Modern philologists have made different classifications of the various
languages of the world, one of which divides them into three great
classes: the Monosyllabic, the Agglutinated, and the Inflected.
--The _first_, or Monosyllabic class, contains those languages which
consist only of separate, unvaried monosyllables. The words have no
organization that adapts them for mutual affiliation, and there is in
them, accordingly, an utter absence of all scientific forms and principles
of grammar. The Chinese and a few languages in its vicinity, doubtless
originally identical with it, are all that belong to this class. The
languages of the North American Indians, though differing in many
respects, have the same general grade of character.
The _second_ class consists of those languages which are formed by
agglutination. The words combine only in a mechanical way; they have _no_
elective affinity, and exhibit toward each other none of the active or
sensitive capabilities of living organisms. Prepositions are joined to
substantives, and pronouns to verbs, but never so as to make a new form of
the original word, as in the inflected languages, and words thus placed in
juxtaposition retain their personal identity unimpaired.
The agglutinative languages are known also as the Turanian, from Turan, a
name of Central Asia, and the principal varieties of this family are the
Tartar, Finnish, Lappish, Hungarian, and Caucasian. They are classed
together almost exclusively on the ground of correspondence in their
grammatical structure, but they are bound together by ties of far less
strength than those which connect the inflected languages. The race by
whom they are spoken has, from the first, occupied more of the surface of
the earth than either of the others, stretching westward from the shores
of the Japan Sea to the neighborhood of Vienna, and southward from the
Arctic Ocean to Afghanistan and the southern coast of Asia Minor.
The inflected languages form the _third_ great division. They have all a
complete interior organization, complicated with many mutual relations and
adaptations, and are thoroughly systematic in all their parts. Between
this class and the monosyllabic there is all the difference that there is
between organic and inorganic forms of matter; and between them and the
agglutinative languages there is the same difference that exists in nature
between mineral accretions and vegetable growths. The boundaries of this
class of languages are the boundaries of cultivated humanity, and in their
history lies embosomed that of the civilized portions of the world.
Two great races speaking inflected languages, the Semitic and the Indo-
European, have shared between them the peopling of the historic portions
of the earth; and on this account these two languages have sometimes been
called political or state languages, in contrast with the appellation of
the Turanian as nomadic. The term Semitic is applied to that family of
languages which are native in Southwestern Asia, and which are supposed to
have been spoken by the descendants of Shem, the son of Noah. They are the
Hebrew, Aramaeic, Arabic, the ancient Egyptian or Coptic, the Chaldaic,
and Phoenician. Of these the only living language of note is the Arabic,
which has supplanted all the others, and wonderfully diffused its elements
among the constituents of many of the Asiatic tongues. In Europe the
Arabic has left a deep impress on the Spanish language, and is still
represented in the Maltese, which is one of its dialects.
The Semitic languages differ widely from the Indo-European in reference to
their grammar, vocabulary, and idioms. On account of the great
preponderance of the pictorial element in them, they may be called the
metaphorical languages, while the Indo-European, from the prevailing style
of their higher literature, may be called the philosophical languages. The
Semitic nations also differ from the Indo-European in their national
characteristics; while they have lived with remarkable uniformity on the
vast open plains, or wandered over the wide and dreary deserts of their
native region, the Indo-Europeans have spread themselves over both
hemispheres, and carried civilization to its highest development. But the
Semitic mind has not been without influence on human progress. It early
recorded its thoughts, its wants, and achievements in the hieroglyphs of
ancient Egypt; the Phoenicians, foremost in their day in commerce and the
arts, introduced from Egypt alphabetic letters, of which all the world has
since made use. The Jewish portion of the race, long in communication with
Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylonia, and Persia, could not fail to impart to these
nations some knowledge of their religion and literature, and it cannot be
doubted that many new ideas and quickening influences were thus set in
motion, and communicated to the more remote countries both of the East and
West.
The most ancient languages of the Indo-European stock may be grouped in
two distinct family pairs: the Aryan, which comprises two leading
families, the Indian and Iranian, and the Graeco-Italic or Pelasgic, which
comprises the Greek family and its various dialects, and the Italic
family, the chief-subdivisions of which are the Etruscan, the Latin, and
the modern languages derived from the Latin. The other Indo-European
families are the Lettic, Slavic, Gothic, and Celtic, with their various
subdivisions.
The word Aryan (Sanskrit, Arya), the oldest known name of the entire Indo-
European family, signifies well-born, and was applied by the ancient
Hindus to themselves in contradistinction to the rest of the world, whom
they considered base-born and contemptible.
In the country called Aryavarta, lying between the Himalaya and the
Vindhya Mountains, the high table-land of Central Asia, more than two
thousand years before Christ, our Hindu ancestors had their early home.
From this source there have been, historically, two great streams of Aryan
migration. One, towards the south, stagnated in the fertile valleys, where
they were walled in from all danger of invasion by the Himalaya Mountains
on the north, the Indian Ocean on the south, and the deserts of Bactria on
the west, and where the people sunk into a life of inglorious ease, or
wasted their powers in the regions of dreamy mysticism. The other
migration, at first northern, and then western, includes the great
families of nations in Northwestern Asia and in Europe. Forced by
circumstances into a more objective life, and under the stimulus of more
favorable influences, these nations have been brought into a marvelous
state of individual and social progress, and to this branch of the human
family belongs all the civilization of the present, and most of that which
distinguishes the past.
The Indo-European family of languages far surpasses the Semitic in
variety, flexibility, beauty, and strength. It is remarkable for its
vitality, and has the power of continually regenerating itself and
bringing forth new linguistic creations. It renders most faithfully the
various workings of the human mind, its wants, its aspirations, its
passion, imagination, and reasoning power, and is most in harmony with the
ever progressive spirit of man. In its varied scientific and artistic
development it forms the most perfect family of languages on the globe,
and modern civilization, by a chain reaching through thousands of years,
ascends to this primitive source.