Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/548

424 that and the Samaritan, yet I have a very great suspicion the languages were once much nearer a-kin than this disagreement of their alphabet promises, and, for this reason, that a very great number of words are found throughout the Old Testament that have really no root, nor can be derived from any Hebrew origin, and yet all have, in the Ethiopic, a plain, clear, unequivocal origin, to and from which they can be traced without force or difficulty.

now finish what I have to say upon this subject, by observing, that the Ethiopic alphabet consists of twenty-six letters, each of these, by a virgula, or point annexed, varying in sound, so as to become, in effect, forty-two distinct letters. But I must further add, that at first they had but twenty-five of these original letters, the Latin P being wanting, so that they were obliged to substitute another letter in the place of it. Paulus, for example, they called Taulus, Oulus, or Caulus. Petros they pronounced Ketros. At last they substituted T, and added this to the end of their alphabet, giving it the force of P, though it was really a repetition of a character, rather than invention. Besides these there are twenty others of the nature of dipththongs, but I should suppose some of these are not of the same antiquity with the letters of the alphabet, but have been invented in later times by the scribes for convenience.

reader will understand, that, speaking of the Ethiopic at present, I mean only the Geez language, the language of the Shepherds, and of the books. None of the other many languages spoken in Abyssinia have characters for writing. But when the Amharic became substituted, in common use and conversation, to the Geez, after the resto-

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