In the Aryan group of languages, the bond of affinity is easily recognisable: the roots of the words are the same: _Pitri, pater, vater,_ are clearly but varying pronunciations of the same word. In the Turanic group, however--Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, Tatar, Mongol and Manchu--you must expect no such well-advertised first-cousinship. They are grouped together, not because of any likeness of roots: not because you could find one single consonant the same in the Lappish or Hungarian, say, and in the Mongol or Manchu words for _father_--you probably could not;--but because there may be syntactical likenesses, or the changes and assimilations of sounds may be governed by the same laws. Thus in Turkic--I draw upon the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_--there is a suffix z, preceded by a vowel, to mean your: _pederin_ is 'father'; 'your father' becomes _pederiniz;_ _dostun_ means 'friend'; 'your friend' becomes not _dostuniz,_ but _dostunus;_ and this trick of assimilating the vowel of the suffix is the last one in the stem is an example of the kind of similarities which establish the relationship of the group. As for likeness of roots, here is a specimen: _gyordunus_ is the Turkish for the Finnish _naikke._--So here you see a degree of kinship much more remote than that you find in the Aryan. Where, say, Dutch and Gaelic are brothers--at least near relations and bosom friends,--Turkish and Mongol are about fifteenth cousins by marriage twice removed, and hardly even nod to each other in passing. And yet Turks and Mongols both claim descent from the sons of a common father: according to legends of both peoples, the ancestor of the Turks was the brother of the ancestor of the Mongols. (Always remember that in speaking of Turks thus scientifically, one does not mean the Ottomans, who inherit their language, but are almost purely Caucasian or even Aryan, in blood.)