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Unhappily, we English have been busy, for the last four thousand years, clipping and paring down our inflections, until very few of them are left to us. Of all Europeans, we have been the greatest sinners in this way. Well said the sage of old, that words are like regiments: they are apt to lose a few stragglers on a long march. Still, we can trace a few inflections, that are common to us and to our kinsmen who compiled the Vedas.

In Substantives, we have the Genitive Singular and the Nominative Plural left.1

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I give a few Suffixes, common to Sanscrit and English

forms of the same root:

Ma; as from the root gna, know, we get the Sanscrit naman and the English nama, name.

Ra; as from the root ag, go, we get the Sanscrit agra and the English acre.

English. I wish that some competent scholar would give us a list of all those of our Teutonic words that are clearly akin to Sanscrit. Antiquam exquirite-sororem. The English bishop and the French evêque, two very modern forms of the same word, are much wider apart from each other than the hoary words in the long list given above. Clive's sailors would have stared, had they been told that the first syllable of the Ganges was to be found in the gangway of their ships, and that kinsmen, long separated, were being re-united. 1 English, in respect of the Nominative Plural, comes nearer to the Mother Speech than German does.

Nu; as from the root su, bear, we get the Sanscrit sunus and the English sunu, son.

Der; as from the root pa, feed, we get the Sanscrit pi-tar and the English fœ-der, father.

U ; as the Sanscrit madhu (honey) is the English meodu (mead). Hence our scádu (shadow), seonu (sinew). Our word silvern must once have been pronounced as silfre-na, having the suffix na in common with the Sanscrit phali-na.

We may wonder why vixen is the feminine of fox, carline of carle. Turning to our Sanscrit and Latin cousins, we find that their words for queen are ráj-nî and reg-ina, coming from the root raj. Still, in these last, then is possessive; the vowel at the end is the mark of the feminine.

What is the meaning of ward in such a word as heaven-ward? I answer, to turn is vrit in Sanscrit, vertere in Latin.

There is no ending that seems to us more thoroughly Teutonic than the like in such words as workmanlike. But this is seen under a slightly differing shape in the Sanscrit ta-drksa, in the Greek te-lik-os, and the Latin ta-lis. These words answer to our old pýlic, which survives as thick or thuck in the mouths of Somersetshire peasants. So in Old English we find swý-lic, corrupted by us first into swylc, and then into such.

Our privative un is seen in Sanscrit, as an-anta-s, un-end-ing.

The Sanscrit kas, ka, kat appears in Latin as quis, quæ, quid, and in English as hwá, hwd, hwat (who, what).

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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.

Sanscrit.

Theme Mah (great)
Compar. mah-î-jas

Superl. mah-istha

English.
Mic-el, much

mâ-r-a, more

mâ-st, most

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

The old Comparatives were formed in ra, tara, Superlatives 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:

Positive. foreweard

Comparative. Superlative.

fyrra

for-ma

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 mast, most. Thus we find both ûtema and útmest, 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,

with which the old Genitive was formed. Hence comes such a form as he must needs go,' which carries us back, far beyond the age of written English, to the Sanscrit adverb formed from the Genitive. Even in the earliest English, the Genitive of néd was néde, and nothing more. In later times we say, 'of a truth, of course,' &c., which are imitations of the old Adverbial Genitive.

We have not many inflections left in the English Verb. The old form in mi, once common to English, Sanscrit, and other dialects, has long dropped; our word am (in Sanscrit asmi) is now its only representative. It is thought that the old Present ran as shown in the following specimen:

Root nam, take; a word retained by us till A.D. 1500.1

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The Perfect of this verb must have been na-nam-ma, in its second syllable lengthening the first vowel of the Present; in other words, forming what is called in English a Strong verb. Sid-ami in Sanscrit has sasad-a for its Perfect, words of which we have clipped forms in I sit and I sat. I hight (once hæhát), from hấtan, and I did (once dide), are the only English Perfects that have kept any trace of their reduplication, and the

1 Hence comes 'to numb.'

former is our one relic of the Passive voice. The Imperative in Sanscrit was, in the Singular, nama, in the Plural, namata, answering to the Old English nim and nimath. The Infinitive was nam-anaj-a (the Greek nem-enai), which we had pared down into nim-an more than a thousand years ago. The Active Participle was nama-nt, which runs through most of the daughters of the Aryan Tongue, and which kept its ground in the Scotch Lowlands until of late years, as ridand' instead of our corrupt word 'riding.' The Sanscrit and English alike have both Strong and Weak Passive Participles; the former ending in na, the latter in ta, as stir-na-s, strew-n.1

Sanscrit, yuk-tas

Greek, zeuk-tos

Latin, junc-tus

English, yok-ed (in Lowland Scotch, yok-it).

Those who choose to write I was stopt instead of stopped, may justify their spelling by a reference to the first three forms given above. But this form, though admissible in the Passive Participle, is clearly wrong in the Active Perfect, I stopped, as we shall see further on.2

In the Aryan Speech there were a few Verbs which had lost their Presents, and which used their old Perfects as Presents, forming for themselves new weak

1 Few Sanscrit verbs have this form, so common in English. 2 Archdeacon Hare always spelt preached as preacht. Still, it is the English th, not t, that answers to the Sanscrit t.

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