4. What has been stated in the previous explanation of Result 3 applies to the languages of the continent of America as well as to those of Africa.
5. Not only the same words but the same minute transitions which words undergo may be recognized in the Four Continents, and the steps of transition are much more completely traceable when the various Continents form the subject of comparison than when the investigation is confined to one Continent. Compare, for example, (See Appendix A, p. [13],) Ano, “A Day” (Caraibs); Antu, Antú, “The Sun, A Day” (Araucan, South America); Antu, Andru, “A Day” (Madagascar, South Africa); Indra, The Indian “God of Day” (Sanscrit, Asia); Inti, Indi, “The Sun” (South America).
6. It will be seen that in this instance, and in numerous other examples, finer shades of transition are restored by means of a comparison including the Four Continents.
7. As regards the Continent of Africa, by this comparison all its synonymes of the class selected for analysis have, with a few trifling exceptions, been exhausted. As regards the other three Continents, so large a portion, probably the great majority, of these synonymes have been introduced from every region of those continents, that the evidence thus obtained, combined as it is with a complete investigation of the African terms, may be considered as equally conclusive with the proofs which would have been furnished by an exhaustion of the synonymes of all the four continents.
The examination of synonymous terms is the principle which has been pursued by Humboldt, in his work on “The Basque,” and by Du Ponceau in his Treatise on the “Algonquyn Dialects of the North American Indians.” It is the most satisfactory mode of investigating languages, because it involves an explanation of the differences as well as of the resemblances they mutually display.
8. Hence it follows that when all the dialects of each continent are thus compared in the aggregate with those of each of the other three, the very same language is reproduced by the reunion of the “disjecta membra.”
With reference more especially to the third and fourth results above stated, I may here advert to the researches of two philologists of the highest eminence, whose conclusions will not, in the present state of philological knowledge, be disputed,—the German writer Klaproth, and Dr. Prichard: the former has treated of the proofs of affinity observable among the Asiatic languages; the latter has discussed the proofs of mutual resemblance displayed by certain languages usually classed under the term “Indo-European.”
The affinities which present themselves among the different [pg 018] languages of the single continent of Asia, in the following examples, have been selected as evidence of the original connexion of those languages by Klaproth.
Words for “The Sun.”
Asia.—Chor Churr (Ossetian.)