Book Description

Excerpt from Discoveries in Hebrew, Gaelic, Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Basque and Other Caucasic Languages: Showing Fundamental Kinship of the Aryan Tongues and of Basque With the Semitic Tongues Until the rise of scientific philology in the early part of the nineteenth century, the belief was general that Hebrew was the mother-tongue of the languages of Europe. The new science examined and condemned the foundations of that belief. Moreover, it was discovered that Hebrew, so far from being worthy to be considered the mother-tongue of those languages, actually bore no readily discernible marks of even remote kinship with them. As might be conjectured, Biblical scholars did not accept without protest the imposition of these revolutionary doctrines of the new philology. Though the controversy over the matter was earnest and long-continued, strangely the truth was not discovered. Philology, however, seemingly won the day; and to her unmerited triumph may in great measure be indirectly ascribed the discredit into which she has since fallen among her sister sciences. The conclusion in the matter arrived at by the founders and builders of scientific philology was succinctly stated by Professor James Hadley, who "was, in the opinion of all who knew him most fully, America's best and soundest philologist" (William Dwight Whitney). "In addition to his mastery of the Greek language, he was well versed in Hebrew, Arabic, Armenian, Sanskrit, Welsh, Gaelic, Irish, and the principal modern languages" (Arthur Twining Hadley, in Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia). In his Brief History of the English Language, published in 1864 as a part of Webster's Dictionary of the English Language, Professor James Hadley said: "All etymologizing which assumes or implies a radical affinity between English and Hebrew, English and Finnish, or the like, is, in the present state of philology, unscientific and illusory." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."