To these similar suffixes belong also such as give its peculiar quality to the Japanese, as the isolating ri which has the same usage in the tongue of the Ainos; e. g.' With 'bow 'to shoot 'what concerns 5 to kill (Pfizmayer)—i. e. A shot from the bow kills. Not only suffixes, but frequently the words themselves, are similar or closely related; of course not merely borrowed ones, but nu merous words which plainly could not be borrowed, and which in both tongues are treated as entirely independent. Besides, the Japanese has both with regard to epochs and locality a number of different dialects. Thus the dialect of \'eddo cannot be understood by the people of Nag asaki, and educated persons at large can only understand each other in the written language.
Also among the A Mos there are different dialects, for the inhabitants of Yesso, the Kurile Islands, Saghalin, of the southern end of Kamchatka, the Gilvaks (Soutanes), and the Natkis of the continent, all of whom belong to the Ainos, have each their peculiar dialect. The island Sag habit is inhabited by several races Of Antos with different dialects.
The languages of Central Asia, commonly called the Altaic or Ural Altaic languages, resemble the Japanese so much that much in them is the same in root; as, e.g., in Manchoo the isolating 'rya (ba) is likewise seen, but has not yet become a true form-element, and in regard to syntax is not yet so highly developed as in the Japanese. Other points, again, have been here more richly developed; for instance, the vocal harmony, which was only alluded to in the Japanese. The vowels of the Altaic tongues are divided into three classes—rough, medium, and soft: the stein-vowel always determines, by its own nature, the nature of the vowels which appear in the suffixes; therefore the sound of the suffixes is much varied. This rule is characteristic of all these tongues; yet it does not universally prevail, and in some of the dialects of the most highly developed of these idioms it is almost abandoned.
Compared with the Japanese, we note another great advance—namely, that in all these tongues verbal and nominal stems are different. Not that the noun (substantive or adjective) can be directly declined; but, while in Japanese the particles supplying the place of inflection frequently accord with the particles of the substantive denoting the case, it is not so here; both are separated as the formative syllables for developed nominal and verbal stems are distinguished.
Titus we see the development of a perfect declension with number and case quite equal to our own in the more highly developed dialects, and a conjugation that metamorphoses the substantive root by means of subordinate unchangeable suffixes. These latter are derived front the ordinary pronouns like the possessive suffixes which are met with every where in these tongues, and many of the case suffixes are recognized as demonstrative pronouns; thus in prineiple the choice of suffixes is rigidly indicated. With this is connected the great development of the personal pronoun, which in the Japanese was unimportant, but here presents a number of forms, and in some cases differs in its inflections from the noun. We often recognize true inflection in these tongues, and in some dialects (Finnish) a real comparative and superlative can be formed.
Other parallelisms of all these tongues are the negative verbs and dif ferent methods of denoting near and remote objects, as well as the whole formation of the sentence. The subject leads as principal idea, and we have again that double principle already referred to: independent limiting ideas (attribute, which in the Eastern tongues often appears only in the genitive form, object, adverb) stand before the verb to be limited, depend ent definitions follow.
All these languages have only suffixes or postpositions; prefixes are not used, or at least are very rare. The suffixes are numerous and devel oped in a manifold manner: there are predicate suffixes (formed out of the pronouns and personals, e.g. in the Samoied language I ; I am good), possessive and objective suffixes. The number of cases, owing to these suffixes, is great. These suffixes—which are allowable in many of the tongues now under consideration, while in most they are necessities —were the cause of the name of " agglutinating " or " adding " being given to this group of languages (see p. 52).
We must content ourselves with this rough sketch of the Altaic tongues, in spite of much that might be more closely considered. The steps in their development going from east to west are particularly worthy of attention. Several of the Western—for example, the Finnish—can hardly be regarded in an unprejudiced manner as other than inflecting tongues. The circumstance is noteworthy that similarity of root does not prevail in any of these languages which are distantly separated from each other; the numerals, for instance, are often quite different.