Born a Provencal, he easily familiarized himself with the dialect of the south. He said, "En be! moussu, ses sage?" as in lower Languedoc; "Onte anaras passa?" as in the Basses-Alpes; "Puerte un bouen moutu embe un bouen fromage grase," as in upper Dauphine. This pleased the people extremely, and contributed not a little to win him access to all spirits. He was perfectly at home in the thatched cottage and in the mountains. He understood how to say the grandest things in the most vulgar of idioms. As he spoke all tongues, he entered into all hearts.
Bilibin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and though he wrote in French and used French jests and French idioms, he described the whole campaign with a fearless self-censure and self- derision genuinely Russian. Bilibin wrote that the obligation of diplomatic discretion tormented him, and he was happy to have in Prince Andrew a reliable correspondent to whom he could pour out the bile he had accumulated at the sight of all that was being done in the army. The letter was old, having been written before the battle at Preussisch- Eylau.
Four hours passed by and the giant was replaced by another bandit. Danglars, who really began to experience sundry gnawings at the stomach, arose softly, again applied his eye to the crack of the door, and recognized the intelligent countenance of his guide. It was, indeed, Peppino who was preparing to mount guard as comfortably as possible by seating himself opposite to the door, and placing between his legs an earthen pan, containing chick-pease stewed with bacon. Near the pan he also placed a pretty little basket of Villetri grapes and a flask of Orvieto. Peppino was decidedly an epicure. Danglars watched these preparations and his mouth watered. "Come," he said to himself, "let me try if he will be more tractable than the other;" and he tapped gently at the door. "On y va," (coming) exclaimed Peppino, who from frequenting the house of Signor Pastrini understood French perfectly in all its idioms.
In the 18th century, to which these names have introduced us, the grammatical writings of J.C. Gottsched (_Deutsche Sprachkunst_, 1748) and J.C. Adelung (_Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart_, 1774-1786) exercised a decisive and far-reaching influence. Gottsched took as his basis the spoken language (_Umgangssprache_) of the educated classes of Upper Saxony (Meissen), which at this time approximated as nearly as possible to the literary language. His _Grammar_ did enormous services to the cause of unification, ultimately winning over the resisting south; but he carried his purism to pedantic lengths, he would tolerate no archaic or dialectical words, no unusual forms or constructions, and consequently made the language unsuited for poetry. Meanwhile an interest in Old German literature was being awakened by Bodmer; Herder set forth better ideas on the nature of language, and insisted on the value of native idioms; and the _Sturm und Drang_ led by Goethe encouraged all individualistic tendencies. All this gave rise to a movement counter to Gottsched's absolutism, which resulted in the revival of many obsolete German words and forms, these being drawn partly from Luther's Bible translation (cf. V. Hehn, "Goethe und die Sprache der Bibel," in the _Goethe-Jahrbuch_, viii. p. 187 ff.), partly from the older language and partly from the vocabulary peculiar to different social ranks and trades.[26] The latter is still a source of linguistic innovations. German literary style underwent a similar rejuvenation, for we are on the threshold of the second classical period of German literature. It had strengthened Gottsched's hand as a linguistic reformer that the earlier leaders of German literature, such as Gellert, Klopstock and Lessing, were Middle Germans; now Wieland's influence, which was particularly strong in South Germany, helped materially towards the establishment of one accepted literary language throughout all German-speaking countries; and the movement reaches its culmination with Goethe and Schiller. At the same time this unification did not imply the creation of an unalterable standard; for, just as the language of Opitz and Schottelius differed from that of Luther, so--although naturally in a lesser degree--the literary language of our day differs from that of the classic writers of the 18th century. Local peculiarities are still to be met with, as is to be seen in the modern German literature that emanates from Switzerland or Austria. Entry: MODERN
