Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Construction Of The Languages Of America Is So Opposite To That
Of The Languages Derived From The Latin, That
The Jesuits, who had
thoroughly examined everything that could contribute to extend
their establishments, introduced among their neophytes, instead of
The Spanish, some Indian tongues, remarkable for their regularity
and copiousness, such as the Quichua and the Guarani. They
endeavoured to substitute these languages for others which were
poorer and more irregular in their syntax. This substitution was
found easy: the Indians of the different tribes adopted it with
docility, and thenceforward those American languages generalized
became a ready medium of communication between the missionaries and
the neophytes. It would be a mistake to suppose, that the
preference given to the language of the Incas over the Spanish
tongue had no other aim than that of isolating the Missions, and
withdrawing them from the influence of two rival powers, the
bishops and civil governors. The Jesuits had other motives,
independently of their policy, for wishing to generalize certain
Indian tongues. They found in those languages a common tie, easy to
be established between the numerous hordes which had remained
hostile to each other, and had been kept asunder by diversity of
idioms; for, in uncultivated countries, after the lapse of several
ages, dialects often assume the form, or at least the appearance,
of mother tongues.
When it is said that a Dane learns the German, and a Spaniard the
Italian or the Latin, more easily than they learn any other
language, it is at first thought that this facility results from
the identity of a great number of roots, common to all the Germanic
tongues, or to those of Latin Europe; it is not considered, that,
with this resemblance of sounds, there is another resemblance,
which acts more powerfully on nations of a common origin. Language
is not the result of an arbitrary convention. The mechanism of
inflections, the grammatical constructions, the possibility of
inversions, all are the offspring of our own minds, of our
individual organization. There is in man an instinctive and
regulating principle, differently modified among nations not of the
same race. A climate more or less severe, a residence in the
defiles of mountains, or on the sea-coasts, or different habits of
life, may alter the pronunciation, render the identity of the roots
obscure, and multiply the number; but all these causes do not
affect that which constitutes the structure and mechanism of
languages. The influence of climate, and of external circumstances,
vanishes before the influence which depends on the race, on the
hereditary and individual dispositions of men.
In America (and this result of recent researches* (* See Vater's
Mithridates.) is extremely important with respect to the history of
our species) from the country of the Esquimaux to the banks of the
Orinoco, and again from these torrid regions to the frozen climate
of the Straits of Magellan, mother-tongues, entirely different in
their roots, have, if we may use the expression, the same
physiognomy.
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