G. A. F. Van Rhyn

“ Prepositions always follow the words they govern; as, indeed, it is a general rule that the governed word precedes the governing. Words connecting sentences, relatives and conjunctions, are in most languages hardly employed at all. A marked phonetic peculiarity running through all the dialects is the law of harmonic sequence of vowels; the vowels are divided into two classes, heavy and light (or hard and soft) , and within the same word only heavy or only light vowels can follow one another ”

“ This character belongs to them in varying degree; the Mantchoo dialects are the poorest of all, and the Mongol do not much surpass them; the Tartaric idioms hold the middle rank; the tongues of the Finnic branch, particularly the Finnish proper and the Hungarian, possess a marked superiority to the others. Most of the languages of the family are known only in their present condition. None of the branches has ever had a properly national literature, if we except the mythic and legendary songs of the Finns and the mostly lyric popular songs of the Hungarians ”