Among the black races, whether or not the eastern negros of Melanesia are connected by race with the African negros, the Melanesian languages stand apart. Nor do all African negros speak languages of one family, but some, such as the Mandingo, seem separate from the great language-family of Central and South Africa, named the Bantu from tribes calling themselves simply “men” (ba-ntu). One of the chief peculiarities of the Bantu languages is their working (just unlike the Tatar languages) by putting prefixes in front. Thus the African magician is called mganga, the plural of which is waganga, magicians. The Kafirs of a certain district bear the well-known name of the basuto, which is a plural form, a single native being called mosuto, while his country is lesuto, his language sesuto, and his character or quality bosuto. In South Africa lies a very different language-family, the Hottentot-Bushman, remarkable for the way in which “clicks,” much like what among us nurses make to children and coachmen to horses, do duty as consonants in words. Lastly, turning to America, the native languages fall into a variety of families. Some of these are known to English readers by a word or two, as the Eskimo of the Arctic coasts by the name of the kayak or single boat on which our sport canoes are modelled; the Algonquin which prevailed from New England to Virginia at the time of the early colonists, and whence we have mocassin and tomahawk; the Aztec of Mexico known by the ocelot and the cacao-bean; the Tupi-Carib of the West Indies and the Brazilian forests, the home of the toucan and jaguar; lastly the Quichua or Peruvian, the language of the inca.
In concluding this account of the chief families of language, it is to be noticed that there are many more, some only consisting of a few dialects or a single one. Altogether a list of fifty or a hundred might perhaps be made, of which no one has been satisfactorily shown to be related to any other. It may, indeed, be expected that often two or three which now seem separate may prove on closer examination to be branches of one family, but there seems no prospect of the families all coming together in this way as offshoots of one original language. The question whether there was one primitive speech, or many, has been in past times most useful in encouraging the scientific comparison of languages. Both theories claim to account for the actual state of language in the world. On the one hand it may be argued that the languages descended from the primitive tongue have branched off so far apart as often no longer to show their connection; on the other hand, if there were many primitive languages, of which those that survived have given rise to families, this would come to much the same state of things. But if, as seems likely, the original formation of language did not take place all at once, but was a gradual process extending through ages, and not absolutely stopped even now, then it is not a hopeful task to search for primitive languages at all (see [page 131]). In the present improved state of philology it answers better to work back from known languages to the lost ancestral languages whence they must have come down. It has been seen that this study leads to excellent results as to the history, not only of the languages themselves, but of the nations speaking them, as when it gives the clue to the peopling of the South Sea Islands, or proves some remote ancestral connexion between the ancient Britons, and the English and Danes who came after them to our land. Yet though language is so valuable a help and guide in national history, it must not be trusted as if it could give the whole origin of a race, or go back to its beginning. All negroes do not speak languages of one family, nor all yellow, or brown, or white men. In exploring the early life of nations, their languages may lead us far back, often much farther than historical records, but they seem hardly to reach anywhere near the origins of the great human races, still less to the general origin of mankind.
CHAPTER VII.
WRITING.
Picture-writing, [168]—Sound-pictures, [169]—Chinese Writing, [170]—Cuneiform Writing, [172]—Egyptian Writing, [173]—Alphabetic Writing, [175]—Spelling, [178]—Printing, [180].
Taught as we are to read and write in early childhood, we hardly realize the place this wondrous double art fills in civilized life, till we see how it strikes the barbarian who has not even a notion that such a thing can be. John Williams, the South Sea Island missionary, tells how once being busy carpentering, and having forgotten his square, he wrote a message for it with a bit of charcoal on a chip, and sent this to his wife by a native chief, who, amazed to find that the chip could talk without a mouth, for long afterwards carried it hung by a string round his neck, and told his wondering countrymen what he saw it do. So in South Africa a black messenger carrying a letter has been known to hide it under a stone while he loitered by the way, lest it should tell tales of him, as it did of whatever was going on. Yet the art of writing, mysterious as it seemed to these rude men, was itself developed by a few steps of invention, which if not easy to make, are at any rate easy to understand when made. Even uncivilized races have made the first step, that of picture-writing. Had the missionary merely made a sketch of his L-square on the chip, it would have carried his message, and the native would have understood the whole business as a matter of course. Beginning at this primitive stage, it will be possible to follow thence through its whole course the history of writing and printing.
Fig. 47.—Picture-writing, rock near Lake Superior (after Schoolcraft.)
Fig. 48.—Pater noster in Mexican picture-writing (after Aubin).