Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/730

Rh 00 E IT li O P E 8. LETTIC branch, represented by. t&amp;gt;. UNATTACHED (6) Lettish. (c) Lithuanian. (6) Albanian. H. SEMITIC. 1 CANAA.NITIC branch, represented by *(-i) Hebrew 2 ARABIC branch, represented by **(&amp;lt;) Arabic. (r) Maltese. III. FIMNO-TATARIC (Turanian, Uralo-Altaic, Ac.) 1. SAMOVKDIC branch or group, represented )_ ^ Yurak. 2 FISSIC or UORI AH represented by (a) Finnish proper or Suonie. (6) Karelian. (c) Tchudic. (d) Vepsic. (e) Votick. (/) Crewinian. (g) Esthonian. (ft) Livonian. (t) Lapponlc. (j) Tcheremlsjilaii. (*) Mordviniiin. (/) Permian. (in) Votiak. (n) Siryenian. (u) Magyar or Hungarian. 3 TURKISH or TATAR gronp, represented by.. (a) Kazak Khirghiz. (4) Nogairlc. (c) Tchuvak. (J) Turkish. 4. USATTACUKD Basque. From this conspectus it appears tliat there are still about 60 distinct languages spoken in Europe, without in cluding Latin, Greek, Old Slavonic, and Hebrew, which are still used in literature or ecclesiastical liturgies. Besides, as we shall presently see, all those which are .spoken over extensive territories, and some even which are confined within very narrow limits, are broken up into several dis tinct dialects. Most of the number, however, are destined to disappear within a comparatively short period, before the encroachments of the few which are especially favoured by political circumstances and literary culture. The process is rapidly going on, and everything tends to its acceleration. Some, indeed, whose doom appeared almost sealed in the end of last century, have gathered fresh life and repulsed the intrusive language by which their existence was threatened ; and on others a temporary and melancholy restoration has been inflicted by the mistaken enthusiasm of a patriotic minority. English, French, German, Russian, Italian, and Spanish will probably for a long time share the real dominion of Europe ; Dutch and the Scandinavian tongues will maintain their ground, but they hardly give promise of expansion: Bohemian, Hungarian, and the South-Slavonic have made good their position ; and Noo Hellenic, under favouring circumstances, may get possession of the territory of its nobler ancestor. Greek and Latin may fairly claim tlie first place in a historic sketch, on account cf the immense and varied influence they have exerted, directly or indirectly, on the popular and literary language
 * (&amp;lt;!) Old Prussian.
 * ?(a) Old Dacian.
 * (&) Phoenician or Punic.
 * (&) Mosarabic.
 * &amp;gt;f all the prominent peoples of Europe. The former, which is

preserved in what is at once the most perfect and the most multi form of the older literatures of the world, was spoken wherever a Greek city ws established in Asia, Europe, or Africa. It had several well-marked phonetic dialects: the JEolic, represented in Europe by the Bceotian variety ; the Doric, employed in Sparta and most of the other Peloponnesiaii states, as well as in other colonies of Sicily and Southern Italy; and the Ionic, which in the Attic dia lect attained its noblest development, and became the principal literary form. A rude dialect of the ^Eolian type was spoken in Thessaly ; and in sereral districts of northern Greece other varieties must have had their home, some of them probably so divergent from 1he more cultured dialects as to be unrecognizable by the rough and ready philology of the ancient Greeks. After the extension of the political power of the Hellenic race by the Hellenized Macedonians the Attic dialect became in a necessarily modified guise the language of at least the educated classes over a wide foreign area. This Koivi) 8tae/cTos, or common dialect as it was called, was that in which all the Christian Scriptures were, if not originally penned, at least most potently disseminated ; and some time after the establishment of the seat of the empire at Constantinople it was adopted as the official language of Eastern Europe, and developed or degenerated into what is distinguished as Byzantine Greek. Amid all the linguistic confusion of mediieval and modern times in the Balkan peninsula th old Hellenic speech maintained a precarious and degraded life in the so-called Romaic of the Greek people, still recognizable to the philologist, but to the vulgar ear and eye very successfully disguised. It is still spoken, not only in the modern kingdom of Greece, but in Thessaly and other parts of Turkey along the coasts of the ^ftgean ind the Sea of Marmora, and in the Greek settlements of southern Russia. Since the declaration of national independence an attempt has been made to go back to something liker the language of Xenophon ; but as yet the Neo-Hellenic is almost purely a literary form, unintelligible to the great bulk of the people in the ountry. At best it is only a compromise between ancient Greek .ml Romaic, neither conforming to the classical standard of the me nor systematically accepting the grammatical changes developed in the other. As education advances, and it is advancing rapidly under the control of the central administration, it will probably take root among the people, and under the vivifying influences of national life grow up into a national speech. The ancient common dialect is still used in the liturgical services of the Oriental Church. The alphabet has been employed by several communities in the Turkish empire for their Turkish dialects, among others by the people of Mariupol. 