Page:The Making of Latin.djvu/18

4 called the Koinē, that is ‘the common dialect’; and from this is descended Modern Greek.

§ . Keltic includes in one branch Gallic, an ancient language of Gaul, of which we have only scanty records, and also Welsh and Breton: this branch is called ‘Brythonic.’ In the other branch, which is called ‘Goidelic,’ are Manx, Irish, and the Gaelic of the Scotch Highlands. Breton, Welsh, Irish and Gaelic are still spoken languages.

§ . The earliest Germanic tongue known to us is Gothic, recorded in the translation of the New Testament made by Bishop Ulfila, a missionary to the Goths of the Crimea in the 4th century a.p.; other branches are Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, English (of which ‘Scotch’ is a dialect), Dutch, and German.

§ . Latin is the best known language of the Italic Branch, in which are included besides Latin several dialects, called Oscan, Umbrian, Volscian, Sabine and Faliscan, which are known to us from inscriptions and from scattered statements of grammarians. It is often possible to discover the original form and meaning of a Latin word by comparing it with the kindred word in one of these dialects. For instance, North Osc. prismu ‘first’ shows that Lat. prīmus has lost an -s- before its -m- (§ 198) and contains the stem pris- that we see in pris-cus ‘primitive’ (§ 252).

Changes in Language

§ . From the examples already given it will be clear that by comparing kindred languages we often