THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 832, 30 July 1910, Page 9

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

The London "Morning Post" lias a long and'interesting article apropos of the issue' of a Chinese, Imperial Edict approving the proposal thai, the Eng- • lish language, should-be adopted as the . official tongue in scientific and technical education in China. . ' The spread of a language to peoples other than those whose mother tongue it is (says the "Post") may be useful . to them if the language is a widespread medium-of communication and if it carries a literature of great spiritual and intellectual, substance. But tho ' language itself always suffers in tho process. The jargen, spoken in tho Chinese ports and:in many other havens of the Pacific,- and known as "pid-gin-English," is only an extreme case of the fate of every language that is adopted by races to which is is exotic. But thats some medium is wanted in many parts of the world and by many people is. proved by the efforts made to create a new "universal" language for general use, of Which perhaps the most vigorous has produced ' "Volapuk." -Men acquainted with the natural history of language can hardly sympathise. with the idea of a made-up. , language which is. tho natural speech of no one, and which can hardly compete even with the least widely spread of living tongues.' For a language must bo alive before it can spread naturally, that is by being spoken, though it may be cultivated after it is dead if it enshrines-a great literature.' The typical cases of languages which re- ' ceived a ■'. vast extension of area and paid for- it by loss of. quality are, of ■course, ,'Gfeek and Latin; and their fate offers a warning to the races that speak English by nature, a warning which must neccsslrily bo unavailing to alter the course of things. Greek was the natural language of the Greek Peninsula and islands,. of the western fringe of Asia. Minor, and "of tho Greek cities of Sicily and Southern Italy. It, . had its varieties, which were natural ' sad- healthy, a» well as its perfect typo. the Greek" spoken at Athens, recorded in the conversational parts of the plays of Aristophanes. But when Alexander, at the head' ot a 'Macedonian Army, ' overran the East and founded new capitals in Egypt and Syria, Greek becam'j the official language of his Empire ami of tho kingdoms that sprang from it, and the language thus made universal .rery quickly degenerated.. Thus camo about a new state of things. From .Pella to Babylon and Alexandria men /talked a rough, simplified 'Greek de- | void of the strength and grace of Attic, and this became tho common tongue. Wh«n the Jewish community, of Alex- . aodria translated their national literature into the language of their daily ' life , this was' tho language they em- ; ployed. But when any man aspired to : WTite something of his .own worth ■read- ■ ing lie avoided the language which lie was accustomed to talk and copied the Athenian .writers <if any earlier, ago. Very soon, then, there were two languages, one for speech and the other for books. Latin had a similar fate. Roman administration, Roman settlc- '.. ments, and tlio course of trade and intercourse, made .Latin, tho common speech not only of Italy, but of Spain, of Gaul, and of Dacia. But the spoken 1 language was nqt_ that of books, which men went on writing for centuries after they had ceased to use it in everyday life. As ' the tribesmen ' of Central Europe filtered into the Empire they gradually , dropped their Native, speech and adopted the Vulgar Latin spoken by those about them, and their countrymen who came after them first as invaders and., then . as settlors followed their .example. But these new incomers could not read ami could not undcr- ■ .stand the Latin of books, so that when a few generations later they wanted documents written which they could understand they wrote not the Latin of books but the language that they spoke, which in each of the countries named turned out to be a new language, so different from Latin that those who talked it. had to go to school to learn Latin, The recent history of the English language has a strong analogy to that of Greek in Alexander's time and of Latin in the later centuries of the Empire. The rush of intercourse with i'urcigu countries and India has for a century flooded this country with new ideas and new expressions, and the change from artistocratic oligarchy to democracy tinged with plutocracy lias tainted the purity of English speech. To begin with, the fino_ delicacy of enunciation has gone. There are lew men now who 6peak their words or sentences with the clear-cut precision of utterance which was characteristic of a Glacl- • stone, a Newman, or a Gokhvin Smith. Then there has been a rapid evolution of slang, much of, which has found its way, quite naturally, into tho language of conversation, which is, of course, the living language. Lastly, the number of men and women who write has become infinite, and among the untold multitude only a few have the capacity, the training, or the time to maintain the traditional standards. Accordingly there is already a difference between the common speech and the language of books, and the effort of some writers to attract their readers by writing as they talk furthers the dogcrxraey of the ,writl'.n language without lifting up the speech of the market-place. These processes cannot be hindered. They are natural and inevitable, and it is useless to lament them. But it is prudent to take note of them, to observe the stage that has-been reached in tho process by which speech and leaves written language behind until the distinction between the, two, slight at first, becomes a gulf rot to be passed except by 1 an educational bridge. The sense of nationality is closely bound up with a feeling for the national speech. In the past half centurv the two forms of tmnsibility havi. grown side by side. Freeman, who felt the call to be the historian o£

England, tried hard to purge- English speech, and perhaps his somewhat uncouth efforts to write English I'reo from the taint of romance 'elements led to .the quaint vocabulary of William -Morris and the style which, as wielded bv other hands, was nicknamed Wardour "Street English. The writers of that fraternity had a presentiment of tho coming vulgarisation which their exertions may perhaps havo slightly delayed. The language is apt, with some limitations, to follow the flag. Possiblv our strategical contributors would hold that the future uF English cannot be. severed. from the fortunes of the Navy, and that the question of the future dialect of everyday international intercourse is bound up witii Iho iKlii ')! tlit Meet »' tho North Sea. In any event the prospect for linguistic purists is gloomy. If tiie Empire is destined to survive for another century or two there must bo a process of further degeneration and diil'ercntiatiou in the language. Men's talk will drilt away from the languageof books, and will be subject to changes due to difference of climate and mixture of races. There will bo the English of books and the unwritten but spoken British of several types, those of .Britain, of America, of Africa, of Australasia, and of India. In a remoter i'uuitc, |,i!i-liuj»s in the twentysecond centurv, there will be a family of liritaunic languages, resembling oneanother, as do French, Italian, and Spanish, and all derived from tho parent stock of English, by that time r„> ion«ei it spulU-ii language- but still studied" in the writings of ancient poets such as Shakespeare and Tennyson and in • tho orations of . Burke and of Bright. There is, of course, the other possibility. Unforeseen catastrophes by sea and -air might lead to an irruption into Hie Empire of fresh Teutonic swarms. They would beyond doubt, like their prototypes of earlier cciituiies. f.nU themselves unintentionally adopting the convenient British lan'o-uage, which would then by them spread over the whole of their TvorldEmpire, and the neo-Brrtish. dialects would then abound with Germanisms and possiblv show clear traces of Semitic influence. Tho World-Empire would, however, adopt the lloiiian, not :he Gothic, letters, to the great advantage of its Chinese subjects, whoso ideographs would remain an antiquarian study, used only as a' device for excluding unwelcome students from tho universities. It is to be litped, however, that whatever the fate of- Empires may he, the classical English language, even when it has become as dead as Greek,, will retain its traditional spelling, s-.