Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities — John Shaqi
Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest AuthoritiesBotta, Anne C. Lynch (Anne Charlotte Lynch)
History
Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities
Botta, Anne C. Lynch (Anne Charlotte Lynch)
Literature -- History and criticism
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.
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