e.

Some languages favor these forms of personification much more than others,
and most of the American languages do so in a marked manner, by the broad
grammatical distinctions they draw between animate and inanimate objects,
which distinctions must invariably be observed. They cannot say "the boat
moves" without specifying whether the boat is an animate object or not, or
whether it is to be considered animate, for rhetorical purposes, at the
time of speaking.

The sounds of words have aided greatly in myth building. Names and words
which are somewhat alike in sound, _paronyms_, as they are called by
grammarians, may be taken or mistaken one for the other. Again, many myths
spring from _homonymy_, that is, the sameness in sound of words with
difference in signification. Thus _coatl_, in the Aztec tongue, is a word
frequently appearing in the names of divinities. It has three entirely
different meanings, to wit, a serpent, a guest and twins. Now, whichever
one of these was originally meant, it would be quite certain to be
misunderstood, more or less, by later generations, and myths would arise
to explain the several possible interpretations of the word--as, in fact,
we find was the case.

Closely allied to this is what has been called _otosis_. This is the
substitution of a familiar word for an archaic or foreign one of similar
sound but wholly diverse meaning. This is a very common occurrence and
easily leads to myth making. For example, there is a cave, near
Chattanooga, which has the Cherokee name Nik-a-jak. This the white
settlers have transformed into Nigger Jack, and are prepared with a
narrative of some runaway slave to explain the cognomen. It may also occur
in the same language. In an Algonkin dialect _missi wabu_ means "the great
light of the dawn;" and a common large rabbit was called _missabo_; at
some period the precise meaning of the former words was lost, and a
variety of interesting myths of the daybreak were transferred to a
supposed huge rabbit! Rarely does there occur a more striking example of
how the deteriorations of language affect mythology.

_Aztlan_, the mythical land whence the Aztec speaking tribes were said to
have come, and from which they derived their name, means "the place of
whiteness;" but the word was similar to _Aztatlan_, which would mean "the
place of herons," some spot where these birds would love to congregate,
from _aztatl_, the heron, and in after ages, this latter, as the p