1. THE PIRINDA.
2. THE TARASCA.
3. THE OTOMI.
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.
[Footnote 43: Only of the Tarasca (1859).]