Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 133 of 208 - First - Home
These Slight Differences In The Form Of
The Verb, According To The Nature Of The Pronouns Governed By It,
Is Found In The Old World Only In The Biscayan And Congo Languages
(Vater, Mithridates.
William von Humboldt, On the Basque Language).
Strange conformity in the structure of languages on spots so
distant, and
Among three races of men so different, - the white
Catalonians, the black Congos, and the copper-coloured Americans!)
an ingenious method of indicating beforehand, either by inflexion
of the personal pronouns, which form the terminations of the verb,
or by an intercalated suffix, the nature and the relation of its
object and its subject, and of distinguishing whether the object be
animate or inanimate, of the masculine or the feminine gender,
simple or in complex number. It is on account of this general
analogy of structure, - it is because American languages which have
no words in common (for instance, the Mexican and the Quichua),
resemble each other by their organization, and form complete
contrasts to the languages of Latin Europe, that the Indians of the
Missions familiarize themselves more easily with an American idiom
than with the Spanish. In the forests of the Orinoco I have seen
the rudest Indians speak two or three tongues. Savages of different
nations often communicate their ideas to each other by an idiom not
their own.
If the system of the Jesuits had been followed, languages, which
already occupy a vast extent of country, would have become almost
general. In Terra Firma and on the Orinoco, the Caribbean and the
Tamanac alone would now be spoken; and in the south and south-west,
the Quichua, the Guarano, the Omagua, and the Araucan. By
appropriating to themselves these languages, the grammatical forms
of which are very regular, and almost as fixed as those of the
Greek and Sanscrit, the missionaries would place themselves in more
intimate connection with the natives whom they govern. The
numberless difficulties which occur in the system of a Mission
consisting of Indians of ten or a dozen different nations would
disappear with the confusion of idioms. Those which are little
diffused would become dead languages; but the Indian, in preserving
an American idiom, would retain his individuality - his national
character. Thus by peaceful means might be effected what the Incas
began to establish by force of arms.
How indeed can we be surprised at the little progress made by the
Chaymas, the Caribbees, the Salives, or the Otomacs, in the
knowledge of the Spanish language, when we recollect that one white
man, one single missionary, finds himself alone amidst five or six
hundred Indians? and that it is difficult for him to establish
among them a governador, an alcalde, or a fiscal, who may serve him
as an interpreter? If, instead of the missionary system, some other
means of civilization were substituted, if, instead of keeping the
whites at a distance, they could be mingled with the natives
recently united in villages, the American idioms would soon be
superseded by the languages of Europe, and the natives would
receive in those languages the great mass of new ideas which are
the fruit of civilization. Then the introduction of general
tongues, such as that of the Incas, or the Guaranos, without doubt
would become useless. But after having lived so long in the
Missions of South America, after having so closely observed the
advantages and the abuses of the system of the missionaries, I may
be permitted to doubt whether that system could be easily
abandoned, though it is doubtless very capable of being improved,
and rendered more conformable with our ideas of civil liberty. To
this it may be answered, that the Romans* succeeded in rapidly
introducing their language with their sovereignty into the country
of the Gauls, into Boetica, and into the province of Africa. (* For
the reason of this rapid introduction of Latin among the Gauls, I
believe we must look into the character of the natives and the
state of their civilization, and not into the structure of their
language. The brown-haired Celtic nations were certainly different
from the race of the light-haired Germanic nations; and though the
Druid caste recalls to our minds one of the institutions of the
Ganges, this does not demonstrate that the idiom of the Celts
belongs, like that of the nations of Odin, to a branch of the
Indo-Pelasgic languages. From analogy of structure and of roots,
the Latin ought to have penetrated more easily on the other side of
the Danube, than into Gaul; but an uncultivated state, joined to
great moral inflexibility, probably opposed its introduction among
the Germanic nations.) But the natives of these countries were not
savages; - they inhabited towns; they were acquainted with the use
of money; and they possessed institutions denoting a tolerably
advanced state of cultivation. The allurement of commerce, and a
long abode of the Roman legions, had promoted intercourse between
them and their conquerors. We see, on the contrary, that the
introduction of the languages of the mother-countries was met by
obstacles almost innumerable, wherever Carthaginian, Greek, or
Roman colonies were established on coasts entirely barbarous. In
every age, and in every climate, the first impulse of the savage is
to shun the civilized man.
The language of the Chayma Indians was less agreeable to my ear
than the Caribbee, the Salive, and other languages of the Orinoco.
It has fewer sonorous terminations in accented vowels. We are
struck with the frequent repetition of the syllables guaz, ez,
puec, and pur. These terminations are derived in part from the
inflexion of the verb to be, and from certain prepositions, which
are added at the ends of words, and which, according to the genius
of the American idioms, are incorporated with them. It would be
wrong to attribute this harshness of sound to the abode of the
Chaymas in the mountains. They are strangers to that temperate
climate. They have been led thither by the missionaries; and it is
well known that, like all the inhabitants of warm regions, they at
first dreaded what they called the cold of Caripe.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 133 of 208
Words from 134717 to 135740
of 211363