Oscan language

“ The treatment of the Indo-European voiced aspirates (bh, dh, ĝh Ƨh) in Latin is one of the most marked characteristics of the language, which separates it from all the other Italic dialects, since the fricative sounds, which represented the Indo-European aspirates in pro-ethnic Italic, remained fricatives medially if they remained at all in that position in Oscan and Umbrian, whereas in Latin they were nearly always changed into voiced explosives. ”

“ This appears early in the history of Italic, Celtic, Lettish (probably, and at a still later period) in Germanic, though at a period later than the beginning of the “sound-shifting.” This extinguished the complex system of Indo-European accentuation, which is directly reflected in Sanskrit, and was itself replaced in Latin and Oscan by another system already mentioned, but not in Latin till it had produced marked effects upon the language (e.g. the degradation of the vowels in compounds as in cōnficio from cón-facio, inclūdo from ín-claudo) . ”

“ The next advance in point of art must be attributed to the Oscans, whose entertainments were most popular among the Italian nations. They represented in broad caricature national peculiarities. Their language was, originally, Oscan, as well as the characters represented. The principal one resembled the clown of modern pantomime; another was a kind of pantaloon or charlatan, and much of the rest consisted of practical jokes, like that of the Italian Polincinella. After their introduction at Rome, they received many improvements; they lost their native rusticity; their satire was good-natured ”

“ Oscan was a pre-Roman language spoken by the Opici, an Italian tribe inhabiting the Campanian coast. Much of the mist that shrouded it for centuries has now been dispelled by the epigraphists. Both Dante and Petrarch were great lovers of Provençal, with which in Castiglione’s time his friend Federico Fregoso was familiar. ”

“ American: Sioux Indians of Arkansas, on the R. Osage. It is also written Huzzaw and Washas. Schoolcraft’s “Indian Tribes,” vol. iv., p. 275; Bradbury’s “Travels,” London, 1817.
Oscan.
Italic: early dialect of Italy, allied to Latin, Umbrian, &c.; but belonging especially to Central and S. Italy. Known by archaic inscriptions. See Mommsen’s “Unteritalischen Dialekte,” Leipzig, 1851; “Versuch,” &c., by Enderis, Zürich, 1871.
Osmanli.
Alatyan: dialect of Western Turkish; it is the typical literary language of the family, spoken by the Oghuz or Ottoman Turks ”

“ In an unwritten speech, nothing that is not very short is transmitted from one generation to another. Few have opportunities of hearing a long composition often enough to learn it, or have inclination to repeat it so often as is necessary to retain it; and what is once forgotten is lost for ever. I believe there cannot be recovered, in the whole Earse language, five hundred lines of which there is any evidence to prove them a hundred years old. Yet I hear that the father of Ossian boasts of two chests more of ancient poetry, which he suppresses, because they are too good for the English. ”

“ He believes in Ossian by instinct, just as many of his opponents have rejected the same by instinct. He holds that Macpherson is merely editor and translator; and that he has used no liberties with his text beyond what an editor and translator is entitled to use. He, however, labours under the disadvantage of not knowing the Gaelic language, although this difficulty is much minimised by the help of Dr Clerk’s literal translation and notes. Part of his arguments is certainly new and original; and the book deserves perusal on the part of the student of the Ossianic controversy. ”

“ The grandeur of the similes is another feature which characterizes great poetry. Ossian seems to speak a gigantic and universal language. The images and pictures occupy even much space in the landscape, as if they could be seen only from the sides of mountains, and plains with a wide horizon, or across arms of the sea. The machinery is so massive that it cannot be less than natural. ”

“ Precisely analogous changes happened with Italic ō and ŭ; the resulting vowel being denoted in Oscan alphabet both by u and by uͦ (Vͦ) , in Umbrian alphabet by u, in Latin alphabet by o.
It is well to add here one or two other characteristics in which Oscan alone is more primitive, not merely than Latin, but even than Umbrian.
(a) Oscan retains s between vowels, whereas in both Latin and Umbrian it became r. In Oscan it seems to have become voiced, as it is represented by z in Latin alphabet, e.g. gen. pl. fem. egmazum, “rerum”; ezum, in Oscan alphabet esom, pres. infin. “esse.” ”

