CHAPTER I. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE.
§ Ι. GENERAL ACCOUNT OF THE LANGUAGES OF THE INDO-TEUTONIC FAMILY. §2. ORIGIN AND FORMATION OF THE INDO-TEUTONIC LANGUAGES—MULTIPLICITY OF THEIR GRAMMATICAL FORMS. § 3. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE, AS COMPARED WITH THE OTHER LANGUAGES OF THE INDO-TEUTONIC FAMILY. § 4. VARIETY OF FORMS, INFLEXIONS AND DIALECTS IN THE GREEK LANGUAGE. § 5. THE TRIBES OF GREECE, AND THEIR SEVERAL DIALECTS—CHARACTERISTICS OF EACH DIALECT.
§ 1. LANGUAGE, the earliest product of the human mind, and the origin of all other intellectual energies, is at the same time the clearest evidence of the descent of a nation and of its affinity with other races. Hence the comparison of languages enables us to judge of the history of nations at periods to which no other kind of memorial, no tradition or record, can ascend. In modern times, this subject has been studied with more comprehensive views and more systematic methods than formerly: and from these researches it appears that a large part of the nations of the ancient world formed a family, whose languages (besides a large number of radical words, to which we need not here particularly advert) had on the whole the same grammatical structure and the same forms of derivation and inflexion. The nations between which this affinity subsisted are—theIndians, whose language, in its earliest and purest form, is preserved in the Sanscrit; thePersians, whose primitive language, the Zend, is closely allied withthe Sanscrit; theArmenians andPhrygians, kindred races, of whose language the modern Armenian is a very mutilated remnant though a few ancient features preserved in it still show its original resemblance; theGreek nation, of which the Latin people is a branch; theSclavonian races, who, notwithstanding their intellectual inferiority, appear from their language to be nearly allied with the Persians and other cognate nations; theLettic tribes, among which the Lithuanian has preserved the fundamental forms of this class of languages with remarkable fidelity; theTeutonic,
