G. This is true, the sign is always left, and enables one, clearly enough, to trace stocks. Dialects are easily made. There are many in France, and they fill other parts of Europe. Every department in France has one.
DISCRIMINATING VIEWS OF PHILOLOGY AND PHILOLOGISTS.--G. It is not clear what Heckewelder meant by "whistling sound," in the prefix pronouns. I told Mr. Duponceau that it had been better that the gentleman's MSS. were left as he originally wrote them, with mere corrections as to grammar--that we should then, in fact, have had Indian information. For Heckewelder thought and felt like a Delaware, and believed all their stories.[89]
[89] This admission of the re-composition of Mr. Heckewelder's letters, and the excellent missionary's general deficiency, furnishes a striking confirmation of the views and sagacity of a critic of the North American Review, writing on that topic, in 1825. And the more so, as those views were conjectural, but they were the conjectures of one who had personally known Mr. Heckewelder.
MONOSYLLABIC LANGUAGE.--G. You have asserted that all the Indian roots are monosyllables.
S. Most of them, not all. This is a branch to which I have paid particular attention; and if there is anything in Indian philology in which I deem myself at home, it is in the analysis of Indian words, the digging out of roots, and showing their derivatives and compounds.
G. The societies would print your observations on these topics. They are of much interest.
ORIGIN OF THE INDIAN LANGUAGE.--S. The Hebrew is based on roots like the Indian, which appear to have strong analogies to the Semitic family. It is not clearly Hindostanee, or Chinese, or Norse. I have perused Rafn's Grammar by Marsh. The Icelandic (language) clearly lies at the foundation of the Teutonic.
G. I have not seen this. The grammatical principles of the Hebrew [90] are widely different (from the Indian). There is, in this respect, no resemblance. I think the Indian language has principles akin to the Greek. The middle moods, or voices, in the Greek and Indian dialects are alike; they make the imperfect past, or aorist, in a similar manner.
[90] Mr. G. did not understand the Hebrew, and was not aware that the person he addressed had made a study of it in particular reference to the Indian.
PATOIS.--G. The great impediment to popular instruction in France, is the multiplicity of patois, and the tenacity of the peasantry for them. The same objection exists to the use of so many Indian dialects by such numbers of petty tribes. Pity these were not all abolished. They can never prosper without coming on to general grounds in this respect.