A Discourse Concerning the Confusion of Languages at Babel
A Discourse Concerning the Confusion of Languages at Babel: Proving it to Have Been Miraculous, from the Essential Difference Between Them, Contrary to the Opinion of Mons. Le Clerc, and Others : with an Enquiry Into the Primitive Language, Before that Wonderful Event
By William Wotton
printed for S. Austen; and W. Bowyer, 1730
Всего страниц: 70
A Roman would say Vir, or Homo ; a Greek, ἄνθρωπος , a Hebrew, Ish. This I call Material in these Languages. But the several Ways by which these Nouns are declined, is what I call formal in these several Tongues. The Latins and Greeks vary their Nouns by Terminations, as Vir, Viri, Viro, Virum… So did the ancient Germans. Saxons and Danes ; since the Norman Invasion we have shortened our Nouns, and what the Romans and Greeks call the Nominative Case, denotes now with us the whole Noun, as it always did in the East. We decline by the Prepositions to, from, of, the, in both Numbers. The Hebrews have no different Termination in the same Number, but only vary thus, Ish, Man, Ishim, Men; Ishah, Woman, Ishoth, Women. The rest is varied by Prepositions inseparably affixed to the Words, as Ha-ish, the Man; Le-ish, to the Man; Be-ish. in the Man ; and the like. These Prepositions thus joined make one Word with the Noun to which they are affixed; which Way of altering the Signification by these single Letters (for the Vowels in Ha, Le, Be, stand for nothing) which answer the End of entire Words in other Languages, is peculiar to those Eastern Tongues which have an Affinity with the Hebrew, and is no where seen in the Languages which come from a Latin or Teutonic Original.