AN ESSAY

ON THE

CHILIAN LANGUAGE.

で

THE original language of Chili, generally called the Araucanian, is denominated by the natives Chili dugu, the Chilian tongue. The alphabet contains the same letters as the Latin, except the x, which is in truth nothing more than a compound letter. The s, which has been by some grammarians very properly called a hissing rather than a letter, is only to be found in about twenty of their words, and never occurs at the termination, which gives to their pronunciation a great degree of fulness. The z is still more seldom to be met with. Besides these common letters, the Chilian has a mute e and a peculiar u, like the Greeks and the French: the former is designated by the acute, and the latter by the grave accent, to distinguish them from the common e and u. This u is also frequently changed into i in the manner of the modern Greeks. It has besides a nasal g and a th which is pronounced by pressing the tongue against the roof of the mouth; the latter is frequently changed into ch, as chegua for thegua (the dog). In the whole of the Chilian alphabet

there is not a single guttural letter or vocal aspirate, a very singular circumstance with an uncivilized people. It is proper to note, that in giving the Chilian words the Italian orthography has been adopted. All the words of the language terminate in the six vowels heretofore noticed, and in the consonants 6, d, f, g, l, m, n, r and v. There are, of course, fifteen distinct terminations, which, with their variety, render the language sweet and sonorous. The accent is usually placed upon the penultimate vowel, sometimes on the last, but never on the antepenult. The radicals, as far as can be collected from the vocabularies, which have been hitherto very imperfect, amount to one thousand nine hundred and seventythree, and are for the greater part either monosyllables or dissyllables. I have made use of the above term in a much more limited sense than many, who improperly call all those words radicals that in any mode produce others, Proceeding upon so false a principle, they make some languages contain thirty or forty thousand roots, which must be considered a grammatical paradox. The roots of a language are those simple primitive expressions, which, neither directly or indirectly derived from any other, produce various words, that afterwards extend themselves into a variety of different forms. Even in the most copious languages, as the Greek and Latin, the number of these roots is very limited. As far as we have been able to discover, the radical Chilian words have no analogy with those of any other known idiom, though the language contains a pum.

ber of Greek and Latin words very little varied, as may be seen in the following table:

This, however, is probably only the result of an accidental combination, for the opinion that they have been derived from the Spanish is utterly destitute of foundation, the nation being for the most part unacquainted with it, whereas these words are to be found in the earliest vocabularies of the Chilian language.

The Chilian nouns are declined with a single declension, or, to speak with more precision, they are all undeclinable, except by the addition of various

articles or particles which mark the number and case. They resemble the Greek nouns in having three numbers, the singular, the dual and the plural, as will appear in the following example:

Instead of pu, the discriminative mark of the plural, the particles ica or egen may be used affixed to the noun, or que placed between the adjective and substantive when they come together. Thus Cara will make in the plural either Caraica, or Caraegèn, or Cumeque Cara, the good cities.

From hence it will be seen that, contrary to the practice in the modern languages of Europe, the article in the Chilian is affixed to the noun. This mode of declension sometimes occurs in the Greek and Latin languages, in which we meet with a few nouns declined in this manner, though more variously, as musa in Latin, and soma in Greek. The Chilian abounds with adjectives both primitive and de