Handbook of Universal Literature | Page 7

exercised a profound influence on the later alphabets of
Europe. From a combination of the Roman and Irish arose the
Anglo-Saxon script, the precursor of that which was developed in the
ninth century by Alcuin of York, the friend and preceptor of

Charlemagne. This was the parent of the Roman alphabet, in which our
books are now printed. Among other deteriorations, there crept in, in
the fourteenth century, the Gothic or black letter character, and these
barbarous forms are still essentially retained by the Teutonic nations
though discarded by the English and Latin races; but from its superior
excellences the Roman alphabet is constantly extending its range and
bids fair to become the sole alphabet of the future. In all the lands that
were settled and overrun by the Scandinavians, there are found
multitudes of inscriptions in the ancient alphabet of the Norsemen,
which is called the Runic. The latest modern researches seem to prove
that this was derived from the Greek, and probably dates back as far as
the sixth century B.C.The Goths were early in occupation of the
regions south of the Baltic and east of the Vistula, and in direct
commercial intercourse with the Greek traders, from whom they
doubtless obtained a knowledge of the Greek alphabet, as the Greeks
themselves had gained it from the Phoenicians.

CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES.
Modern philologists have made different classifications of the various
languages of the world, one of which divides them into three great
classes: the Monosyllabic, the Agglutinated, and the Inflected.
--The first, or Monosyllabic class, contains those languages which
consist only of separate, unvaried monosyllables. The words have no
organization that adapts them for mutual affiliation, and there is in
them, accordingly, an utter absence of all scientific forms and
principles of grammar. The Chinese and a few languages in its vicinity,
doubtless originally identical with it, are all that belong to this class.
The languages of the North American Indians, though differing in
many respects, have the same general grade of character.
The second class consists of those languages which are formed by
agglutination. The words combine only in a mechanical way; they have
no elective affinity, and exhibit toward each other none of the active or
sensitive capabilities of living organisms. Prepositions are joined to
substantives, and pronouns to verbs, but never so as to make a new
form of the original word, as in the inflected languages, and words thus
placed in juxtaposition retain their personal identity unimpaired.
The agglutinative languages are known also as the Turanian, from

Turan, a name of Central Asia, and the principal varieties of this family
are the Tartar, Finnish, Lappish, Hungarian, and Caucasian. They are
classed together almost exclusively on the ground of correspondence in
their grammatical structure, but they are bound together by ties of far
less strength than those which connect the inflected languages. The race
by whom they are spoken has, from the first, occupied more of the
surface of the earth than either of the others, stretching westward from
the shores of the Japan Sea to the neighborhood of Vienna, and
southward from the Arctic Ocean to Afghanistan and the southern coast
of Asia Minor.
The inflected languages form the third great division. They have all a
complete interior organization, complicated with many mutual relations
and adaptations, and are thoroughly systematic in all their parts.
Between this class and the monosyllabic there is all the difference that
there is between organic and inorganic forms of matter; and between
them and the agglutinative languages there is the same difference that
exists in nature between mineral accretions and vegetable growths. The
boundaries of this class of languages are the boundaries of cultivated
humanity, and in their history lies embosomed that of the civilized
portions of the world.
Two great races speaking inflected languages, the Semitic and the Indo-
European, have shared between them the peopling of the historic
portions of the earth; and on this account these two languages have
sometimes been called political or state languages, in contrast with the
appellation of the Turanian as nomadic. The term Semitic is applied to
that family of languages which are native in Southwestern Asia, and
which are supposed to have been spoken by the descendants of Shem,
the son of Noah. They are the Hebrew, Aramaeic, Arabic, the ancient
Egyptian or Coptic, the Chaldaic, and Phoenician. Of these the only
living language of note is the Arabic, which has supplanted all the
others, and wonderfully diffused its elements among the constituents of
many of the Asiatic tongues. In Europe the Arabic has left a deep
impress on the Spanish language, and is still represented in the Maltese,
which is one of its dialects.
The Semitic languages differ widely from the Indo-European in
reference to their grammar, vocabulary, and idioms.