No doubt the differences of language are as numerous as the other distinctions which characterize the several races of men. The various degrees of natural capacity and of intellectual progress; the prevalence of particular faculties; the nature of surrounding circumstances; the ease or difficulty with which our different wants and desires are gratified, will produce not only peculiar characters in the nature and construction of language, but in its copiousness and development.
One of the most curious points in the subject of language, is the continued existence in a large portion of Asia, very anciently civilized, and considerably advanced, at least in the useful arts, of simple monosyllabic languages, which are not in the slightest degree connected with the peculiar organization of the Mongolian variety, to which these people belong, and whose language is distinctly polysyllabic.
The attempts that have been made to trace the origin of languages to the varieties of our species, or to the influence of climate, have hitherto been fruitless, and the doctrines broached on the obscure subject refuted by observation. Mr. Jefferson states that there are twenty radical languages in America for one in Asia; more than twenty languages, he adds, are still spoken in the kingdom of Mexico, most of which are at least as different from one another as the Greek and the German, the French and the Polish. The variety of idioms spoken by the people of the new continent, and which without the least exaggeration may be stated at some hundreds, offers a very striking phenomenon, particularly when we compare it to the few languages spoken in Asia and in Europe. Vater also informs us, that in Mexico, where the causes producing insulation of the several tribes have been for a long time in a course of diminution, Clavigero recognised thirty-five different languages. Some of these words are rather of difficult pronunciation, and Humboldt tells us that Notlazomahuiztespixcatatzin is the term of respect with which they addressed their priests. During the French revolution, a learned Jacobin discovered that the early Peruvians adored a divinity who patronized the Sans-culottes, of their day, and who was named Cawaltze-quos, i. e. without breeches. Such barbarous words do not constitute that engaging tongue that Shakspeare calls “speaking holiday,” but rather confirms Byron’s ideas of the Russians’ difficult expressions, which no man has leisure to pronounce except on high-days and holidays.
Although brutes pronounce no articulate sounds, there is, no doubt but they have a language perfectly intelligible to one another. Their manner of expressing their different emotions is in some instances perfectly distinct; and birds have most decidedly a peculiar language. The following may be said to be the words of a nightingale’s strain observed by Bechstein, an ingenious ornithologist, and committed to paper several times while he listened with deep attention to that sweet bird’s “complaining notes,” that “tune our distresses and record our woes.”
Tiouou, tiouou, tiouou tiouou
Shpe, tiou, tokoua
Tio, tio, tio, tio.
Kououtio, kououtio kououtio,
Tskouo, tskouo, tskouo,
Tsii, tsii, tsii, tsii, tsii, tsii, tsii, tsii tsii tsii,
Kouoror tiou. Tskoua pipitskousisi
Tso, tso, tso, tso, tso, tso, tso tso, tso, tso, tso, tso, tsirrhading!
Tsisi si tosi si, si, si, si, si, si, si.
Tsorre tsorre tsorre tsorrehi
Tsatn, tsatn, tsatn tsatn tsatn tsatn tsatn tsi,
Dlo, dlo, dlo dla, dlo dlo dlo dlo dlo
Kouioo trrrrrrrrtzt
Lu, lu, lu, ly ly ly li li li li
Kouio didl li loulyli
Ha guour, guour, koui kouio!
Kouio, kououi kououi kououi koui, koui, koui, koui,
Ghi ghi ghi
Gholl, gholl, gholl gooll ghia hududoi
Koui koui koui ha hia dia dillhi!
Hets, hets, hets, hets, hets, hets, hets hets, hets, hets
Hets, hets, hets, hets, hets
Tourrho hostehoi
Kouia, kooia, kouia, kouia, kouia kouia kouia kouiati!
A story is related of an irascible Irish piper of the name of Molroy, who declared a war implacable against the feline race, as he swore that they invariably pronounced his name in their nocturnal concerts. Gall and various observers of animals have fully ascertained that the attention of dogs is awakened by our conversation. He brought one of these intelligent creatures with him from Vienna to Paris, which perfectly understood French and German, of which he satisfied himself by repeating before it whole sentences in both languages. A recent anecdote has been related of an old ship-dog, that leaped overboard and swam to the shore on hearing the captain exclaim, “Poor old Neptune! I fear we shall have to drown him!” and such was the horror which that threat inspired, that he never afterwards would approach the captain or any of the ship’s company, to whom he had previously been fondly attached. It must, however, be observed that in the brute creation, as in ours (sometimes more brutal species), peculiar attributes, that do not belong to the race, distinguish individuals gifted with what in man we might call a superior intellect, but which in these animals shows a superiority of what we term instinct. Spurzheim relates an instance of a cow belonging to Mr. Dupont de Nemours, which, amongst the whole kindred herd, was the only one that could open the gate leading to their pastures; and her anxious comrades, when arriving at the wished-for spot, invariably lowed for their conductor. It is also related of a hound, who, unable to obtain a seat near the fire without the risk of quarrelling with the dozing occupants that crowded the hearth, was wont to run out into the court-yard barking an alarum that brought away his rivals in comfort, when he quietly reentered the parlour, and selected an eligible stretching-place. This animal displayed as much ingenuity as the traveller who, according to the well-known story, ordered oysters for his horse for the purpose of clearing the fireside.
ECSTATIC EXALTATION.
This rapturous excitement is not unfrequently the province of the physician. Fortunately perhaps for the patient, it is an incurable malady, illustrating the lines of Dryden,