The materials for the study of their institutions and population are abundant, but lend themselves to discussion rather than to a summary of admitted facts. In the early history of south-western Asia the Semites form the most important ethnic group, which is primarily linguistic but also shares other remarkable characteristics. Two of the greatest religions of the world, Christianity and Islam, are Semitic in origin, as well as Judaism. In politics these races have been less successful in modern times, but the Semitic states of Babylonia and Assyria were once the principal centres for the development and distribution of civilization. It is generally agreed that this civilization can be traced back to an earlier race, the Sumero-Akkadians, whose language seems allied to the agglutinative idioms of central Asia. If this ancient civilized race was really allied to the ancestors of the Turks and Huns, it is a remarkable instance of how civilization thrives best by being transplanted at a certain period of growth. Still less is known of the early non-Aryan races of Asia Minor such as the Hittites and Alorodians. One hypothesis supposes that the shores of the Mediterranean were originally inhabited by a homogeneous race neither Aryan nor Semitic. Entry: 5
2. _Earliest Roman Inscriptions._--At Rome, at all events, it is clear from the unwavering voice of tradition that Latin was spoken from the beginning of the city. Of the earliest Latin inscriptions found in Rome which were known in 1909, the oldest, the so-called "Forum inscription," can hardly be referred with confidence to an earlier century than the 5th; the later, the well-known _Duenos_ (= later Latin _bonus_) inscription, certainly belongs to the 4th; both of these are briefly described below (§§ 40, 41). At this date we have probably the period of the narrowest extension of Latin; non-Latin idioms were spoken in Etruria, Umbria, Picenum and in the Marsian and Volscian hills. But almost directly the area begins to expand again, and after the war with Pyrrhus the Roman arms had planted the language of Rome in her military colonies throughout the peninsula. When we come to the 3rd century B.C. the Latin inscriptions begin to be more numerous, and in them (e.g. the oldest epitaphs of the Scipio family) the language is very little removed from what it was in the time of Plautus. Entry: 2
Hermann devoted his early attention to the classical poetical metres, and published several works on that subject, the most important being _Elementa doctrinae metricae_ (1816), in which he set forth a scientific theory based on the Kantian categories. His writings on Greek grammar are also valuable, especially _De emendanda ratione Graecae grammaticae_ (1801), and notes and excursus on Viger's treatise on Greek idioms. His editions of the classics include several of the plays of Euripides; the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes (1799); _Trinummus_ of Plautus (1800); _Poëtica_ of Aristotle (1802); _Orphica_ (1805); the Homeric _Hymns_ (1806); and the _Lexicon_ of Photius (1808). In 1825 Hermann finished the edition of Sophocles begun by Erfurdt. His edition of Aeschylus was published after his death in 1852. The _Opuscula_, a collection of his smaller writings in Latin, appeared in seven volumes between 1827 and 1839. Entry: HERMANN
Gujarati has no important local dialects, but there is considerable variation in the speeches of different classes of the community. Parsees and Mussulmans (when the latter use the language--as a rule the Gujarat Mussulmans speak Hindostani) have some striking peculiarities of pronunciation, the most noticeable of which is the disregard by the latter of the distinction between cerebral and dental letters. The uneducated Hindus do not pronounce the language in the same way as their betters, and this difference is accentuated in northern Gujarat, where the lower classes substitute _e_ for _i_, _c_ for _k_, _ch_ for _kh_, _s_ for _c_ and _ch_, _h_ for _s_, and drop _h_ as readily as any cockney. There is also (as in the case of the Mussulmans) a tendency to confuse cerebral and dental consonants, to substitute _r_ for _d_ and _l_, to double medial consonants, and to pronounce the letter _a_ as _å_, something like the _a_ in "all." The Bhils of the hills east of Gujarat also speak a rude Gujarati, with special dialectic peculiarities of their own, probably due to the fact that the tribes are of Dravidian origin. These Bhil peculiarities are further mixed with corruptions of Marathi idioms in Nimar and Khandesh, where we have almost a new language. Entry: GUJARATI
In the 17th century a number of Dutchmen, for the greater part from Holland and Zeeland, under Jan van Riebeek, had settled in South Africa, in Cape Town, where the Dutch navigation called into being a Dutch port. In course of time they were joined there by French emigrants (most of them Huguenots who left their country about 1688 and joined with other Huguenots from Holland in assuming the Dutch language), perhaps also by Portuguese and by Malay people, who, together with the English who settled there and after 1820 became numerous in Cape Colony, mixed some peculiarities of their language with the Dutch idioms. Thus in the first half of the 18th century the language arose which is now called the South African Dutch. Since 1880 the present Dutch language has became more frequently used in official writings, though with certain adaptations agreeably to the native idiom. Entry: DUTCH
