Man and His Migrations

by R. G. Latham

The permanence of language as a sign of origin must be determined, like every thing else of the same kind, by induction; and this tells us that both the loss and retention of a native tongue are illustrated by remarkable examples. It tells both ways. In St. Domingo we have negroes speaking French; and this is a notable instance of the adoption of a foreign tongue. But the circumstances were peculiar. One tongue was not changed for another; since no Negro language predominated. The real fact was that of a mixture of languages—and this is next to no language at all. Hence, when French became the language of the Haytians, the usual obstacle of a previously existing common native tongue, pertinaciously and patriotically retained, was wanting. It superseded an indefinite and conflicting mass of Negro dialects, rather than any particular Negro language.

In the southern parts of Central America the ethnology is obscure, especially for the Republics of San Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Yet if we turn to Colonel Galindo’s account of them, we find the specific statement that aborigines still exist, and that their language is the Spanish; not any native Indian dialect. As similar assertions respecting the extinction and replacement of original languages have frequently proved incorrect, let us assume this to be an over-statement—though I have no definite grounds for considering it one. Over-statement though it may be, it still shows the direction in which things are going; and that is towards the supremacy of a European tongue.

On the confines of Asia and Europe there is the nation, tribe or family of the Bashkirs. Their present tongue is the Turkish. It is believed, however, that originally it was the mother-tongue of the Majiars of Hungary.

Again, the present Bulgarian is akin to the Russian. Originally, it was a Turk dialect.

Lastly—for I am illustrating, not exhausting, the subject—there died, in the year 1770, at Karczag in Hungary, an old man named Varro; the last man, in Europe, that knew even a few words of the language of his nation. Yet this nation was and is a great one; no less a one than that of the ancient Komanian Turks, some of whom invaded Europe in the eleventh century, penetrated as far as Hungary, settled there as conquerors, and retained their language till the death of this same Varro. The rest of the nation remained in Asia; and the present occupants of the parts between the Caspian and the Aral are their descendants. Languages then may be lost; and one may be superseded by another.

The ancient Etruscans as a separate substantive nation are extinct: so is their language, which we know to have been peculiar. Yet the Etruscan blood still runs in the veins of the Florentine and other Italians.

On the other hand, the pertinacity with which language resists the attempts to supersede it is of no common kind. Without going to Siberia, or America, the great habitats of the broken and fragmentary families, we may find instances much nearer home! In the Isle of Man the native Manks still remains; though dominant Norsemen and dominant Anglo-Saxons have brought their great absorbent languages in collision with it. In Malta, the labourers speak Arabic—with Italian, with English, and with a Lingua Franca around them.

In the western extremities of the Pyrenees, a language neither French nor Spanish is spoken; and has been spoken for centuries—possibly milleniums. It was once the speech of the southern half of France, and of all Spain. This is the Basque of Biscay.

In contact with the Turk on one side, and the Greek and the Slavonic on the other, the Albanian of Albania still speaks his native Skipetar.

A reasonable philologist makes similarity of language strong—very strong—primâ facie evidence in favour of community of descent.