On the Caucasian language see Georgia (Vol. 11, p. 758) and Caucasia (Vol. 5, p. 546).
On other European languages see Basques (Vol. 3, p. 485), by the late Rev. Wentworth Webster, author of Basque Legends, and Julien Vinson, author of Le Basque et les langues Mexicaines; and for the Etruscan language Etruria (Vol. 9, p. 854), by Professor R. S. Conway.
On African languages see Bantu Languages (Vol. 3, p. 356), by Sir H. H. Johnston; Bushmen (Vol. 41, p. 871) and Hottentots (Vol. 13, p. 805); and, for the intermediate group, the article Hausa (Vol. 13, p. 69).
On the languages of the North American Indians see the article Indians, North American (especially p. 457 of Vol. 14), by Dr. A. F. Chamberlain, professor of anthropology, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts.
Alphabet
This list of articles will serve the student as a guide for the purely linguistic articles. Besides the general treatment in the article Philology from which we started, he should read articles on such general subjects as Phonetics (Vol. 21, p. 458), by Dr. Henry Sweet, author of A Primer of Phonetics, A History of English Sounds since the Earliest Period, etc. This leads to a study of the article Alphabet (Vol. 1, p. 723), equivalent to 30 pages of this Guide, written by Professor Peter Giles of Cambridge and illustrated with a plate and various fac-similes of early alphabets. This article is supplemented by Professor Giles’s articles on all the letters of the alphabet, which deal with the history and form of the symbol, the character of the sound it stands for and, particularly, the development and change of the sound in English and its dialects. For instance the article on the letter N describes four different sounds, of which there are two in English—usually distinguished as n and ng; explains that in the early Indo-European language some n’s and m’s could sometimes be pronounced as vowels; describes the opposite process, the nasalization of vowels, especially in French; and closes by saying: “It is possible to nasalize some consonants as well as vowels; nasalized spirants play an important part in the so-called Yankee pronunciation of Americans.”
Artificial Languages
From alphabets the student may well turn to ideal languages in the article Universal Languages (Vol. 27, p. 746), by Professor Henry Sweet, which criticizes Volapük and Esperanto and the Idiom Neutral as being unscientific, not really international—even from a European point of view, and still less when one considers the growing importance of Japan and China in world-trade and world-history. Their being based on national languages Dr. Sweet thinks is a disadvantage. But in their comparative success he sees proof that a universal language is possible. See also Prof. Sweet’s separate articles Volapük (Vol. 28, p. 178) and Esperanto (Vol. 9, p. 773).
Writing
The article Writing (Vol. 28, p. 852) deals, chiefly from the anthropological standpoint, with primitive attempts to record ideas in an intelligible form, for example with “knot-signs,” “message-sticks,” picture-writing and the like. The needs, which led to the invention of these primitive forms of writing, were: mnemonic, recalling that something is to be done at a certain time—the primitive “tickler” was a knotted string or thong, like our knotted handkerchief as a reminder, and these knot-strings were finally used for elementary accountings, commercial or chronological, like the use of the abacus in little shops, or of the similar system in scoring games of pool; to communicate with some one at a distance, for which marked or notched sticks, engraved or coloured pebbles, wampum belts, etc., were used; and, third, to distinguish one’s own property or handicraft whence cattle-brands, trade-marks, etc. In Assyria, Egypt and China picture-writing developed into conventional signs: on these see Egypt (Vol. 9, p. 60), and China (Vol. 6, p. 218). All of these are of great interest to the general reader, but the article Cuneiform (Vol. 7, p. 629) by Dr. R. W. Rogers, professor of Hebrew and Old Testament exegesis, Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, New Jersey, has the sort of entertainment in it that there is in a good detective story, since it tells how the meaning of the mysterious wedge-shaped inscriptions on the rocks at Mount Rachmet in Persia was discovered.