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 CHAPTER II

10.—A fact, generally noted by linguists, is —the rapidity or facility, with which the dialects and tongues of people, deprived of literary monuments, are altered or changed.

Literature serves, so to say, as the standard, after which the spoken language is modelled in order to be preserved in its integrity.

—In relation to the savage tribes of Brasil, the frequent change of their vocabulary was one of the leading circumstances, which were noted by the catechising missionaries, who, very often, expressed their admiration at the fact, that a dialect had undergone, within a short time, after it was knwon, so many alterations, as to become quite a different one.

They have observed, that the names of the most common objects themselves, as, for instance, — father, son, etc, were, sometimes, so much altered by pronunciation, that they form-