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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I Had Much
Difficulty To Collect In The Missions, And In The Convents, Those
Grammars Of American Languages, Which, On My Return To Europe, I
Placed In The Hands Of Severin Vater, Professor And Librarian At
The University Of Konigsberg.
They furnished him with useful
materials for his great work on the idioms of the New World.
I
omitted, at the time, to transcribe from my journal, and
communicate to that learned gentleman, what I had collected in the
Chayma tongue. Since neither Father Gili, nor the Abbe Hervas, has
mentioned this language, I shall here explain succinctly the result
of my researches.
On the right bank of the Orinoco, south-east of the Mission of
Encaramada, and at the distance of more than a hundred leagues from
the Chaymas, live the Tamanacs (Tamanacu), whose language is
divided into several dialects. This nation, formerly very powerful,
is separated from the mountains of Caripe by the Orinoco, by the
vast steppes of Caracas and of Cumana; and by a barrier far more
difficult to surmount, the nations of Caribbean origin. But
notwithstanding distance, and the numerous obstacles in the way of
intercourse, the language of the Chayma Indians is a branch of the
Tamanac tongue. The oldest missionaries of Caripe are ignorant of
this curious fact, because the Capuchins of Aragon seldom visit the
southern banks of the Orinoco, and scarcely know of the existence
of the Tamanacs. I recognized the analogy between the idiom of this
nation, and that of the Chayma Indians long after my return to
Europe, in comparing the materials which I had collected with the
sketch of a grammar published in Italy by an old missionary of the
Orinoco. Without knowing the Chaymas, the Abbe Gili conjectured
that the language of the inhabitants of Paria must have some
relation to the Tamanac.* (* Vater has also advanced some
well-founded conjectures on the connexion between the Tamanac and
Caribbean tongues and those spoken on the north-east coast of South
America. I may acquaint the reader, that I have written the words
of the American languages according to the Spanish orthography, so
that the u should be pronounced oo, the ch like ch in English, etc.
Having during a great number of years spoken no other language than
the Castilian, I marked down the sounds according to the
orthography of that language, and now I am afraid of changing the
value of these signs, by substituting others no less imperfect. It
is a barbarous practice, to express, like the greater part of the
nations of Europe, the most simple and distinct sounds by many
vowels, or many united consonants, while they might be indicated by
letters equally simple. What a chaos is exhibited by the
vocabularies written according to English, German, French, or
Spanish notations! A new essay, which the illustrious author of the
travels in Egypt, M. Volney, is about to publish on the analysis of
sounds found in different nations, and on the notation of those
sounds according to a uniform system, will lead to great progress
In the study of languages.)
I will prove this connection by two means which serve to show the
analogy of idioms; namely, the grammatical construction, and the
identity of words and roots.
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