“ In 1892 he became professor of Sanskrit and Indo-European comparative philology in the University of Chicago; but it is in the narrower field of the Italic dialects that his important work lies, including Der Vocalismus der oskischen Sprache (1892) , The Oscan-Umbrian Verb-System (1895) , and Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian (1904) , as well as an excellent précis of the Italic languages in Johnson’s Universal Cyclopaedia. He collaborated with W. G. Hale (q.v.) in the preparation of A Latin Grammar (1903) . ”

“ The poems of Ossian were assigned to a ‘natural genius,’ whom men of unquestioned literary sagacity placed next to and even above Homer. Now they are almost forgotten, and their interest lies mainly in the influence they exerted upon some of the greatest minds of the 18th century.
It was in the year 1760 [15] that James Macpherson, a Scotch youth of twenty–four, [16] published in Edinburgh some Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and Translated from the Gallic or Erse Language. ”

“ The inscriptions we possess are enough to show that the dialect spoken by these tribes was substantially the same from the northern boundary of the Frentani to some place in the upper Aternus valley not far from Amiternum (mod. Aquila) , and that this dialect closely resembled the Oscan of Lucania and Samnium, though presenting some peculiarities of its own, which warrant, perhaps, the use of the name North Oscan. The clearest of these is the use of post positions, as in Vestine Poimunie-n, " in templo Pomonali "; pritrom-e, i.e. in proximum, " on to what lies before you." ”

“ It is obvious that in phonetic writing all the faults already present in the co-ordination between concept and sound are transferred to the written language. To these are added the defects as regards unambiguity occurring in co-ordination between sound and sign from which no language is free. In some languages, in fact, notably in English, these defects amount to a crying calamity. The principle of unambiguity would require that there should never be a doubt as to the way in which a spoken word is written, and as little doubt as to the way in which a written word is spoken. ”

“ The Osage appear to have emigrated from the north and west; from their speaking the same language with the Kans, Otos, Missouries, and Mahaws, together with their great similarity of manners, morals, and customs, there is left no room to doubt that they were originally the same nation, but separated by that great law of nature, self-preservation, the love of freedom, and the ambition of various characters, so inherent in the breast of man. ”

“ Syntax.—It may be said generally that there are very few if any peculiarities in the syntax of the Oscan and Umbrian inscriptions as compared with Latin usage, though a large number of familiar Latin idioms appear, such as the abl. absolute; the abl. of circumstance, the genitive in judicial phrases, the use of the neut. adj. as an abstract substantive, e.g. Oscan ualaemom touticom, “optimum publicum,” i.e. “optima rei publicae ratio.” In verbal forms the same use of the gerundive combined with the noun to represent the total verbal action, e.g. Umb. ocrer pehaner paca, “arcis piandae causa” ”

“ This prose, however, was to be a poetic prose, poetic and at the same time natural; for prose was regarded as the most natural expression of the soul. Surely the sensation that Ossian made in Germany would not have been so prodigious had his poems appeared in meter. An indignant protest arose on all sides when Denis introduced an innovation by publishing a translation in hexameters. [70] [21] Had the poems of Ossian appeared originally in the measures of the so–called Gaelic originals, they might have found readier acceptance with scholars, but scarcely with the reading public. ”

“ Let the question of the authenticity be in the meantime laid aside, and let the poems as they are be considered. One thing is certain—they are the clever productions of a Gaelic genius—of [198] a master whose works have influenced the literature of modern Europe. The healthy and grand old figure of Ossian appeared on the scene of the artificial literary world of the eighteenth century, and his tenderness, his naturalness, and his keen sympathies with the external world of form, of colour, and of movement carried before him the conventionalities of a hollow generation. ”

