Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon].

  • Robert Chambers
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    295/408 page 287
    ago, the speech of a considerable tribe dwelling in Western Europe; but these have since been driven before superior nations into a few corners, and are now only to be found in the highlands of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and certain parts of France. The Gaelic of Scotland, Erse of Ireland, and the Welsh, are the only living branches of this sub-family of languages. The resemblances amongst languages are of two kinds,—identity of words, and identity of gramma- tical forms; the latter being now generally consi- _ dered as the most important towards the argument. When we inquire into the first kind of affinity among the languages of the Indo-European family, we are surprised at the great number of common terms which exist amongst them, and these referring to such primary ideas, as to leave no doubt of their having all been derived from a common source. Colonel Vans Kennedy presents nine hundred words common to the Sanskrit and other lan- guages of the same family. In the Sanskrit and Persian, we find several which require no sort of translation to an English reader, as pader, mader, sunu, dokhter, brader, mand, vidhava; likewise asthi, a bone, (Greek, ostoun ;) denta, a tooth, (Latin, dens, dentis ; eyeumen, the eye; brouwa,
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