It May Be Conceived That Women, From Their Separate Way Of Life, Frame Particular Terms Which Men Do Not Adopt.

Cicero observes* that old forms of language are best preserved by women because by their position in society they are less exposed to those vicissitudes of life, changes of place and occupation which tend to corrupt the primitive purity of language among men.

(* Cicero, de Orat. lib. 3 cap. 12 paragraph 45 ed. Verburg. Facilius enim mulieres incorruptam antiquitatem conservant, quod multorum sermonis expertes ea tenent semper, quae prima didicerunt.) But in the Carib nations the contrast between the dialect of the two sexes is so great that to explain it satisfactorily we must refer to another cause; and this may perhaps be found in the barbarous custom, practised by those nations, of killing their male prisoners, and carrying the wives of the vanquished into captivity. When the Caribs made an irruption into the archipelago of the West India Islands, they arrived there as a band of warriors, not as colonists accompanied by their families. The language of the female sex was formed by degrees, as the conquerors contracted alliances with the foreign women; it was composed of new elements, words distinct from the Carib words,* which in the interior of the gynaeceums were transmitted from generation to generation, but on which the structure, the combinations, the grammatical forms of the language of the men exercised an influence. (* The following are examples of the difference between the language of the men (m), and the women (w); isle, oubao (m), acaera (w); man, ouekelli (m), eyeri (w); but, irhen (m), atica (w).) There was then manifested in a small community the peculiarity which we now find in the whole group of the nations of the New Continent.

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