Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The American Languages, From Hudson's
Bay To The Straits Of Magellan, Are In General Characterized By A
Total Disparity Of Words Combined With A Great Analogy In Their
Structure.
They are like different substances invested with analogous
forms.
If we recollect that this phenomenon extends over one-half of
our planet, almost from pole to pole; if we consider the shades in the
grammatical forms (the genders applied to the three persons of the
verb, the reduplications, the frequentatives, the duals); it appears
highly astonishing to find a uniform tendency in the development of
intelligence and language among so considerable a portion of the human
race.
We have just seen that the dialect of the Carib women in the West
India Islands contains the vestiges of a language that was extinct.
Some writers have imagined that this extinct language might be that of
the Ygneris, or primitive inhabitants of the Caribbee Islands; others
have traced in it some resemblance to the ancient idiom of Cuba, or to
those of the Arowaks, and the Apalachites in Florida: but these
hypotheses are all founded on a very imperfect knowledge of the idioms
which it has been attempted to compare one with another.
The Spanish writers of the sixteenth century inform us that the Carib
nations then extended over eighteen or nineteen degrees of latitude,
from the Virgin Islands east of Porto Rico, to the mouths of the
Amazon. Another prolongation toward the west, along the coast-chain of
Santa Marta and Venezuela, appears less certain.
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