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VIII. But the facts constituting the External or Historical Evidence that we have regarding the sources of the language leave us nearly altogether uninformed as to the proportionate amount of each of its several probable ingredients, and as to the precise results that have been produced by their intermixture. This we can only learn from the Internal Evidence, or that afforded by the language itself.

WHENEVER two or more populations, speaking different languages, are placed alongside of one another, under the same government, there arises a tendency, which, sooner or later, will, to a greater or less extent, become operative, towards the establishment of uniformity of speech. No such tendency arises in the case of contiguous populations living under different governments. The result of such a competition of any two languages will depend partly upon the genius and circumstances of the languages, partly upon those of the populations speaking them. This is, probably, all the length that we can safely go in stating the general law. The languages will be distinguished from each other in respect of their comparative states of advancement and cultivation, the facility with which they may be acquired (which, again, may vary with the acquirers), the degree of tenacity and affection with which they are clung to (depending, it may

be, upon their inherent qualities, it may be upon merely their history and fortunes, or those of the races by whom they are spoken), and the attractions which they hold out, either by their natural beauty and capabilities, their expressiveness, their convenience or importance politically, commercially, or for general purposes, and the amount and value of their literary stores. The popula tions speaking them will be distinguished by their comparative numbers, by the political relation in which they stand to each other, by their respective social conditions, and even by the disposition of each, on the one hand to adopt new customs, or on the other to impose its own laws and usages upon its neighbours. The result, therefore, it is manifest, may be infinitely modified, both in itself and in the manner in which it is brought about.

The following cases, among others, may be considered :

The retention of their proper language by the Greeks throughout all the vicissitudes of their history.

The establishment of the Latin language in Gaul and several other countries after their conquest by the Romans.

The imposition of their own language by the Turks in those portions of their empire that were earliest wrested from the Christians.

The substitution of the Arabic for the old languages in Egypt and the other Mahometan countries along the northern coast of Africa.

The substitution, after the overthrow of the Roman empire, in some of its provinces of a Gothic, in others. of a semi-Gothic speech, in place of the Latin.

The abandonment of their ancestral languages by the

Franks, after their conquest of Gaul; by the Normans, after their settlement in England; and by the Manchoos, after their conquest of China.

The retention of their ancestral language by the Saxons, after their conquest of Britain.

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See, also, the remarks of Dr. Charles Pickering, in the fifteenth chapter (The Relation between the Races) of his work entitled, The Races of Man," and the instances there brought forward, principally from the languages of Asia and Africa.

When one of two competing languages completely gives way and disappears before the other, that result is always preceded by both languages having been generally spoken for a considerable period by the population that is destined to relinquish its ancestral speech, and by at least one generation of that population having grown up in the knowledge and use of both languages from childhood. It is only a language which it has itself acquired in childhood that one generation will ever transmit to another.

But in some cases, when two languages come into competition, the one does not retire and altogether disappear before the other, but a combination takes place between them; or, if one of them acquires the ascendancy, it is still more or less modified by the other.

It is probable that some languages are naturally more impressible by a foreign element or influence than others. And the same language will vary in its impressibility at different stages of its growth, or according to the temper or circumstances of the population speaking it. It will also be more apt to be affected by the contact of one foreign language than of another.

Most commonly the effect produced by one language upon another is confined to the vocabulary. It is very rarely, if ever, that two distinct grammatical structures become intermixed; although sometimes, perhaps, a language may suffer some derangement of its grammar from coming into collision with another language.

IX. The number of words which the English language appears to have derived from the Celtic of the original Britons, or their descendants the Welsh, is considerable; but they are scattered and unconnected, and do not constitute a distinguishable department of its vocabulary. No stream of words has flowed into it from that quarter. There has been no chemical combination of the two languages; only a mechanical intermixture to a certain extent.

THE ablest investigation that the question of the amount of Celtic in English has received is contained in a paper read before the Philological Society in 1844 by the late Rev. Richard Garnett, and published in the Society's Proceedings, vol. i. p. 169.

Mr. Garnett enumerates about two hundred English words (some of them, however, only provincial), which he conceives to have been borrowed from the Welsh, and he affirms that twenty times as many might be produced. Among those which he instances are the following funnel, from ffynel, literally, an air-hole; garter, from gar tas, a shank tie; kick, from cic, the foot; cuts, in the expression "to draw cuts," from cutus, a lot; to wed, from gweddu, to yoke; bride, from priawd, meaning one won and possessed.

The word leather Mr. Garnett gives as an instance of a term which is found in many Teutonic (or Gothic) as well as in all the Celtic dialects, but which there are,

evertheless, reasons for believing to be originally Celtic,

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