But as the first inhabitants of the earth had, for many ages, no method of fixing sounds, or very imperfect methods, their language must have been liable to considerable mutations, even when they lived and conversed together. But after they had separated from each other, by extending their settlements into distant regions, and an intercourse between the colonies had ceased, their languages must have in a great measure lost their affinity to each other. The radical words, common to all, must have assumed dialectical distinctions, and new objects and inventions, peculiar to the different tribes, must have originated new terms among each, to which the others were strangers. Different nations would advance, by very different degrees of rapidity, to a state of civilization, and as words multiply with ideas, one language would become more copious than another, as well as more regular and polished. In the course of many centuries, these causes would obscure the common radicals, and make such accessions of new words to each dialect, as to form them all into distinct languages. An uncivilized people have occasion for few words; perhaps five or six hundred would answer all their purposes. And if we should thoroughly examin any of the present languages of the world, we should probably find that the roots of the most copious do not amount to more than that number. The Greek, it is said, may be traced to about three or four hundred radical words. These roots or elementary words are usually monosyllables, and mostly names of sensible objects. By applying these names figuratively, savages make them answer the purpose of expressing other ideas, and by combining them in an almost infinite variety of ways, civilized nations form copious and elegant languages.
Thus it happens that in the existing languages of Europe, there are many words evidently the same; the orthography and pronunciation do not exactly coincide in all the countries where they are used; yet the resemblance is obvious in _these_ particulars; and with respect to their _meaning_, there is such an affinity, as to demonstrate that the nations, in whose languages they are found, all sprung from the same parents.
The primitive language of Europe probably retained its original form and purity in the West, much later than on the borders of Asia;[12] for the Gauls and Britons had made less advances in knowlege, than the eastern nations, and had probably suffered fewer shocks from war and conquest. The Greeks first formed an elegant language out of the barbarous dialects spoken on the borders of the Egean Sea. The Romans afterwards did the same in Italy, and gradually changed the languages of the countries which they conquered, by introducing their own. It was the policy of the Roman state to make _subjects_, rather than _slaves_, of their conquered nations; and the introduction of their own tongue among them was considered as a necessary step towards removing prejudices, facilitating an intercourse with their provinces, and reconciling distant nations to the Roman government.