ABSTRACT
APPLIED to linguistic matters, the term relationship is ambiguous and has frequently led those who are not trained philologists into error. With less excuse certain philologists, even, have sometimes taken seriously a mere metaphorical expression and have set up genealogical trees for languages after the fashion of Hozier. As a result, they believed themselves authorized in saying that French or Italian, for example, had sprung from Latin, and in speaking of mother, daughter, and sister languages. This is an unfortunate terminology because it gives a false idea of the relations between languages. There is nothing in common between the " relationship " of languages and generation or filiation in the physiological sense of these terms.
