N.B. In Oriental words written in Roman characters, the vowels and diphthongs are to be pronounced as in Italian, and the consonants as in English; with exception of g, which is always to be pronounced hard, its soft sound being represented by j. RESEARCHES INTO THE ORIGIN AND AFFINITY OF THE PRINCIPAL LANGUAGES OF ASIA AND EUROPE. CHAP. I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. THE result of all speculations respecting the origin of language must be unsatisfactory, because no data exist from which any reasonable conclusion on the subject can be deduced. For no tribe of men has yet been discovered, however few in numbers or rude and miserable, that did not possess a language adapted to all the purposes and wants of its mode of life. It might, hence, be conjectured that speech was one of the qualities which belonged to man from his original formation. But, when it is considered that children learn the use of alphabetical sounds with much difficulty, and that strangers can never acquire the proper pronunciation of a foreign language, it seems necessarily to follow that, although the power of forming articulate sounds is inherent in man, still the converting such sounds into an intelligible language depends entirely on association, imitation, and tuition. Admitting, therefore, the Mosaic account of the creation of mankind, and supposing that the faculty and knowledge of speech were communicated to the first man and woman by the supreme Being, B |