North of the Meuse and the Rhine little was written as yet in the 13th century. Not until about 1300 does literary life begin to develop here (Melis Stoke's _Rijmcronijk_), and these writings were written in the language of the south with slight deviations here and there. Chancery and clergy had taken a written language to the north, deviating considerably from the native idiom in vogue there, which belonged to the Frisio-Frankish idioms. So this written language gradually spread over the west of the Netherlands and Belgium. The east of the Netherlands agreed in its chancery style more with the districts of Low Germany. Entry: DUTCH
Comparison is the instrument with which science works, and a scientific grammar, accordingly, is one in which the comparative method has been applied to the relations of speech. If we would understand the origin and real nature of grammatical forms, and of the relations which they represent, we must compare them with similar forms in kindred dialects and languages, as well as with the forms under which they appeared themselves at an earlier period of their history. We shall thus have a comparative grammar and an historical grammar, the latter being devoted to tracing the history of grammatical forms and usages in the same language. Of course, an historical grammar is only possible where a succession of written records exists; where a language possesses no older literature we must be content with a comparative grammar only, and look to cognate idioms to throw light upon its grammatical peculiarities. In this case we have frequently to leave whole forms unexplained, or at most conjecturally interpreted, since the machinery by means of which the relations of grammar are symbolized is often changed so completely during the growth of a language as to cause its earlier shape and character to be unrecognizable. Moreover, our area of comparison must be as wide as possible; where we have but two or three languages to compare, we are in danger of building up conclusions on insufficient evidence. The grammatical errors of the classical philologists of the 18th century were in great measure due to the fact that their area of comparison was confined to Latin and Greek. Entry: A
3. _Ancient Egyptian_, as we have seen, does not form the connecting link between Libyan and Cushitic which its geographical position would lead us to expect. It represents a third independent branch, or rather a second one, Libyan and Cushitic forming one division of Hamitic. A few resemblances with Libyan (M. de Rochemonteix in _Mémoires du congrès internat. des orientalistes_, Paris, 1873; elementary) are less due to original relationship than to the general better preservation of the northern idioms (see above). Frequent attempts to detach Egyptian from Hamitic and to attribute it to a Semitic immigration later than that of the other Hamites cannot be proved. Egyptian is, in many respects, more remote from Semitic than the Libyan-Cushitic division, being more agglutinative than the better types of its sister branch, having lost the most characteristic verbal flection (the Hamito-Semitic imperfect), forming the nominal plural in its own peculiar fashion, &c. The advantage of Egyptian, that it is represented in texts of 3000 B.C., while the sister tongues exist only in forms 5000 years later, allows us, e.g. to trace the Semitic principle of triliteral roots more clearly in Egyptian; but still the latter tongue is hardly more characteristically archaic or nearer Semitic than Beja or Kabylic. Entry: 3
It follows from this that the grammar of a people changes, like its pronunciation, from age to age. Anglo-Saxon or Early English grammar is not the grammar of Modern English, any more than Latin grammar is the grammar of modern Italian; and to defend an unusual construction or inflexion on the ground that it once existed in literary Anglo-Saxon is as wrong as to import a peculiarity of some local dialect into the grammar of the cultivated speech. It further follows that different languages will have different grammars, and that the differences will be more or less according to the nearer or remoter relationship of the languages themselves and the modes of thought of those who speak them. Consequently, to force the grammatical framework of one language upon another is to misconceive the whole nature of the latter and seriously to mislead the learner. Chinese grammar, for instance, can never be understood until we discard, not only the terminology of European grammar, but the very conceptions which underlie it, while the polysynthetic idioms of America defy all attempts to discover in them "the parts of speech" and the various grammatical ideas which occupy so large a place in our school-grammars. The endeavour to find the distinctions of Latin grammar in that of English has only resulted in grotesque errors, and a total misapprehension of the usage of the English language. Entry: GRAMMAR
