Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/36

Rh

The Numerals, up to a hundred, are much the same in Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, and English.

In the Comparison of our Adjectives, we have much in common with Sanscrit. There was a Comparative suffix jans, a Superlative jans-ta.

So swâdu (sweet) becomes swâdîyâns, swâdisthas, (sweeter, sweetest).

The old Comparatives were formed in ra, tara, Su&shy;perlatives in ma, tama. We have, as relics of the Comparative, other, whether, after; also, over, under.

Of the old Superlatives we have but one left:

But this forma we have degraded into a Comparative, and now call it former. It is, in truth, akin to the Sanscrit pra-tha-ma and the Latin pri-mus. Long before the Norman Conquest, we corrupted our old Aryan Superlatives in ma into mest, thinking that they must have some connection with mœst, most. Thus we find both ûtema and ûtmest, utmost. Our word aftermost, if written at full length, would be af-ta-ra-ma-jans-ta, a heaping up of signs to express Comparison.

In our Pronouns, we had a Dual as well as a Singular and Plural; it lasted down to the reign of Edward I.

In our Adverbs, we find traces of the Sanscrit s,