These forms, “Om, Amo, Amen,” are the common inflections of the first person in all the Indo-European languages. (See Dr. Prichard on the Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations, pp. 130, 136.) In the North American Indian dialects it will be seen that they occur in all the three persons. There are instances of the same kind in the Indo-European Tongues for the Doric Greek Infinitive as in Poth-emen-ai, “To desire,” and the Greek Passive Participle as in Tupt-omen-os, Tupt-omen-e, “Struck,” are examples of the application of “Amen or Omen” to any individual of the Human Race, in other words, to all the three persons!
This inflection “Amen” exists in the Tartar dialects in the first person, as in Bol-amen, “I am,” Bol-asin, “Thou art,” &c.
The following are examples of its use for the first person in the Greek:
| Singular. | Plural. |
| Amen, used as an Inflection for “I.” | Amen, used as an Inflection for “We.” |
| E-tupt-omēn, “I was struck.” | Tupt-omen, “We strike.” |
| Tupt-oi-mēn, “Would that Iwere struck.” | |
| Ē-mēn, “I had been.” | Ē-men, “We were.” |
These examples will serve to illustrate the proposition that in inflections and other grammatical details the North American Indian dialects partially coincide with individual Indo-European languages in the same manner as those languages partially agree among themselves! It remains to be pointed out that where these two groups of tongues differ, the differences are such as time might have produced, and that they have the same basis in common.
“Om, Amo, Amen,” are according to Dr. Prichard, pronouns confused with the verb. It is an interesting fact, that “Amo”[153] is actually used as the separate pronoun of the third person “He” in the dialect of the “Blackfeet,” one of the N. American Indian Tribes to the west of the Mississippi visited by Mr. Catlin! Now, as all pronouns were originally[154] nouns, names for a “Human Being,” (see p. [13],) words of this class must have been in the first instance applied indifferently to all the three Persons. But in the course of time—1, In some languages different nouns were appropriated to different Persons,—the most common noun being applied to the First; (this accounts for the occurrence of “Amo Om Amen,” probably forms of the most primitive[155] noun—in the first Person of the Indo-European languages!)—2, In other tongues supplementary pronouns were used to mark the requisite distinction of Persons, the most common nouns being still used agreeably [pg 169] to previous habit,—(though no longer of practical service)—in combination with the verb; (this is the case in the Algonquyn dialects in which the same inflection is repeated in all the three persons, and the requisite distinction of persons is made by means of pronoun prefixes or supplementary pronouns, a distinction which, in the Greek, &c., is made by varying the final inflections or original pronouns, as in “Tupt-oi-mēn, Tupt-oi-o,” &c.)[156]
The pronoun prefixes of these North American Indian dialects, which as previously intimated, are common to the Welsh and the Hebrew, and other Semetic tongues remain to be noticed.
Algonquyn Pronoun Prefixes.
(See previous specimens of Algonquyn Verbs.)