The transmission of early Arabic poetry has been very imperfect. Many of the reciters were slain in battle, and it was not till the 8th to the 10th centuries and even later that the earliest collections of these poems were made. Many have to be recovered from grammars, dictionaries, &c., where single lines or groups of lines are quoted to illustrate the proper use of words, phrases or idioms. Moreover, many a reciter was not content to declaim the genuine verses of ancient poets, but interpolated some of his own composition, and the change of religion introduced by Islam led to the mutilation of many verses to suit the doctrines of the new creed.[3] Entry: LITERATURE
_The Pisaca Languages._--Before proceeding farther, it is advisable to discuss the fate of another small group of languages spoken in the extreme north-west of India. After the great fission which separated the main body of the Indo-Aryans from the Iranians, but before all the special phonetic characteristics of Iranian speech had developed, another horde of invaders crossed the Hindu Kush from the Pamirs, journeying directly south. They occupied the submontane tract, including the country round Chitral and Gilgit, Kashmir and Kafiristan. Some even followed the course of the Indus as far as Sind, and formed colonies there and in the western Punjab. Here they mingled with the Indo-Aryans who had come down the Kabul valley, and to a certain extent infected the local dialect with their idioms. How far their influence extended over the rest of India is undecided, and will probably never be known, but traces of it have been detected by some inquirers even in the dialects of modern Marathi. Those who remained behind in the hill country, the whole of which is popularly known as Dardistan, were isolated by the inhospitable nature of their home and by their own savage character. They seem to have had customs allied to cannibalism, and in later Indian literature legends grew around them as a race of demons called _Pisacas_, [Greek: hômophagoi], who spoke a barbaric tongue called _Paisaci_. This language appears now and then in the Sanskrit drama, and Sanskrit philologists wrote still-extant grammatical notices of its peculiarities. These show that it possessed an extremely archaic character, and the same fact is prominent in the Pisaca languages of the present day. Some words which were spoken in the oldest time are preserved with hardly a change of letter, while in India proper the corresponding forms have either disappeared altogether or have been so changed as to be hardly recognizable at first sight. The principal modern Pisaca languages are three or four spoken in Kafiristan, Khowar of Chitral, Shina of Gilgit, Kashmiri, and Kohistani. The last two are border tongues, much mixed with the neighbouring languages of India proper. The only one which has any literature is Kashmiri (q.v.). The rest are entirely uncultivated. Their general character may be described as partly Indian and partly Iranian, although they have in their isolated position developed some phonetic laws of their own. Entry: INDO
_Languages._--Until comparatively recent times Turkish and Greek were the only languages systematically taught or officially recognized in the Balkan lands subject to Turkish rule. The first, the speech of the conquering race, was the official language; the second, owing to the intellectual and literary superiority of the Greeks, their educational zeal and the privileges acquired by their church, became the language of the upper classes among the Christians. The Slavonic masses, however, both Servian and Bulgarian, preserved their language, which saved these nationalities from extinction. The Servian dialect extending into regions which escaped the Turkish yoke, enjoyed certain advantages denied to the Bulgarian: in free Montenegro the first Slavonic printing-press was founded in 1493; at Ragusa, a century later, Servian literature attained a high degree of excellence. Bulgarian, for nearly four centuries, ceased to be a written language except in a few monasteries; a literary revival, which began about the middle of the 18th century, was the first symptom of returning national consciousness. The Servian, Bulgarian and Rumanian languages have borrowed largely from the Turkish in their vocabularies, but not in their structural forms, and have adopted many words from the Greek. Modern Greek has also a large number of Turkish words which are rejected in the artificial literary language. The revival of the various Balkan nationalities was in every case accompanied or preceded by a literary movement; in Servian literature, under the influence of Obradovich and Vuk Karajich, the popular idiom, notwithstanding the opposition of the priesthood, superseded the ecclesiastical Russian-Slavonic; in Bulgaria the eastern dialect, that of the Sredna Gora, prevailed. Among the Greeks, whose literature never suffered a complete eclipse, a similar effort to restore the classical tongue resulted in a kind of compromise; the conventional literary language, which is neither ancient nor modern, differs widely from the vernacular. Albanian, the only surviving remnant of the ancient Thraco-Illyrian speech, affords an interesting study to philologists. It undoubtedly belongs to the Indo-European family, but its earlier forms cannot, unfortunately, be ascertained owing to the absence of literary monuments. Certain remarkable analogies between Albanian and the other languages of the Peninsula, especially Bulgarian and Rumanian, have been supposed to point to the influence exercised by the primitive speech upon the idioms of the immigrant races. Entry: 187
