TONGUES, CONFUSION OF. The Biblical nar rative of the Dispersion of Nations has been already examined [NATIoNs, DISPERSION OF], with the exception of an important detail, the Confusion of Tongues, which has only been touched upon, its full discussion having been reserved for the present article. This subject is one that requires to be treated in such a manner as that information bearing on the narrative may be stated, before we attempt to discuss the general questions it suggests. The following order will meet this necessity :—The event ; the relation of the languages of the dis persed nations ; and the possibility of tracing all existing languages to one source. To inquire into the date of this part of Genesis would lead us into a long discussion : it may be sufficient to express an opinion that the indications of X. 12 perhaps (strangely ignored by most writers), and 18 cer tainly, seem to point to an age much before that of Moses.
r. The event.—The part of the narmtive of the dispersion relating to the present subject thus com mences : ' And the whole earth [or land,' rt.4, was of one language [or lip,' rIVIV1, and of one speech [or words,' 10470-1].' The journey and building of the tower is then related, and the divine determination to confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.' The scattering of the builders and discontinuance of the building of the city having been narrated, it is added Therefore is the name of it called Babel ; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth ; and [or for 1 from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth ' (xi. 1-9). The author of the Genesis of the Earth, etc., in accordance with the rendering for' instead of and,' which he proposes, suggests that the confusion was the consequence, not in any manner the cause, of the dispersion . ; designed to prevent the descendants of Noah from reuniting' (2d ed. p. 246). The ordinary explana tion seems simpler, yet this one is by no means to be disregarded. It has also been supposed that the meaning is tropical, and that oneness of speech indi cates agreement of policy, but this idea is not critically sound.
2. The relation of the languages of the dispersed nations.—The narrative of the dispersion and con fusion immediately follows the list of Noah's de scendants. It is therefore important to examine in the present place all the philological evidence of that list. Do the languages of the nations there indicated show traces of a common origin and also of a violent separation ? The philological data de rived from the list have been already stated : we shall here briefly sum up the results then obtained. The languages which can be distinctly connected with the names of the list are of three classes— Barbaric, Iranian, and Semitic. To the first class belong the one identification of Hamites of Africa, and a possible second ; to the second class the only identifications of Japhethites ; to the third, those of two groups, the first comprising all the Canaanite nations, that is the Hamites of Palestine and Syria, and the second all the Shemite nations of which the language can be traced, ten in number, to which no doubt others might be reasonably added. It would seem at first sight that we have here three classes, corresponding to the descendants of the three sons of Noah, but on further examination this conjecture must be abandoned. Its stability depends upon a satisfactory reason for the adoption by the Canaan ites of Semitic languages, but there is no evidence that they were preceded by Shemites, and therefore it appears that their own speech was Semitic and that they did not adopt it from Semitic predeces sors. Let us look a little further at the connection of these languages. The Semitic languages are all closely allied, and even their remote branches have not to this time lost the strong characteristics that make all rather like dialects of one language than distinct languages sprung from a single marked stock. The occurrence of these languages among
Hamite nations is therefore very significant. Tbe Iranian languages, on the other hand, have only been traced to a common origin by the researches of acute philologers. They form a not less marked family, but one in the remoter members of which the family likeness is far less readily discerned. The only Barbaric language traced with certainty, the Egyptian, is extremely peculiar, as it connects its class with the Semitic by tbe presence of strong Semitic elements. It has a monosyllabic Barbaric vocabulary, with an amalgamate Semitic grammar. The connection of the Semitic and Iranian lan guages, though not yet convincingly proved, is a pro blem that the best comparative philologers consider merely to require a certain amount of laborious examination. The connection of the Semitic family and the Egyptian language is established. The former connection is expected to prove common origin, the latter has been asserted to do so by some but denied by others. This question is of so much importance that it will be well here to state the main data for its solution. Egyptian is either a bridge between the Semitic family and the Barbaric class, or it is a trench separating them. The main characteristics of the lang-uage, equally found in the oldest form written in hieroglyphics and hieratic, in the later dialect of the demotic papyri and inscrip tions, and in the Coptic language, may be briefly laid down. The roots are all monosyllabic. In the whole of the Eg,yptian vocabulary there are very few words which are not obviously monosyl labic roots, or derivatives readily reducible to such roots. In Coptic there is a departure from mono. syllabism, but it is so obvious that it should occa sion no difficulty. An intelligent student, if he examine Peyron's excellent Lexicon, which is ar ranged not alphabetically but under the roots, will at once see that Coptic is essentially monosyllabic. Egyptian monosyllabism is either biliteral or tri literal, the more common form being probably biliteml. The Egyptian formative syllables and formative words are immediately recognised as strikingly similar to the Semitic. The personal pronouns in their separate and enclitic forms, and the latter as used for the purpose of inflecting verbs and adding the possessive idea to nouns, are almost identical—facts now universally admitted. The most common form of the substantive verb is tbe same as the Hebrew. The prepositions and ad verbs are important as possessing the forms, and in their use as nouns the significations, of the pri mitive nouns from which they originated, thus warning us not to place the earliest-known Egyptian very far from the first condition of the language ; an important matter in the present inquiry, as it is re pugnant to any theory that would place a Semitic language as the parent of Egyptian. The deriva tives are framed in many different ways, and have not yet been proved to follow any fixed system. There is one very common form of the verb with s prefixed, which has a causative sense ; there is a reduplicated form with a frequentative or augmen tative sense ; and traces of three other forms, re spectively with T, and N prefixed. These forms are all Semitic ; the first corresponds to the causa tive conjugation Shaphel, known in but one in stance in Hebrew, but frequent in Syriac ; the second to the frequentative Pilpel, and the kindred in form and use, Pealal ; the third perhaps to Tiphel ; the fourth to Hiphil-Hophal ; the fifth to Niphal : though the correspondence of sense is not yet certain irt the last three cases, and the corre spondence of form in the case of the Tiphel conjuga tion may be accidental. Tbe compounds are mere agglutinations of two words, never more, as HAS SBA a flute-player,' from HAS to play,' and SBA a flute.' The amalgamate stage of compounds is never reached.