Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/27

Rh latter part of this term is the German national name Deutsch for Deut-isch, in Gothic Thiud-isk; it is from a root widely diffused in all the Indo-European tongues, to which, of course, Gothic, as a Teutonic speech, belongs.

The branches of the Indo-European family fall into three distinct group:—I. Sanskrit, Old-Persian, Greek, Latin, Keltic, Slavonic; II. Low German (Frisian, Dutch, Norse, Scotch, English); III. High German. Of these the first to appear in Europe must have been the Keltic; the outstanding physical features of our continent—mountains, rivers, valleys—bear Keltic names. The last to appear, and the lowest in the scale of culture, is the Slavonic. The affinities of these tongues have long been established, and the principles involved are formulated in the well-known Grimm's Law. The most striking illustrations of the law are to be found in such familiar and widely-diffused words as numerals, pronouns, and terms for relationships, common natural phenomena, domestic animals, and the like. The law affects merely the nine mutes, as arranged in three sets, viz.:—Hards, Aspirates, Softs, the initials of which form the mnemonic H. A. S. Any word common to the three groups stated above will change, as far as its mutes are concerned, from group to group in the order of the groups and the order of the sets of mutes. These changes can be showns diagrammatically, thus:—A circular disc, divided into three arms corresponding to the three groups above, is made to revolve from left to right within a circle or outer rim, which latter is divided into three compartments corresponding to the three sets of mutes—H. A. S.

The typical illustrations of the law in the three positions of the disc are these:—