The Persian grammar also combines many European languages:
| Persian. | Welsh. | English. | Latin. | German. |
| Men, I. | My. | Mine. | Meus. | Mein. |
| Tou, thou. | Thou. | Tu. | Du. | |
| Av, he, she, or it. | Idem, spelt Ev. | |||
| A een, this. | Hyn.; Hon. | |||
| Bod|n|, to be; (n. infinitive affix.) | Bod. | |||
| Am, I am. | Idem. | (Eim|i, Greek.) |
This tense is very like Latin:
Shou, be thou.
Shou d (sit), let him be.
Shou eem (simus), let us be.
Shou eet (sitis), be ye.
Shou nd, let them be.[30]
Section III.
On the Changes which have taken place in the English Language. Effect of the Norman Conquest, as a Cause of these Changes exaggerated. Dr. Johnson's Opinion. Sir Walter Scott's. Speech of “Wamba” in Ivanhoe. Some of the most important Changes have occurred since the time of Chaucer. The modern English, the Provincial Dialects of Lancashire and other English Counties, and the Lowland Scotch, different Fragments of the Anglo-Saxon. The Provincial English Auxiliary Verb, “I Bin,” &c.
That extensive changes have taken place in many Human languages, within a comparatively limited period, is a truth of which the proofs are alike abundant and indisputable. The various dialects that sprang from the Latin after the downfall of the Roman Empire, the emanation of numerous dialects in the Scandinavian Kingdoms from one ancient tongue, “The Danska Tunge” or “Norse,” and finally the successive phases of transition through which the English language itself has passed since the period of the Norman conquest, conspire, with other examples of the same kind, at once to establish the occurrence of such changes, and to exhibit in a striking point of view their extraordinary variety and extent.
In order to account for differences, so characteristic and apparently so fundamental, as many of the languages which are the offspring of these changes display, it has generally been deemed necessary to ascribe them to the agency of a violent disturbing cause. Hence the origin of an opinion that may be regarded as the prevalent one, viz. that these varieties of dialect have been mainly produced by the influence of Foreign invasions and conquests, and the consequent admixture of [pg 030] the Languages of the dominant, with those of vanquished, nations.
The grounds of this conclusion may be appropriately tested—and its fallacy, as I conceive, satisfactorily established—in one single instance, which I have been naturally led to select as involving considerations of peculiar interest to English readers. I allude to the influence which the Norman conquest of England is supposed to have exercised, in the production of those peculiar features, which distinguish the modern language of England from the original Anglo-Saxon tongue.
The share which the Norman conquest may have had in the formation of those peculiarities may be best determined by investigating 1st the immediate, and 2d the remote, consequences of that event.