In the Gothic stock there has been the Anglo-Saxon; in the Celtic the Welsh; and in the Classical the Anglo-Norman. Nevertheless, the importance of the languages of these three divisions is by no means equal. The Gothic tongues supply the basis of our investigations. The Celtic afford a few remnants of that language which the Anglo-Saxon superseded. The Anglo-Norman language exhibits certain superadded elements. s. 146. Over and above the Gothic, Celtic, and Classical languages, there are others that illustrate the English; and some of our commonest grammatical inflections can be but half understood unless we go beyond the groups already enumerated. The Gothic, Celtic (?),[20] and Classical stocks are but subordinate divisions of a wider class. Each has a sufficient amount of mutual affinities to be illustrative of each other, and each is contained, along with two other groups of equal value, under a higher denomination in philology. What is the nature of that affinity which connects languages so different as the Gothic, Celtic (?), and Classical stocks? or what is the amount of likeness between, _e.g._, the {94} German and Portuguese, the Greek and Islandic, the Latin and Swedish, the Anglo-Saxon and Italian? And what other languages are so connected? What other philological groups are connected with each other, and with the languages already noticed, by the same affinities which connect the Gothic, Celtic (?), and Classical stocks? Whatever these languages may be, it is nearly certain that they will be necessary, on some point or other, for the full illustration of the English. As both these questions are points of general, rather than of English, philology, and as a partial answer may be got to the first from attention to the degree in which the body of the present work exhibits illustrations drawn from widely different languages, the following statements are considered sufficient. s. 147. The philological denomination of the class which contains the Gothic, Celtic (?), and Classical divisions, and, along with the languages contained therein, all others similarly allied, is _Indo-European_; so that the Gothic, Celtic (?), Classical and certain other languages are Indo-European. All Indo-European languages illustrate each other. The other divisions of the great Indo-European group of languages are as follows:-- 1. The Iranian stock of languages.--This contains the proper Persian languages of Persia (Iran) in all their stages, the Kurd language, and all the languages of Asia (whatever they may be) derived from the Zend or Sanskrit. 2. The Sarmatian stock of languages.--This contains the languages of Russia, Poland, Bohemia, and of the Slavonian tribes in general. It contains also the Lithuanic languages, _i.e._, the Lithuanic of Lithuania, the old Prussian of Prussia (now extinct), and the Lettish or Livonic of Courland and Livonia.