The last will be considered at once, and dismissed. More has been written on the Otomi than any other language of these parts; the proper Mexican not excepted. It was observed by Naxera that it was monosyllabic rather than polysynthetic, as so many of the American languages are, with somewhat doubtful propriety, denominated. A Mexican language, with a Chinese characteristic, could scarcely fail to suggest comparisons. Hence, the first operation on the Otomi was to disconnect it from the languages of the New, and to connect it with those of the Old World. With his accustomed caution, Gallatin satisfies himself with stating what others have said, his own opinion evidently being that the relation to the Chinese was one of analogy rather than affinity.
Doubtless this is the sounder view; and one confirmed by three series of comparisons made by the present writer.
The first shows that the Otomi, as compared with the monosyllabic languages of Asia, en masse, has several words in common. But the second qualifies our inferences, by showing that the Maya, a language more distant from China than the Otomi, and, by means inordinately monosyllabic in its structure, has, there or thereabouts, as many. The third forbids any separation of the Otomi from the other languages of America, by showing that it has the ordinary amount of miscellaneous affinities.
In respect to the Chinese, &c., the real question is not whether it has so many affinities with the Otomi, but whether it has more affinities with the Otomi than with the Maya or any other American language; a matter which we must not investigate without remembering that some difference in favour of the Otomi is to be expected, inasmuch as two languages with short or monosyllabic words will, from the very fact of the shortness and simplicity of their constituent elements, have more words alike than two polysyllabic forms of speech.
The fact, however, which most affects the place of the Otomi language is the monosyllabic character of other American languages, e. g. the Athabaskan and the Attacapa.
As these are likely to be the subject of some future investigation, I lay the Otomi, for the present, out of consideration; limiting myself to the expression of an opinion, to the effect that its philological affinities are not very different from what its geographical position suggests.
Of the[43] Pirinda and Tarasca we have grammars, or rather grammatical sketches; abstracts of which, by Gallatin, may be found in his Notes on the Semi-civilized Nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America, in the first volume of the Transactions of the American Ethnological Society. The following are from the Mithridates.
Pirinda Paternoster.
Cabutumtaki ke exjechori pininte;
Niboteachatii tucathi nitubuteallu;
Tantoki hacacovi nitubutea pininte;
Tarejoki nirihonta manicatii ninujami propininte;
Boturimegui dammuce tupacovi chii;
Exgemundicovi boturichochii, kicatii pracavovi kue¸entumundijo boturichochijo;
Niantexechichovi rumkue¸entuvi innivochochii;
Moripachitovi cuinenzimo tegui.
Tucatii.
Tarasca Paternoster.