Page:Czechoslovak stories.pdf/337

 conditions have produced a separation into two nationalities, the Serbian and the Croatian.

7. The Bulgarian stem. Only in Macedonia is it still undecided whether to consider the indigenous Slavs as Bulgarians or Serbians, or perhaps as an independent branch.

The common origin of the Indo-European languages is determined mainly by two tests which the philologists apply. These proofs of kinship are a similar structure or inflectional system and a common root system.

Practically all the common words in use in any of the languages belonging to the Indo-European family are fair illustrations of the strong relationship existing among the eight branches, and are proofs of an original or parent tongue known to nearly all of the now widely dispersed nations of Europe. For instance, the word “mother” in the modern languages has these forms: In the French, it is “{{lang|fr|mère,” abbreviated from the older Italic tongue, Latin, where it was “{{lang|la|mater}},” in the Spanish “{{lang|es|madre}}”; in the German it is “{{lang|de|Mutter}}”; in the Scotch the word becomes “mither”; in the Bohemian or Czech it is “{{lang|cs|mateř}}” or “{{lang|cs|matka}}”; and in the Russian it is “{{lang|ru-Latn|mat}}” or “{{lang|ru-Latn|mater}}.”

The English verb, “to be,” conjugated in the present tense is: