Apart from racial prejudice there is the further obstacle of language.
A man cannot court a girl and learn to love her sentimentally unless
he can speak to her. Now Africa alone has 438 languages, besides a
number of dialects. Dr. Finsch says (38) that on the Melanasian island
of Tanua nearly every village has a dialect of its own which those of
the next village cannot understand; and this is a typical case.
American Indians usually communicate with each other by means of a
sign language. India has countless languages and dialects, and in
Canton the Chinamen from various parts of the Empire have to converse
with each other in "pidjin English." The Australians, who are perhaps
all of one race, nevertheless have no end of different names for even
so common a thing as the omnipresent kangaroo.[136] In Brazil, says
von Martins, travellers often come across a language
"used only by a few individuals connected with each other by
relationship, who are thus completely isolated, and can hold
no communication with any of their other countrymen far or
near";
and how great was the confusion of tongues among other South American
Indians may be inferred from the statement (Waitz, III., 355) that the
Caribs were so much in the habit of capturing wives from different
tribes and peoples that the men and women of each tribe never spoke
the same language. Under such circumstances a wife might become
attached to her husband as a captured, mute, and maltreated dog might
to his master; but romantic love is as utterly out of the question as
it is between master and dog.