Page:An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language.djvu/16

x conception of propriety grew up. What an abundance of new ideas and words, which were foreign to the primitive speech, had now to be evolved! In fact, we find among the Aryans but a slight agreement in the designations of ethical ideas; and,  and ,  and , are specifically Teutonic; , , and  have no exact correspondences in the remaining Teutonic languages. ,, , , as well as (see ),  (see ), and  (see ), owe their existence to the special religious development of the Teutons, while we find the belief in elfish beings (see ) even in the Vedas.

It is true that this increase does not altogether suffice to characterise the development of the languages of the Teutonic group. If we assign the year 2000 B.C. as the latest date for the Aryan division of dialects, the second period of the history of the German language would end with the beginning of our era. This interval of two thousand years, at the end of which we assume the development of the consonant and vowel forms peculiar to Teutonic, as well as the settlement of the Teutons in Germany, has no well-defined divisions with prominent characteristics; but the later evidence of the language indicates in this pre-historic period so many points of contact with civilised nations as would in historic times probably be regarded as forming a new epoch. The Teutonic tribe, with the western group of nations of the Aryan stock, had left its eastern home as a pasturing people. Evidence in the language itself subsequently shows us these people with their flocks on the march. The term tageweide, current in Middle High German, could exist as a measure of length only among a race of shepherds in the act of migrating; only nomads could count their stages by periods of rest. That the great stream of Aryan tribes poured through the South Russian lowlands (the Italics and Kelts had shown them the way) is antecedently probable, and this theory is finely illustrated by the history of the word. Here we see the Teutons in contact with a non-Aryan people in the south of Russia; and so, too, the foreign aspect of the Teutonic word (  also) testifies to the pre-historic contact of our ancestors with people of a different race, whose origin can unfortunately no longer be determined. We suspect that its influence on the Teutons and their language was manifested in a greater number of loan-words than can now be discovered.

On the other hand, the emigrant Aryans, whom we find at a later period in our part of the world, and whose languages were differentiated only gradually from one another and from the primitive speech, were led by constant intercourse to exchange a large number of terms expressive of the acquisitions of civilisation, which the individual tribes would perhaps have acquired only after a longer independent development. Numerous words are peculiar to the European Aryans, which we seek for in vain among the Indians and Persians. They relate chiefly to agriculture and technical products, the development of which did certainly not take place at the same time among all the European peoples belonging to the Teutonic stock. Occasionally the language itself bears witness that correspondences in the languages spoken by the Western Aryans are due only to the adoption of words by one people from another (see ). Thus the stems of old words such as, , , and , whose Aryan character is undoubted, will not necessarily be regarded as genuine Teutonic, since they may have been borrowed from a kindred people.

The evidence of language, which alone gives us a knowledge of the primitive contact of the Teutons with foreign and kindred people, is unfortunately not full