1 Latin was only one of a number of closely related languages domiciled in the peninsula of the Apennines, and by several of these it was affected much in the same way in which English is affected y German or French. Most of the number have left neither litera ture nor history behind them, but they must still be differentiating factors in the dialects of modern Italy. Oscan, which was spoken in a large part of the country south of Rome, and Umbrian, which takes its name from a district to the north, are both known to us from inscriptions, the latter by the remarkable liturgical series called the Eugubine Tables. The Latin language kept pace with the extension of the Roman empire till it came into contact with the higher culture of Greece and the East ; as an aggressive lan guage it has no historic parallel, for though the area of English has advanced as rapidly in modern times, this advance has mainly found place where English-speaking people have outnumbered the foreign elements in the population. It continued to be the language of nearly all European literature for centuries after it had ceased to !&amp;gt;&amp;lt; a spoken speech ; and it was the language of all learned litera ture well on in the 17th century. It is still iised in the liturgy -of the Roman Catholic Church, and still forms the most potent 1 in guistic element in all European education. Its alphabet is moiv widely employed than any other in Europe, and is at the present moment gaining ground against the &quot;Gothic&quot; characters of modern Germany, as it did in early ages against the Saxon characters in England. f the languages which have sprung from Latin, French resembles it most in its fortunes, though not in its forms. It is the official, literary, and educational language of the country whose name it bears, and is daily becoming more and more the popular language as well. Based as it is on the old lanyne d oil of the north, it has gained the superiority over the dialects of Burgundy, Picardy, and Normandy, and the more cultured Provencal of the south, has already reduced them to the rank of mere patois, and is gradually diminishing even their local importance. On the north-west it is more slowly displacing the Breton, and in the south making inroads on the Basque. It was nearly naturalized among a large part of the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine, and is still spoken by upwards of 200,000 of the new citizens of the German empire. In Switzerland it is the mother tongue of about 600,000 people, being dominant in Neufchatel, Geneva, and Yaud, and sharing the ground with German in Freiburg, Valais, and Bern. In Belgium it is the principal speech of the educated classes. No European language has had such an extensive foreign history within the continent. Not onlv was the closely related Norman French introduced into England in the llth century, with such striking effect on the English voca bulary, but at several subsequent periods literary French has been potently at work. In the decadent period of German literature it largely supplemented the German language among the upper classes, and for a time furnished a large proportion of his vocabulary to the nominal writer of German. In Russia there was a similar French period about the beginning of the 18th century, which has left its influence to this day on the oilicial publications of the Government. And in spite of the growing claims of German and English, French is still acquired by a greater number of foreigners t^an any other modern tongue. The language usually known as Italian is not so much the national language of Italy as the language of a special disttict. The other dialects have not sunk to the level of patois ; and at the present moment it is a matter of keen debate what is to be considered the true standard for the people at large. From Venice to Palermo there is a rich variety of forms which have received more or less of literary culture ; and the pretensions of Florence to be the sole and final &quot;arbitress are far from being, unanimously admitted. Whatever position be assigned to Tuscan as the language of edu cation, it will be a long time before it attain the predominance in 1 See Blau in Zeitschrift der deut-sch. Morgenl. Ges., 1874.