A Table of the Aryan Languages. With Notes and Illustrations,
By Henry Attwell. (Williams and Norgate.)—This table enumerates, under the six heads of Indic, Iranic, 'Celtic, Grreco-Latin, Slavonic, and Teu- tonic, the various languages of the Aryan race, the dead languages being distinguished by red type. Brief notes, historical and geographical, as well as linguistic, are added, and illustrations—lists of the numerals, for instance—are given with Bach words as head, eye, tooth, &c., all being such as are not likely to be borrowed by one nation from another, and therefore are specially valuable, as exemplifying the kinship between various languages. We give an instance, taken at random,—" Water." Under this head we have the Sanskrit, uda ; Hindustanee, nuddee, a river ; Greek clomp; Latin, unda (udus); Armorican, dour; Lithuanian, wanda; Slavonic, woda ; Old - German, wazar ; German, crasser; Gothic, vat° ; Anglo-Saxon, waeter. The book before us is in the shape of a thin quarto volume, but the information contained in it is also given in the shape of a wall-map. With this latter, the present writer has been long familiar. He feels that he cannot too strongly recommend it. Every teacher of any one of the languages which belong to the Aryan family should have it at hand. He will find that even young boys can be interested in it, while to the elder it is remarkably suggestive.
Previous page
