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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We Seem To Be Present At Their Formation,
And We Should Pronounce Them To Be Of Very Recent Origin, Did
We
not recollect that the human mind steadily follows an impulse once
given; that nations enlarge, improve, and repair the
Grammatical
edifice of their languages, according to a plan already determined;
finally, that there are countries, whose languages, institutions,
and arts, have remained unchanged, we might almost say stereotyped,
during the lapse of ages.
The highest degree of intellectual development has been hitherto
found among the nations of the Indian and Pelasgic branch. The
languages formed principally by aggregation seem themselves to
oppose obstacles to the improvement of the mind. They are devoid of
that rapid movement, that interior life, to which the inflexion of
the root is favourable, and which impart such charms to works of
imagination. Let us not, however, forget, that a people celebrated
in remote antiquity, a people from whom the Greeks themselves
borrowed knowledge, had perhaps a language, the construction of
which recalls involuntarily that of the languages of America. What
a structure of little monosyllabic and disyllabic forms is added to
the verb and to the substantive, in the Coptic language! The
semi-barbarous Chayma and Tamanac have tolerably short abstract
words to express grandeur, envy, and lightness, cheictivate, uoite,
and uonde; but in Coptic, the word malice,* metrepherpetou, is
composed of five elements, easy to be distinguished. (* See, on the
incontestable identity of the ancient Egyptian and Coptic, and on
the particular system of synthesis of the latter language, the
ingenious reflexions of M. Silvestre de Sacy, in the Notice des
Recherches de M. Etienne Quatremere sur La Litterature de l'Epypte.
) This compound signifies the quality (met) of a subject (reph),
which makes (er) the thing which is (pet), evil (ou). Nevertheless
the Coptic language has had its literature, like the Chinese, the
roots of which, far from being aggregated, scarcely approach each
other without immediate contact. We must admit that nations once
roused from their lethargy, and tending towards civilization, find
in the most uncouth languages the secret of expressing with
clearness the conceptions of the mind, and of painting the emotions
of the soul. Don Juan de la Rea, a highly estimable man, who
perished in the sanguinary revolutions of Quito, imitated with
graceful simplicity some Idylls of Theocritus in the language of
the Incas; and I have been assured, that, excepting treatises on
science and philosophy, there is scarcely any work of modern
literature that might not be translated into the Peruvian.
The intimate connection established between the natives of the New
World and the Spaniards since the conquest, have introduced a
certain number of American words into the Castilian language. Some
of these words express things not unknown before the discovery of
the New World, and scarcely recall to our minds at present their
barbarous origin.* (* For example savannah, and cannibal.) Almost
all belong to the language of the great Antilles, formerly termed
the language of Haiti, of Quizqueja, or of Itis.* (* The word Itis,
for Haiti or St. Domingo (Hispaniola), is found in the Itinerarium
of Bishop Geraldini (Rome 1631.) - "Quum Colonus Itim insulam
cerneret.") I shall confine myself to citing the words maiz,
tabaco, canoa, batata, cacique, balsa, conuco, etc.
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