CHAPTER LIV. GERMANIC GROUP. Low German.-Scandinavian-Icelandic-Swedish-Danish and NorwegianAnglo-Saxon-English-Frisian- -Low German proper - Dutch - Platt Deutsch. GERMANIC is used as a collective name, including all the descendants of the ancient nation, known to the Romans already as Goths, but under that name to distinguish them from the Celtic Gauls. Whether it is derived from the Latin germanus or from the German Erman, Hermann (Irminsûl), has not yet been decided. The name includes, therefore, the English as a descendant of the Anglo-Saxon dialect of the German, the Scandinavian in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and northern islands, and the German proper. The latter is, in German, called Deutsch from the old form thinda (Ivos), and its derivative thindiskô, ¿Ivikŵs; meaning most probably the people, by excellence, like the Latin gens and gentiles. This has given rise to the English term Dutch, so constantly misapplied to German, but originally, and properly, only meant for the Dutch of Holland. Jacob Grimm, who is here, as in all philology, master and highest authority, mentions four characteristic features of this group, which distinguish it from the languages of other nations. The Ablaut, or radical change of vowels as it occurs in the inflection of the strong verb; the commutation of sounds according to fixed and permanent rules; the weak noun and the weak verb. Of these the commutation of sounds is the most important principle, as its influence is seen already in those roots which the German idioms have in common with all Indo-European languages, and as it is that feature which gives to them now their peculiar Germanic character. The other three refer only to the mode of expressing certain relations in German proper. This commutation is the regular and consistent change of the mutes (p, t, k); for example, from the Greek to the Gothic, and again from the Gothic to old High German. These mutes retain their quality, as labials, dentals, &c., but they change their quantity and pass from tenuis to media, from media to aspirate, and so on. The law which governs these changes, is this: The media of each of the three organs of speech passes into the corresponding tenuis, the tenuis into the aspirate, and the aspirate again into the media. The commutation has, therefore, reference to the three qualities, labial, dental, and guttural, and to the three quantities, tenuis, media, and aspirate. In its application three changes are observed; the Sanscrit or its representatives, the Greek and Latin from the first class; the Gothic and Low-German idioms the second, and the HighGerman the third. The effects of this law may be seen in the following table: λείχειν, lingere, loigan, leechon, lecken, lick. Circumstances, foreign to the nature of this law, will, of course, occasionally prevent its being carried out in all cases, as in the Gothic, which has no labial or guttural aspirates, or in the High-German, which uses z instead of the dental aspirate. These anomalies, however, cannot impair the correctness and importance of this remarkable law. Whilst this law is common to all Germanic tongues, and, at the same time, a peculiarity exclusively their own, other tongues also have instances of the Ablaut. This means a regular change of vowels, mainly seen in the (strong) verb, but passing through the whole language. In the verb it represents the inflection by a change of the radical vowel as in nehme, nahm, genommen, and in most of the so-called irregular verbs of the English. This law is based upon the fact that in these languages à, i and u alone are original vowels, and the source of all others. From their combination arise, in a remarkable manner, all other vowels which occur in German, thus― This is carefully to be distinguished from the so-called umlaut, which plays so prominent a part in Germanic tongues, and is not an actual transition from vowel to vowel, like the Ablaut, but merely an intermediate vowel, produced mainly by the addition of e. The inflection of Germanic languages is characterized by its two distinct methods, the strong and the weak. The strong declension and conjugation exhibit the highest perfection of inflecting languages. They express the relation of time or number by a change of the radical vowel in noun or verb itself; the weak noun, on the other hand, is inflected by the aid of a pronoun, the weak verb by that of an auxiliary, though both pronoun and auxiliary are incorporated, as it were, into noun and verb. Equally characteristic of the Germanic idioms is their subjective character, reflecting the same peculiarity in the Germanic race, whilst the Pelasgic group presents objectivity as its most striking ethic element. In the latter we mark a systematic division of words into vowels and consonants, and a strict observance of mechanical laws, determining the length of a syllable and the cadence of a verse. Not so in the Germanic languages. These words are accented and syllables lengthened according to their intrinsic value, as original roots or as bearers of a more |