Page:A Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language with a Preliminary Dissertation- Dissertation and Grammar, in Two Volumes, Vol. I (IA dli.granth.52714).pdf/18

 improbable and contrary to the usual history of society. If the imagined parent language had ever existed, we should be able to trace it to its locality, as we might the modern languages of the south of Europe to Latin, even had there been no history, or as we can assign a common origin to the Polynesian lan- guages from New Zealand to the Sandwich islands. The name of the language, and the name and locality of the advanced people who spoke it, might, among tribes acquainted with letters, be known; but there is no indication of such language or people, and the conjectures of European scholars on these subjects will be shown to have no shadow of foundation.

The tests applied, by the supporters of the theory, to prove the existence of a common-original language, have consisted in an essential identity of a few words, and in a supposed similarity of grammatical structure. To this last test, chiefly relied on by late German writers, I am not dis- posed to attach much weight, when applied to languages of remarkably simple structure, affording necessarily few salient points for comparison; and such is the case with all the insular languages. With respect to the test by identity of words, it is certain that the number, and the particular description of words, are alone entitled to any weight; and that the existence of a small number of words in common, in the languages under examination, is no more a proof of their derivation from a common tongue than the existence of Latin words in English that our Teutonic tongue is a sister dialect of Italian, Spanish, and French; or of Latin words in Irish that Irish is derived from Latin; or of Arabic words in Spanish that the Spanish language is of Arabian origin, and a sister dialect of Hebrew.

It has been imagined by some writers that when the class of words expressing the first and simplest ideas of mankind are the same in two or more languages, such languages may be con- sidered as derived from the same stock. This certainly does not accord with my experience of the Malayan and Polynesian languages, into which, from the simplicity of their structure, I find that well-sounding foreign words very readily gain admission. Instead of words expressing simple ideas being excluded, I should, on the whole, owing to the familiar and frequent use of