Holland's Influence on English Language and Literature

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Chapter II The Great Results of Comparative Philology

The study of comparative philology is especially important for the English language, because wonderful and surprising results have been obtained in this field. It is by this study that nowadays we know that all the European languages together with some Asiatic languages form one great family, commonly called the Indo-Germanic, Indo-European, or Aryan group, and that all the languages of this whole group may be supposed to have sprung from one original language, which probably first divided itself into three different dialects or branches:

1. The Asiatic, consisting in later times of the Sanskrit (in India), the Zend (in old Persia) and the Armenian (in old Armenia).

2. The Southern European branch, which in the course of history was divided into Greek, Celtic and Latin which last was the parent of Italian, Spanish and French.

3. The Northern European branch, containing the Germanic group and the Slavo-Lettic languages.

The Slavo-Lettic is that group of languages which includes in its south-eastern branches the Russian, Bulgarian, Servian, Croatian and Slavonian, and in its western branch the Czechish or Bohemian and Polish, and further the Lettic which includes Lithuanian and Lettish.

The Germanic group, later appears in two groups, viz., the eastern with the Scandinavian and the Gothic,

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and the western including High German (the present German), and Low German including English, Dutch and Frisian.

Since the study of comparative philology has discovered this genealogical coherency of all the European languages with some of the Asiatic, a most beautiful field for the study of every one of these languages has been opened for research. Every language can be traced in its own particular growth. The lines along which it changed and deviated from the original can be indicated by comparison with other languages of the same family. A new light has shone on the study of the etymology, grammar, and syntax of every language, and even on the entire history of the nations and the civilization of Europe. Since that time every piece of ancient and mediaeval literature, no matter in what language it was written, has become a source for the study of languages and of history in general.

That this progress of comparative philology was important especially for the knowledge of the English language with its so many different elements, is evident enough, and beautiful results show this. Everybody who knows, for instance, the works of W.W. Skeat,¹ and especially his Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, must admire the researches, by which nearly every word is traced in its history, and by which is determined to which of the different elements of the present English language it originally belonged. And the comparative grammars, constructed since the first great endeavor of Bopp² give such an insight into the structure of several languages as never could have been gained before.

1 W.W. Skeat, Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth edition. Other works of Skeat are for instance his Principles of English Etymology, 2 vols., and The Science of Etymology.

2 F. Bopp, A Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, German and Scandinavian Languages. Translated by E.B. Eastwick, Fourth edition. London, 1885.