Inhaltsangabe
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ... must confine ourselves to the words existing in our English vocabulary which have been derived from that language, and which are evidence of the earliest known stage in the culture of our race. For we find in this primitive deposit of language, not only the original forms of words like knee, foot, and tooth, and terms for our simplest acts and perceptions, but others more indicative of a definite state of civilization. The numerals up to ten descend to us from this period; the words father, mother, daughter, sister, brother, son, widow and our old word neve (now replaced by the French nephew) show that family relationships had been considerably developed. Hound is an Aryan word, and with goat, goose, sow, and a word for horse, eoh, which we once possessed, but which has long since perished in our language, have been taken as a proof that these animals had been more or less domesticated. But the most important of these names of domesticated animals are connected with the flocks and herds of pastoral life, and seem to show that cows and sheep were the main property and means of subsistence for this ancient people. Ewe, wether, and wool, cow, ox, steer, herd, have been traced back to the early Aryans, and another word fee, which in Old English and other Teutonic tongues meant both cattle and money, and which is related to the Latin pecu, from which pecuniary descends. Indeed, the accumulated evidence of language proves almost beyond a doubt that the Aryans were a nomadic race, similar in habits to the modern Tartars, driving their herds of cattle with them on their wanderings, dependent for the most part on their meat and milk for food, and on their skins for clothing. The words wheel, nave, axle, yoke, and a root from which our wain and...
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