“ Yet there is just as little doubt that in complexity of form the Eskimo language goes far beyond English. I wish merely to indicate that, however we may indulge in speaking of primitive man, of a primitive language in the true sense of the word we find nowhere a trace. ”

“ The merit of the poems themselves, as poetry, may safely be left to take care of itself. Long ago the songs of Ossian earned a place for themselves in the literature of every European language; an Italian version, it is said, being the constant companion and inspiration of the First Napoleon. England alone has refused to admit the claims of the Celtic bard, and that at the bidding of Dr. ”

“ The poet seeks not to vary their character, and his hearers are willing to be charmed over and over again by the same strains. We believe that the poetry of Ossian would be destroyed by any greater distinctness or variety of imagery. And if, indeed, Fingal lived and Ossian sung, we must believe that the old bard was blind; and we suspect that in such an age, such a man would, in his blindness, think dreamily indeed of the torrents, and lakes, and heaths, and clouds, and mountains, moons and stars, which he had leapt, swam, walked, climbed, and gazed on in the days of his rejoicing youth. ”

“ Had Macpherson expanded his material, his work could hardly fail to contain some such expressions. His translations, on the contrary, remain true to the powers of their original language. In Gaelic there are no words for "landscape" or for "picturesque;" the ideas, as in all primitive tongues, are concrete, and Ossian sings only of named objects, of "car-borne Cuthullin" and "blue-eyed Comala," of "green Erin of streams" and of "woody Morven." Allusions and speech both, in these poems, suit ancient Celtic times and no other period known to history. ”

“ The "dry light" of truth and certainty for which everybody is toiling and labouring in art, religion, philosophy, and literature, is concealed by more than the darkness of printers' types in mere verbal criticism—the most popular, but perhaps the most pernicious habit of the day. The form of the poetry in Ossian, apart from all its spirit and substance, has long been analysed, investigated, discussed, destroyed, and built up again; yielding all the fruit it seems likely ever to yield, more doubt and more discussion ”

“ Students of the science of language make a sharp distinction between it and the knowledge of language, which is regarded as incomparably lower. But while a knowledge of language is important in at least one respect, in that it presents to us the cultural material set down in other languages, or makes them accessible in translation to those who do not know foreign languages, philology is of no service in this respect at all, and the pursuit of it will seem [99] as inconceivably futile to future science as the scholasticism of the middle ages seems to us now. ”

“ A man of the obstinate prejudices and overbearing temper of Dr. Johnson, with a firm belief that no Ossianic poems really existed, and that Gaelic was not a written language, with an entire ignorance of that language, and a colossal reputation as a critic, bursting suddenly among the frightened Highland ministers, who believed in him, and trembled before him, could hardly return with any other result than that he had found no poems of Ossian, and no one bold enough to avow, in his presence, that he believed in their existence ”

“ Expertness in the use of languages does not come so readily to the scientific investigator and the technologist, whose work lies in other directions, and so it [12] is in these quarters that the movement for the introduction of an international auxiliary language receives the greatest support. To this must be added the fact that, as Ostwald has aptly remarked, the scientific investigator regards language only as a means of making himself understood. ”

“ The Omawhaw and Puncaw pronunciation is more guttural than that of the two former, of which, particularly the Osage, the pronunciation is more brief and vivid.
The free and independent spirit of the Indian is carried even into their language, and may be recognised there by its absolute destitution of a single word drawn from the language of a civilised people. ”

“ The American tribes exhibit to-day in some respects the state of society existing in the Celtic Scotland of Fingal's time. They are a people living by the chase, knowing little of the arts of husbandry, and without a literature. Yet the Indian chiefs harangue their warriors in rhetoric glowing with splendid metaphor, and the names they use are full of poetic feeling. Names like Minnehaha (Laughing Water) or Chibiabos (the Blessed Islands) are of similar character and origin with the names in Ossian.
The Gaelic bard, like Homer himself, was by no means the earliest singer of his race. ”