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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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.
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