Phe subject being abstruse did not prevent fairly good attendance in the Society's hall in Museum Ruad, on Wednesday evening (Ist).
The President, Me. called the meeting to order at x quarter tu nine, andthe minutes of the Jast meeting being taken as read, the President called on De. Edkins proceed with the reading of his paper.
The lecturer began with laying down three rules of procedure in comparing families of language with each other. (1) Phe sphere of ethnology is distinec from that of language Decnuse conquered races and absorbed nationalities learn the language of thg conquerors. (2) The indestructibility of words, Phere is no limit in time to the lifetime of words, They may last fur many thousand years, only they must lave a clear sign Heance and be marked by intensity of feeling or constancy vf repetition. (3) Physivlogical control over all later changes is to be taken asa fixed law. These three things premised we may proceed to compare the Junguages of the Continent of Asia with each othe:
The families of language in Asia are nine 1 Chinese, 2 Japanese and Corean with Amo, 3 Manchu, Mongol and Turkish, 4 Tibetan and Burmese, 5 Annamese and Siamese, 6 Indo-European, 7 Semitic, 8 Dravidian, and 9 Malay.
Phe Chinese is the most primitive among these. We see in Shanghai among the natives about two thousand imperfect speakers of English. hey pronounce it most of them wretchedly because they have not " command of a large number of separate sounds, On the other hand European speaking Chinese pronounce fairly well Decause they find the sounds not difficult imitate. "This shows that Chinese is pri-initive in type and old, while European ure the most competent and perfect languages existing in any part of the world.
Yet China has wade great achievements in language as her arge collections of words show, Her vocabulary in agriculture, politics and social questions, in medicine and the arts, is very voluminous, But she did not get beyond the monosyllabl The polyayllabie growth of language is due to the nomad races, The process was probably of this sort. Agricultural vocabularies ure spoken with local accent, But if the speakers become nomad they move to new markets at a distance and all Local nocent is then useless; then they repeat a word or use 4 synonym to make the bargainer understand, This is a.m ment in the direction vf polysylla We see the same thing among the Chiese themselves who are heard repeating words when they explain the Confucian books in modern colloquial, Two words take the place of one. This then is the origin of polysyllabic speech, Tt is caused by the renioval of speakers from agricultural life to nomad life, Agricultural life supplice words. Nomad life supplies turms, Then the Indo-European languages were shown to be based on the Tartar. The Tartar languages were developed when North Asia lad a warm climate and metallurgy and agriculture flourished in the basina of the Caspian and of the now} Frozen Ocean. The Accadians were une with them at that time and this appears to have been one of the early civilisations of the world, With the stimulus then acquired the Accadians were able to do what they afterwards achieved in Mesopotamia. The fact that the Tartars and Accadians alike have the pronouns me and mine and the connected substantial verb to be shows this.
The lines of migration were then traced by the help of the names of the domestic animals, especially the dog, horse, and cow and the words for cheese, butter and milk, By this means was shown that there were about four latitudinal lines of migration from Asia to Europe and that for example the Tibetan word for cheese being the same as that of the Greeks, a part of the Greeks might go from near Tibet westward through PersiatoKurope. Certainly them any nonics of animals which are the same in Tartary and Kurope show that there is ground for the view that the vocabulary of Europe and Tartary is identical; 2.g. Ugoli, owl, in el is Ogle in Swedish, The reason that the Tartar languages were able to attain this positi prominence in the development of European speech is found in an early civilisation in Siberia and the Caspian basin when the climate was warmer than it If words xre same in the older system vf language an in the newer, etymology of words ought to be sought Exstern Asia where systems of hun speech: still exist of very antique type.
At the else of the lecture, Mr.
Ispoke of it in a highly commendatory, annner, But in regard to the Japanese ne fur doy, which it had been stated was the same word with the English dg, he remarked that he irely failed to see resemblance, But in regard to th attention of the President was drawn ce the circumstance that 4 is dropped, wis really the source of, and that i is prefixed just as the Japanese prefix 1 te the Chinese ma to make their name for the horse, CHARTERED BANK OF INDIA,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.