Page:Prob of Siamese alphabet - Schrader - 1928.pdf/2

 great family of languages the two principal branches of which are the Tibeto-Burman and the Siamo-Chinese groups.

It is the importance of Indo-Chinese linguistics for the problems of the Siamese alphabet which my paper was intended to call attention to, and I meant to draw attention especially to the unique importance, in this respect, of the Tibetan language. The latter, as has been noticed long ago, is the key to Indo-Chinese linguistics, Mr. Karlgren's researches on Chinese phonology are no doubt very useful and much to be admired, but they only prove that it is impossible to reconstruct the supposed polysyllabic stage of that language without the help of Tibetan. I am, of course, well aware of the dangers involved in comparing just two languages only of a large linguistic family many members of which are as yet hardly known at all to us, but I can prove that even through this imperfect method valuable results may be attained, and I would ask J. B., who denies this — which, indeed, seems to he his main objection to my paper—the one question: How did Indo-European linguistics originate? Did it start with the axiom that all investigations about the supposed mutual connection of the languages believed to form the Indo-European family must be postponed until each member of that family was perfectly known? that it was inadmissableinadmissible [sic], e.g., to compare Gothic with Old Bulgarian before both Teutonic as well as Slav philology would have spoken their last word?? Need it be said that in that case even now the existence of an Indo-European family of languages would be nothing but a vague hypothesis? and that the said philologies would not be nearly as advanced as they are? No, Bopp was perfectly right to operate with the few languages known to him (only five when he began) and leave it to his followers to correct and elaborate his system. And the same holds good with Conrady. He had at his disposal practically all the cultivated members of the Indo-Chinese family of speech, i.e., just those languages of which more than their present condition is known—among them Tibetan, the Sanskrit of Indo-Chinese linguistics—and moreover quite a number, though comparatively few, of the rustic members of that family. What a menstruous injustice, in view of this XXI—3.