultimately, under the name of Hindûs (whence Hindûstan), they occupied all the district around and in connection with this great river system, displacing and driving to the south an earlier race, who still inhabit the S.E. and S. of the Deccan (Dakshina, so called as on the right hand—dexter—of the invading Hindû race), and who are allied to the Moghols of Central Asia. The dialect of the earlier, as of the existing populations to the S. and E., is of Turanian or Nishada origin. The principal Aryan dialects at present are Bengali, Hindi, and Mahratta, all of them lineal descendants of the Devanagari or Sanskrit, which is no longer a spoken language. Hindustani, though mainly Aryan in its vocabulary, and wholly so in its structure, is rather the language of general communication than a distinct dialect. See “Comparative Grammar of the Aryan Languages of India,” by Beames. W. S. W. V. See [Dravidian].
Indo-Chinese.
A collective term for a class of languages embracing Anamite, Siamese, and allied dialects. See Leyden in “Asiatic Researches,” vol. x.; Brown’s “Comparative Table” in the “Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,” 1837.
Indo-European, see [Aryan].
Bopp’s “Comparative Grammar”; “Vergleichende Grammatik des Sansk., Zend., Griech., Lat., Lithau., Altslav., Gothischen und Deutschen,” 4 vols., Berlin, 1833-42; English translation by Eastwick, 3 vols., London, 1862.
Indo-Germanic.
Same as Indo-European. See Schleicher: “Indo-Germanische Chrestomathie,” Weimar, 1869; Fick: “Wörterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen,” Göttingen, 1871. W. W. S.
Indo-Parthian.
Name for an early dynasty of Kabulistan, then probably of much greater extent; their coins are found over the whole of the Punjab and into India. W. S. W. V.
Indo-Portuguese.
Mixed dialect used at the seaports of Ceylon, formed by a combination of Portuguese with Dutch and Sanskrit.
Indo-Scythian, Indo-Scythic.
An early dynasty of Kabulistan founded about B.C. 80, by a nomadic people called Yue-tchi by the Thibetans.
⁂ The language used by these monarchs on their coins is two-fold; Aryan and Greek. See Wilson’s “Ariana Antiqua,” pp. 347-381. G. R.
Inflectional.
Same as polysyllabic; name for the highest class of speech yet known to man. It is specially applied to the Aryan family of languages, which express the “moods, tenses, cases, and all other modifications of meaning in verbs and nouns by means of suffixes ... mutilated fragments of words.”—Farrar.
Inganos.
American: Indians of N. Granada. See “Vocabulario,” “Los Indios del Andaqui,” pp. 20-21.
Ingush.
Lesgian: a dialect of Tshetsh, spoken by the Lamur, hill-men of Georgia and Circassia.
Inhambane.
African: a dialect of the Mozambique.
Inkalait, Inkilik, Inkulukhluait, Ingelmut.
American: dialects of Athabascan, spoken at the Eskimo frontier in the N.W.; belonging to the Kenai stock. ☞
Inkra, see [Accra].
Inniut or Innuit.
Native name for the Eskimo. It means “the people.”
Inongo.
African: dialect of Yarriba, vernacular on the W. Coast.
Insam.
A Papuan dialect of New Guinea.
Inscriptions.
The most durable means of preserving individual records of written speech. They are termed, variously, “incised,” “impressed,” “lapidary,” “monumental,” “numismatic,” “painted.” The famous Rosetta and Carpentras stones, and the decree of Canopus from Egypt, and the Behistun rock inscriptions, are examples of bilingual records, that serve, by means of comparison, to facilitate decipherment. The Assyrian cuneiform writing and the Egyptian hieroglyphs have thus been explained, and the Chinese have in use extensive libraries of stone inscriptions at the present day. See Gesenius: “Scripturæ Linguæque Phœniciæ Monumenta,” 2 vols., Leipsig, 1837.
Intibuca.
American: one of the four native languages of Honduras.
Ionic or Ionian.
A sub-dialect of classical Greek; the original Ionians are said to have been Pelasgoi. It was largely cultivated in Asia Minor, and is the dialect of Homer and Herodotus. For some time before the rise of the Attic school, circa B.C. 400, it was the established language of prose literature. See Portus: “Dict.: Ionicum-Græc.-Lat.” London, 1825.
Iowa.
American: a dialect of Dacota or Sioux. Iowa, a State admitted in 1846, is derived from the Pahoja, or “Grey-snow,” Indians, who now reside N. of the R. Des-Moines. Schoolcraft: “History ... of the I. Tribes,” Philadelphia, vol. iv., p. 307.
Iquito.
American: a dialect of Carib.
Iranic or Iranian.
Class name for the Persian branch of the Aryan family of languages. It includes Bactrian or Zend, ancient Persian, Pehlevi, Pazend, and modern Persian. The word “Iranian” is from “Arya.” See under Aryan.
Ireland, New, under [N].
