Page:The Brasilian language and its agglutination.pdf/17

 The former, called sometimes the Uràl-altaic, is again divided into five sections: the languages of the Tonguses, the Mongols, the Turks, the Finns, the Samoyeds.

The latter, which occupies the South-part of Asia, is also divided into four sections: the Tamul, the dialects of Tibet and Bhotan, the dialects of Siam and those of Malaca and Polynesia.

With the group of the agglutinative languages are classed the African tongues, so-called atonic, the words of which are mostly formed by means of prefixes, a characteristic, that distinguishes them from the Ural-altaic tongues, which, as a rule, do not admit of the root of a word occupying the second place.

Still there must be considered, as belonging to the same agglutinative group, the numerous dialects or tongues of America; and among these, those, spoken by Brasilian savages, present undoubtedly all the supposed essential characteristics of an agglutinative language, as we hope to prove beyond contest by our further illustrations.

3.—It is, certainly, too difficult for the linguist to establish a distinct and uniform classification out of the speeches of those multitudes