The language of the poems, as of all the best Arabian literature, was that of the desert Arabs of central Arabia; and to use it aright was the ambition of poets and scholars even in the Abbasid period. For the man of the towns its vocabulary was too copious to be easily understood, and in the age of linguistic studies many commentaries were written to explain words and idioms. Entry: LITERATURE
Universal grammar, as founded on the results of the scientific study of speech, is thus essentially different from that "universal grammar" so much in vogue at the beginning of the 19th century, which consisted of a series of a priori assumptions based on the peculiarities of European grammar and illustrated from the same source. But universal grammar, as conceived by modern science, is as yet in its infancy; its materials are still in the process of being collected. The comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages is alone in an advanced state, those of the Semitic idioms, of the Finno-Ugrian tongues and of the Bantu dialects of southern Africa are still in a backward condition; and the other families of speech existing in the world, with the exception of the Malayo-Polynesian and the Sonorian of North America, have not as yet been treated scientifically. Chinese, it is true, possesses an historical grammar, and Van Eys, in his comparative grammar of Basque, endeavoured to solve the problems of that interesting language by a comparison of its various dialects; but in both cases the area of comparison is too small for more than a limited success to be attainable. Instead of attempting the questions of universal grammar, therefore, it will be better to confine our attention to three points--the fundamental differences in the grammatical conceptions of different groups of languages, the main results of a scientific investigation of Indo-European grammar, and the light thrown by comparative philology upon the grammar of our own tongue. Entry: A
_Languages._--The German-speaking nations in their various branches and dialects, if we include the Dutch and the Walloons, extend in a compact mass along the shores of the Baltic and of the North Sea, from Memel in the east to a point between Gravelines and Calais near the Straits of Dover. On this northern line the Germans come in contact with the Danes who inhabit the northern parts of Schleswig within the limits of the German empire. A line from Flensburg south-westward to Joldelund and thence northwestward to Hoyer will nearly give the boundary between the two idioms.[2] The German-French frontier traverses Belgium from west to east, touching the towns of St Omer, Courtrai and Maastricht. Near Eupen, south of Aix-la-Chapelle, it turns southward, and near Arlon south-east as far as the crest of the Vosges mountains, which it follows up to Belfort, traversing there the watershed of the Rhine and the Doubs. In the Swiss territory the line of demarcation passes through Bienne, Fribourg, Saanen, Leuk and Monte Rosa. In the south the Germans come into contact with Rhaeto-Romans and Italians, the former inhabiting the valley of the Vorder-Rhein and the Engadine, while the latter have settled on the southern slopes of the Alps, and are continually advancing up the valley of the Adige. Carinthia and Styria are inhabited by German people, except the valley of the Drave towards Klagenfurt. Their eastern neighbours there are first the Magyars, then the northern Slavs and the Poles. The whole eastern frontier is very much broken, and cannot be described in a few words. Besides detached German colonies in Hungary proper, there is a considerable and compact German (Saxon) population in Transylvania. The river March is the frontier north of the Danube from Pressburg as far as Brünn, to the north of which the German regions begin near Olmütz, the interior of Bohemia and Moravia being occupied by Czechs and Moravians. In these countries the Slav language has been steadily superseding the German. In the Prussian provinces of Silesia and Posen the eastern parts are mixed territories, the German language progressing very slowly among the Poles. In Bromberg and Thorn, in the valley of the Vistula, German is prevalent. In West Prussia some parts of the interior, and in East Prussia a small region along the Russian frontier, are occupied by Poles (Cassubians in West Prussia, Masurians in East Prussia). The total number of German-speaking people, within the boundaries wherein they constitute the compact mass of the population, may be estimated, if the Dutch and Walloons be included, at 65 millions. Entry: A