THE LANGUAGE OF THE FUTURE.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 19, Issue 1494, 30 November 1872, Page 2

THE LANGUAGE OF THE FUTURE.

(From the London Daily Telegraph.)

Within the last few weeks three remarkable gatherings of men representing widely diverse nationalities have been witnessed at certain European capitals. The Kaisers were in solemn conclave at Berlin; the Internationalists at the Hague; and the Arbitration Tribunal was sitting at Geneva. Where, it might have been asked, was the ghost of good Bishop Wilkins, author of the " Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical language"? How it would have amused the learned old divine to pause for a moment in the stately chambers of the Schbss, and there to bear a Babel of tongues —French, German, Russiau, English —mingled it may be, with some of the wild dialects of the great Austrian Empire ! A European statesman must know four or five languages at least, and speak them fluently. In the Hotel de Ville of Geneva the diversity was less evident; but even there, the five distinguished gentlemen who composed the Court represented four different languages, two of which were, for purposes of convenience, "ruled out" as inadmissible. If, however, from these assemblages of cosmopolitan diplomats the shade of the Bishop had flitted to the International conference whither were gathered horny-handed sons of toil from all nations under the canopy of heaven, it would have beheld a much more singular spectacle. Here were met men, members of the same great secret society, linked together by common vows and oaths in the same cause; yet the one scarcely knew a word of what the other said, and the opening address of the session had to be read four times over —once in English, once in German, once in French, and once in Flemish. We cross oceans, we cut isthmuses, we tunnel mountain ranges —it is but the diversity of language which is now the great barrier between man and man. The English laborer in a French country town might as well be iu the heart of Yeddo. He would, it is true, meet with the objects of a common civilisation. But he would have to ex press himself in dumb show, or to make his wants known by the practical method of helping himself. Nor ueed we travel out of England to see how insuperable an obstacle is the want of a common speech to even the most ordinary acts of life. How often has the tourist in Wales found himsell baffled when inquiring his road across the moors by the inability of the natives to comprehend any word that has not in it a dozen of w's, a brace of r's, and a score or so of d's and l's ? Half an hour is spent, silver is produced, signs are tried—all in vain; and the disheartened pedestrian, as he onward plods his weary way, hears behind him the muttered curse, " Dim Sassenach," of which phrase we believe the first word to be a well-known English " root"; the second, the title given by the Welsh to their English oppressors. Nor is the disgust of the Cambrian peasant for the stupid Englishman who cannot speak Welsh any proof of barbarism. Did not our own officers remark of the dwellers on the coasts of the Black Sea, ° We were there for months, and yet the beggars could not pick up English " ? It is, indeed, only the philosopher, who makes the mystery of language his especial study, or the cosmopolitan to whom all countries are as one, who is ever freed thoroughly from the almost innate belief that his own tongue, whichever it may be, is superior to any other. Anglo-Saxons more especially take a sort of brutal pride in holding to their own language. If the Englishman makes a concession it is in favor of the French, out of which he creates a new dialect, neither French nor English, but of which he is as proud as is a child when it first begins to string sentences together. But were you to propose to a typical John Bull that he should learn to speak a little German, or to make himself intelligible in Italian, or to pick up a little Spanish, he would be inclined to put your hint on a par with a suggestion that he should study I\optic, or read the " Arabian Nights " in the original, or to devote himself to hieratic papyri, or to make a speech in Prakrit, or to curse in the dialect of the Qjibbeways. Scientific men have busied themselves before now, some iu the attempt to find the one primal language, others in the effort to invent a philosophic tongue, which ail nations alike shall be able to adopt. When Professor Max Mailer's

ancestors were still naked savages, using rude weapons of fliut, Psaoimitichus, King of Egypt, brought up two children, Caspar Hauser like, in a closed chamber. The sole articulate w<»rd these prisoners were observed to utter was " becos," and the King finding out by diligent inquiry that "becos" was Phrygian for bread, admitted, with a sigh, that Phrygian must be an older tongue than even Egyptian itself. Such experiments we now know to be mere etymological snares. There is no original language, or, if ever there was one, it lies deep buried in the stream of time. We might as well ask Professor Darwin to point out to us the one typical animal from which all other forms are aberrations. And equally vain is the attempt to form a universal language, which all nations shall use. Leib» nitz, it is true, had such an idea, and was haunted by the conception of a philosophical tongue, to which he attached as much importance as to his infinitesimal calculus. We know now that, subtle as is language, it is yet far exceeded by the infinite subtlety of thought. Futile would be the endeavor to give unity and regularity to that which is irregular in itself. Were one common speech possible in which all thought should find expression, then would it be possible to translate with perfect accuracy from one language into another. Let those who think that this can be done try their hand upon a page of Rabelais or of " Don Quixote." The phrases can be rendered; it is true, word for word, by sheer brute force. And how pitiable is the result! " Bless thee, thou art translated!" To those who know the original, who revel in its nuances and shades, to whom each word calls up a hundred happy associations, a translation is, and always must be, the most dull, weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable of all capita mortua. Excellent as are the " Arabian Night 3 " of Lane, and the Heroic Deeds and Sayings of the Good Pantagruel," done into English ty Sir Thomas Urquhart, Knight, yet is their flavor as that of rare old hermitage from a decanter. Each tongue has its own subtleties. It needs a Levant born Greek to enter into the " Odyssey," as it needs an Englishman to appreciate the beauties of the " Pilgrim's Progress," or. —to take a widely different instance —to revel in the Titanisms of Cobbett.

But yet the time is coming when one language shall be spoken from China to Peru, from the world's Dan to its Beersheba. And who can doubt which tongua it is that shall triumph in the end above all others ? French is the ideal dialect of literature and science. What such men as Comte or St. Beuve could have done without French —how far they could have expressed themselves in any other tongue it is difficult to think. Bat, after all, art and criticism, literature and science, are but a small part of the great life of the world. Nor can we doubt that when the International of capitalists holds its meeting five thousand years hence to protest against the cruel tyranny of the working classes, its delegates will address the great assembly in English, and all will understand them. Our noble old Teutonic tongue is the fullest and richest in the world. No language —not even German —has a grander literature. None is fuller of spoils from all quarters of the earth. In the English Dictionary lie mixed together Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Celtic, Sr.xon, Danish, French, Spanish, Spanish, Italian, German —nay, even Malay and Chinese words. And who can doubt, as he slowly rolls round the little mapped sphere which does duty for the world's globe, that English is, beyond all others, the spoken language of the earth ? The tongues which have no literature must die. And if we dismiss from our calculation the barbarous dialects of Africa and the East, of the dwellers round the North Pole, of the savage hordes of China and Tartary, and of the Indians of the West, how large a proportion of the civilised world speaks the tongue of Chaucer and Spenser, o\ Shakespeare and Milton ? Set the world against England and her Colonies arid the colossal Continent of North America, and it is easy to see what will be the end of the confusion of fc* n " guage will longest hold its own iu tbs obstinate struggle far the survival of tltf Attest. Great works, the heirlooms of past days, will stiil be studied by scholars, Daute, Cervantes, Boccaccio, Balelais, Calderon-« these, and our own Chaucer, almost as unintelligible now to most of J>* as " Piers Ploughin.au " or Skelton, will