INFLEXION FOR |At beginning and | At beginning (and end). MOODS AND | end | TENSES | | | | MODIFICATIONS OF |Not so many for | Numerous. instead of an adverb ACTION GENERALLY | moods & tenses, | _not_, there is a complicated | but modifications| negative inflexion. | of action | | are expressed | | often by modific-| | ations of verb | | instead of adv. | | | USE OF ADVERBS, | | More work is thrown on the PREPOSITIONS, | | principal parts of speech, and & OTHER | | particles are not much used. PARTICLES | | | | COMPOUND WORDS | | Hardly any except in names; but | | derivative nouns can be formed | | very readily. -------------------+------------------+---------------------------------- We select Latin and Hebrew, because the one is of the Aryan family of languages and the other of the Semitic. What is a family—and when are languages said to belong to the same family? Languages, like everything else, are classed with reference to similarity. The similarity may be in grammar, or in vocabulary, the former kind of agreement being the more decisive. Let us take an example of agreement in vocabulary. In the Aryan group of languages the word for five is _pantshan_ in Sanscrit, _pente_ in Greek, _quinque_ in Latin, _pump_ in Welsh, _funf_ in German, and _fif_ in Anglo-Saxon. Agreements of this kind go to prove that the languages belong to one great family. Next we reach the conclusion that the races that used them had a common ancestry who dwelt in an old “Aryan home”. But can we prove that the Semitic languages have any kinship to the Aryan? Some try to do so by looking for coincidences in certain words, as in the numerals. For instance, the Hebrew for five is _chimasha_. Has this any relation to _pantshan_? In looking at the Yao language we often find certain coincidences. If the Yao had ever derived a word for five from _pantshan_, they would have put a vowel at the end, and further, they would have treated the beginning of the word as being less important (just as the Greeks treat the end of the words as of less importance). Now, it is singular that the Yao word for five is _msano_, the Swahili _tano_, the Chinyasa _sanu_, and the Nyamwesi _nhanu_! Resemblances of this kind, if numerous and not accidental, would point us towards a time when all “the earth was of one language and one speech”.