190

The Loom of Language

as a rustic dialect of the province of Latium; but nobody can tell
where the speakers of proto-Aryan lived;, whether tn Southern Russia,
or on the Iranian plateau^ or somewhere else If, as some philologists
believe, Old Indie, and the Persian of the Avetfa have the most archaic
features of Aryan languages known to us, it is not necessaiily true that
the habitat of the early Aiyan-speaking people was nearer to Asia than
to Europe The example of Icelandic shows that a language may stray
far away from home and still preserve char ictenstics long ago discarded

TEUTONIC COMPARISON

ANGl O-AMriUCAN

(a) Regular typi

swunsu

DANISH

MUCH

tl KMAN

men RICHLR than
RICHESr
nk nkarc an iikast
ug ngcre ( nd ngcst
njk xijkct dan ujksi
icich nnthtn icichst
als

(b) Irregular forms *

(l) GOOD
BJ i ru<
BL6T
gor bame bast
1«* bcdre Kdst
goed bctcr b<
gut bev.tsr :st

(ll) MUCH MOKE
mydcttwC/") inera
n»egc«(0 nici c
vcel nuccr
vicl inciii

MOM
mcst
incut
mu »t

(m) LirrtE
LL$S LHASr
htc«(z) hlla (pi.) nni mmsc
hllc
idrc mnidst
wcinig
xiimder mmst
wemj; wcnigcr (minder)
weiugst (mindcst)

* The -r ending is that ot the neuter form
by those that stayed behind. Only one thing seems certain When the
recorded history of Aryan begins with the Vedic hymns, the dispersal
of the Aryan-speaking tribes had already taken place.
From the writings of some German authors we might gain the base-
less impression that we are almost as weU-mformed about the language
and cultuial life of the proto-Aryans as we are about Egyptian civili-
zation* One German linguist has pushed audacity so far as to compile a
dictionary of hypothetical primitive Aryan, and another has surpassed
him by telling us a story m it* Others have asserted that the proto-
Aryans were already tilling the soil with the ox and the yoke. The proof