Lectures on The Science of Language 37

Lectures on The Science of Language 37

During these continued struggles their languages lose as many words as men

are killed on the field of battle. Some words (we might say) go over,

others are made prisoners, and exchanged again during times of peace.

Besides, there are parleys and challenges, and at last a dialect is

produced which may very properly be called a language of the camp,

(Urdu-zebán, camp-language, is the proper name of Hindustání, formed in

the armies of the Mogul emperors,) but where it is difficult for the

philologist to arrange the living and to number the slain, unless some

salient points of grammar have been preserved throughout the medley. We

saw how a number of tribes may be at times suddenly gathered by the

command of a Chingis-khán or Timur, like billows heaving and swelling at

the call of a thunder-storm. One such wave rolling on from Karakorum to

Liegnitz may sweep away all the sheepfolds and landmarks of centuries, and

when the storm is over, a thin crust will, as after a flood, remain,

concealing the underlying stratum of people and languages.

 

On the evidence of language, the Finnic stock is divided into four

branches,

 

The Chudic,

The Bulgaric,

The Permic,

The Ugric.

 

The Chudic branch comprises the Finnic of the Baltic coasts. The name is

derived from Chud (Tchud) originally applied by the Russians to the Finnic

nations in the north-west of Russia. Afterwards it took a more general

sense, and was used almost synonymously with Scythian for all the tribes

of Central and Northern Asia. The Finns, properly so called, or as they

call themselves Suomalainen, _i.e._ inhabitants of fens, are settled in

the provinces of Finland (formerly belonging to Sweden, but since 1809

annexed to Russia), and in parts of the governments of Archangel and

Olonetz. Their number is stated at 1,521,515. The Finns are the most

advanced of their whole family, and are, the Magyars excepted, the only

Finnic race that can claim a station among the civilized and civilizing

nations of the world. Their literature and, above all, their popular

poetry bear witness to a high intellectual development in times which we

may call mythical, and in places more favorable to the glow of poetical

feelings than their present abode, the last refuge Europe could afford

them. The epic songs still live among the poorest, recorded by oral

tradition alone, and preserving all the features of a perfect metre and of

a more ancient language. A national feeling has lately arisen amongst the

Finns, despite of Russian supremacy, and the labors of Sjögern, Lönnrot,

Castrén, and Kellgren, receiving hence a powerful impulse, have produced

results truly surprising. From the mouths of the aged an epic poem has

been collected equalling the Iliad in length and completeness, nay, if we

can forget for a moment all that _we_ in our youth learned to call

beautiful, not less beautiful. A Finn is not a Greek, and Wainamoinen was

not a Homer. But if the poet may take his colors from that nature by which

he is surrounded, if he may depict the men with whom he lives, “Kalewala”

possesses merits not dissimilar from those of the Iliad, and will claim

its place as the fifth national epic of the world, side by side with the

Ionian songs, with the Mahábhárata, the Shahnámeh, and the Nibelunge. This

early literary cultivation has not been without a powerful influence on

the language. It has imparted permanency to its forms and a traditional

character to its words, so that at first sight we might almost doubt

whether the grammar of this language had not left the agglutinative stage,

and entered into the current of inflection with Greek or Sanskrit. The

agglutinative type, however, yet remains, and its grammar shows a

luxuriance of grammatical combination second only to Turkish and

Hungarian. Like Turkish it observes the “harmony of vowels,” a feature

peculiar to Turanian languages, as explained before.

 

Karelian and Tavastian are dialectical varieties of Finnish.

 

The Esths or Esthonians, neighbors to the Finns, speak a language closely

allied to the Finnish. It is divided into the dialects of Dorpat (in

Livonia) and Reval. Except some popular songs it is almost without

literature. Esthonia, together with Livonia and Kurland, forms the three

Baltic provinces of Russia. The population on the islands of the Gulf of

Finland is mostly Esthonian. In the higher ranks of society Esthonian is

hardly understood, and never spoken.

 

Besides the Finns and Esthonians, the Livonians and the Lapps must be

reckoned also amongst the same family. Their number, however, is small.

The population of Livonia consists chiefly of Esths, Letts, Russians, and

Germans. The number of Livonians speaking their own dialect is not more

than 5000.

 

The Lapps, or Laplanders, inhabit the most northern part of Europe. They

belong to Sweden and Russia. Their number is estimated at 28,000. Their

language has lately attracted much attention, and Castrén’s travels give a

description of their manners most interesting from its simplicity and

faithfulness.