Irish or Erse (Fenic).
Celtic: the native dialect of Ireland, and closely allied to Gaelic. In writing it an alphabet is still in use, formed from the Latin, and closely resembling the old Anglo-Saxon characters, which were in fact borrowed from it. See Dicty. by O’Reilly, Dublin, 1864; “Old Irish Glosses,” by Stokes and others. W. W. S.
Irofa.
Japanese alphabet, taken from the first three letters.
Iron, Irun, Iran.
A dialect of the Caucasus. See [Osset].
Iroquois, Irokese.
American: it has a double import—1. As the special name of a tribe or nation, of the State of New York. 2. As a general name for the class, the most important members of which, the Iroquois themselves, the Onondagas, the Senecas, the formidable Mohawks, and others are, probably, the most familiar representatives of the traditional Red Indian, especially in his capacity of hero and warrior. R. G. L.
See Schoolcraft: “Comparative Vocaby.,” Albany, 1847; Vocaby. by Howse, “Proceed. Philol. Socy.,” vol. iv., London, 1856.
Irula, Irular.
Dravidian: a dialect of Canarese, vernacular in the Nilgherry Hills; it is allied to Budugur. Vocaby. in Hunter’s “Comp. Dicty.”
Isanna.
American: a dialect of Baniwa; others are the Tomo-Maroa and the Javita.
Isère.
A sub-dialect of Provençal. Ducoin: Notice in “Courrier de l’Isère,” 1834.
Isiele.
African: a dialect of the Yoruba, allied to Aro, Mbofia, and Isoama. H. C.
Ismaelite, Ishmaelite.
Arabic: dialect of N. Arabia.
Isoama or Iswama.
African: a dialect of the Yoruba, with the same affinities as the Isiele. H. C.
Isolating.
A term for monosyllabic forms of speech.
Issel.
Over-Yssel: provincial dialect of Holland.
Isubu.
African: spoken near the Cameroon, W. Africa; it is classed by Bleek as Bantu.
⁂ One of the three best known languages of the coast belonging to the N.W. branch of the Kaffir; the Benga and Dualla being the other two. In all three there is a large and laudable amount of missionary literature: the most in the Dualla, the least in the Benga. R. G. L.
Italian.
(1) The native tongue of Italy, spoken in many dialects. It is formed directly from the Latin or Old Italic, by union with the Teutonic forms of Gothic and Longobardic settlers. Called the “vulgar tongue” by Dante, Petrarch, and Boccacio, it has since been much polished in Tuscany, and now forms one of the most refined languages of modern society, lending itself specially to the requirements of vocal melody. See Manuzzi: “Vocab. della Crusca,” 4 vols., Florence, 1868.
(2) Dialects are divided into classes: 1, the Lombardic, or dialects of Upper Italy; 2, the Romanic, or dialects of Middle Italy; 3, the Neapolitan, or dialects of S. Italy; 4, Cant or slang, called Furbesco and Zerga or Gergo.
Italic or Old Italian.
A collective name for that branch of the Aryan family of languages which includes classical Latin, Oscan, Umbrian, Messapian or Iapygian, and perhaps Tosk, Tuscan, or Etruscan, all with alphabets allied to the early Roman. Fabbretti: “Glossarium,” Turin, 1838, &c. See [Romance].
Itam.
Term in Malay. See [Bolong].
Ite or Itenaz, and Itonoma.
American: dialects of Bolivia, spoken in the missions of Moxos, and allied to Chapacura. H. C.
ADDENDA.
Ibbodah.
African: native name of the Kacunda, who speak Shabun.
Iddoa.
American: native name of the Scott’s Valley Indians; they speak a dialect of Shasta.
Idibae.
American: aborigines of Darien.
Igala.
African: a separate language from Igarra, spoken in the Yoruba district. See Kölle’s “Pol. Afr.” H. C.
Ihongworong, under [J].
Ildefenso.
American: same as Aldefenso. See [Pueblo].
Illano, Ilyano.
Same as Hilluna. See [Ilocana].
Inabak, Inagata.
Malayan: sub-dialects of Abak.
Ingrian.
Ugrian: a branch of Fin, government of St. Petersburg. They are called Ingricot or Izhor. H. C.
Ingwa.
African: Nigritian dialect of Dagamba.
Inies (Tachies).
American: tribe of Caddoes.
Inta.
African: Bowdich’s name for the Fantee. H. C.
Ionian Is., see [Romaic].
Ipas.
American: tribe of Vilelas.
Isfor.
Same as Dofar; local dialect of Himyarite.
Isistine.
American: tribe of Lule.
Isi-Zulu, under [Z].
Islandisch.
Same as Norse; German form of Icelandic.
Isty-Semole.
American: i.e. “Wild men,” Creek Indians of Florida. See [Seminole].
Itelman, Itulmen.
Native name of the Kamtshatdales.
Izhor, see [Ingrian].