Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations by Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
page 39 of 500 (07%)
page 39 of 500 (07%)
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enabled to clear up obscure passages and to ascertain the
signification of doubtful words. Among the historical proofs, he furnishes a vocabulary containing 306 Slavic and Greek words of striking analogy. "Of three sisters," he observes, "_one_ kept faithful to her mother tongue--the Slavic language; the _second_ gave to that common heritage the highest cultivation--the Greek language; and the _third_ mixed the mother tongue with a foreign idiom--the Latin language." A work of the same tendency has been published in the Greek language, by the Greek priest Constantine, Vienna 1828. It contains a vocabulary of 800 pages of _Russian_ and Greek words, corresponding in sound and meaning.--That these views are not new, is generally known; although they hardly ever have been carried so far, except perhaps by the author of the History of Russia, Levesque, who considers the Latins as a Slavic colony; or by Solarich, who derived all modern languages from the Slavic. Gelenius in his _Lexicon Symphonum_, 1557, made the first etymological attempt in respect to the Slavic languages. In modern times, great attention has been paid to Slavic etymology by Dobrovsky, Linde, Adelung, Bantkje, Fritsch, and others. An _Etymologicon Universale_ was published in 1811, at Cambridge in England, by W. Whiter.--Galiffec, in his _Italy and its Inhabitants_, 1816 and 1817, started the opinion, that the _Russian_ was the original language, and that the Old Slavonic and all the rest were only dialects.] [Footnote 14: Or rather some writers in Lusatia and the Austrian provinces comprised in the kingdom of Illyria.] [Footnote 15: The t' signifies the _Yehr_, or _soft sign_ of the Russians in addition to the _t_. This letter not existing in the English language, we have endeavoured to supply it in the best |
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