 

The Bulgaria branch comprises the Tcheremissians and Mordvinians,

scattered in disconnected colonies along the Volga, and surrounded by

Russian and Tataric dialects. Both languages are extremely artificial in

their grammar, and allow an accumulation of pronominal affixes at the end

of verbs, surpassed only by the Bask, the Caucasian, and those American

dialects that have been called Polysynthetic.

 

The general name given to these tribes, Bulgaric, is not borrowed from

Bulgaria, on the Danube; Bulgaria, on the contrary, received its name

(replacing Moesia) from the Finnic armies by whom it was conquered in the

seventh century. Bulgarian tribes advanced from the Volga to the Don, and

after remaining for a time under the sovereignty of the Avars on the Don

and Dnieper, they advanced to the Danube in 635, and founded the Bulgarian

kingdom. This has retained its name to the present day, though the Finnic

Bulgarians have long been absorbed by Slavonic inhabitants, and both

brought under Turkish sway since 1392.

 

The third, or Permic branch, comprises the idioms of the Votiakes, the

Sirianes, and the Permians, three dialects of one language. _Perm_ was the

ancient name for the country between 61°-76° E. lon. and 55°-65° N. lat.

The Permic tribes were driven westward by their eastern neighbors, the

Voguls, and thus pressed upon their western neighbors, the Bulgars of the

Volga. The Votiakes are found between the rivers Vyatka and Kama.

Northwards follow the Sirianes, inhabiting the country on the Upper Kâma,

while the eastern portion is held by the Permians. These are surrounded on

the south by the Tatars of Orenburg and the Bashkirs; on the north by the

Samoyedes, and on the east by Voguls, who pressed on them from the Ural.

 

These Voguls, together with Hungarians and Ostiakes, form the fourth and

last branch of the Finnic family, the Ugric. It was in 462, after the

dismemberment of Attila’s Hunnic empire that these Ugric tribes approached

Europe. They were then called Onagurs, Saragurs, and Urogs; and in later

times they occur in Russian chronicles as Ugry. They are the ancestors of

the Hungarians, and should not be confounded with the Uigurs, an ancient

Turkic tribe mentioned before.

 

The similarity between the Hungarian language and dialects of Finnic

origin, spoken east of the Volga, is not a new discovery. In 1253, Wilhelm

Ruysbroeck, a priest who travelled beyond the Volga, remarked that a race

called Pascatir, who live on the Yaïk, spoke the same language as the

Hungarians. They were then settled east of the old Bulgarian kingdom, the

capital of which, the ancient Bolgari, on the left of the Volga, may still

be traced in the ruins of Spask. If these Pascatir—the portion of the

Ugric tribes that remained east of the Volga—are identical with the

Bashkir, as Klaproth supposes, it would follow that, in later times, they

gave up their language, for the present Bashkir no longer speak a

Hungarian, but a Turkic, dialect. The affinity of the Hungarian and the

Ugro-Finnic dialects was first proved philologically by Gyarmathi in 1799.

 

A few instances may suffice to show this connection:—

 

Hungarian. Tcheremissian. English.

Atya-m atya-m my father.

Atya-d atya-t thy father.

Atya atya-se his father.

Atya-nk atya-ne our father.

Atya-tok atya-da your father.

Aty-ok atya-st their father.

 

DECLENSION.

 

Hungarian. Esthonian. English.

Nom. vér werri blood.

Gen. véré werre of blood.

Dat vérnek werrele to blood.

Acc. vért werd blood.

Abl. vérestöl werrist from blood.

 

CONJUGATION.

 

Hungarian. Esthonian. English.

Lelem leian I find.

Leled leiad thou findest.

Leli leiab he finds.

Leljük leiame we find.

Lelitek leiate you find.

Lelik leiawad they find.

 

A Comparative Table of the NUMERALS of each of the Four Branches of the

FINNIC CLASS, showing the degree of their relationship.

 

1 2 3 4

Chudic, Finnish yksi kaksi kolme neljä

Chudic, Esthonian iits kats kolm nelli

Bulgaric, Tcheremissian ik kok kum nil

Bulgaric, Mordvinian vaike kavto kolmo nile

Permic, Sirianian ötik kyk kujim ujoli

Ugric, Ostiakian it kat chudem njeda

Ugric, Hungarian egy ket harom negy

 

5 6 7

Chudic, Finnish viisi kuusi seitsemän

Chudic, Esthonian wiis kuas seitse

Bulgaric, Tcheremissian vis kut sim

Bulgaric, Mordvinian väte kóto sisem

Permic, Sirianian vit kvait sizim

Ugric, Ostiakian vet chut tabet

Ugric, Hungarian öt hat het

 

8 9 10

Chudic, Finnish kahdeksan yhdeksan kymmenen