THE STUDY OF ENGLISH.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 793, 16 April 1910, Page 9

THE STUDY OF ENGLISH.

.HISTORY IN COMMON WORDS. » ii r " F- JV Furnivall's plea ; at .the Authors' Club .dinner for the -historic study'of, the English language, was Heartily welcomed by everybody prc\m-, fi UT "Graiiimar" .schools- and" our Public , .schools (which, w. English, means sohoola that are not public at all) the English language is the', most. neglected of subjects. In our public elementary schools the youngsters do.not stop long; enough for anything vory useful to be attempted, most ot our municipal secondary., schools have a scientific basis- and the rea.'l"historic study of _. the language is largely left to Americans. At ■ Harvard; '-for in- j SLal jcc )) there, are thirtylfive' professors of English; at Oxford and Cambridge there are only two each; and jet .how much English history; that''is,■■history of the English people, can be learnt from a. careful study'of the. history of the English.-language!-. Dr. Furiiivall cimscit fjavo some instances, but there are others hotter known which prove the point, such as, for instance, the common everyday woids ox, beef, sheep, mutton; pig, pork. Those who have read Scott's "lvanhoe'i -will not need to bo told why we use the second word m each of these couples to indicate the, animai when ready'for the' table, and the first.one to distinguish 1 1 when ahve. The first word is Saxon, the'secoifl frenc'i: In Norma:i-Frenc!i days the' Saxons were the servants, of. the conquerors. They had to tend tho animals.'.when'.-alive/ their -NormauFrench masters had only to deal vwith them when dead. Henco wo get pig, the Saxon word and pork, tho French word. Both theso originally meant tho animal, alive or dead, but it is easy to see how they came to have distinct meaning. Jn them we have the history of post-Norman Conquest times in England. One of. Dr. Furnivall's examples of .changed meanings was the name of the village.Thorpe Cloud, which stands on a Derbyshire hill, AVhy "Cloud"? Reference to an Anglo-Saxon diction-, ary shows that ."cloud" originally meant . <: rock"—herico the name of the village! But further research shows that clouds, as we know them, were originally so called because they looked liko Now tho uso of the\ word as rock has. vanished..-- There is no more interesting story .in the world..than, the, history, of-, the . English language, and a study of it-makes a man extraordinarily . plain in both speaking and writing. Plain homely Anglo-Saxon is still tho.most effective way to people's hearts and minds.