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.

    326/408 page 318
    tions of language. Insomuch that, while English, French, and German are each spoken with little variation by many millions, there are islands in the Indian archipelago, probably not inhabited by one million, but in which there are hundreds of lan- guages, as diverse as are English, French, and German. It is easy to see how this should be. There are peculiarities in the vocal organization of : every person, tending to produce peculiarities of pronunciation ; for example, it has been stated that each child in a family of six gave the mono- syllable, fly, in a different manner, (eye, fy, ly, &c.) until, when the organs were more advanced, correct example induced the proper pronunciation of this and similar words. Such departures from orthoepy are only to be checked by the power of such ex- ample; but this is a power not always present, or not always of sufficient strength. The able and self-devoted Robert Moffat, in his work on South Africa, states, without the least regard to hypo- thesis, that amongst the people of the towns of that great region, “the purity and harmony of language is kept up by their pitchos or public meetings, by their festivals and ceremonies, as well as by their songs and their constant inter- course. With the isolated villages of the desert, it
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image