THE FUTURE LANGUAGE OF THE WORLD. (From the London Telegraph.)

Waikato Times, Volume III, Issue 112, 23 January 1873, Page 2

THE FUTURE LANGUAGE OF THE WORLD. (From the London Telegraph.)

Tin: time is coming when 0110 language shall be spoken from China to Peru, from the world's Dan to it* Beersheba And who can doubt which tongue it is that shall triumph in the end above all others 9 French is the ideal dialect of literature and science. What such men as Comte or St. Beuve could have done without French— bow far they could hare expressed themselves in any other tongue- it is difficult to think. But, after oil, art and criticism, literature and science, arc but a small part of the great life of the world Xor enn we doubt that when the International of capitalists holds its meetings five thousand years henco to protest against the cruel tyrany of the working classes, its delegates will address the great assembly in English, and all will uuderstnud it. Our noble old Teutonic tongue is the fullest and richest in the world. No language — not even German — hns a grander literature from all parts of the earth. In tbo English Dictionary lie mi\ed together Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Celtic, Siuon. Danish, French, Spanish, Italian German — nay, even Malay and Chinese words. And who can doubt, as be slowly rolls round the little mapped sphero which does duty for the world's globe, that English is, above all others, the spoken language of the earth 9 The tongues which have no liter iture must die. And if we dismiss from our calculations the barbarous dialects of Africa and the East, of the dwellers round the North Pole, of the savase hordes of China and Tartnry. and of the Indians of the "West, how large a proportion of the civilised world speaks the tongue of Chaucer and Spencer, or Shnkespeare and Mill on? Set the world against England and her Colonics and the colossal continent of North America, and it is easy to sec what will be the end of the confusion of tongues — which langungo will longest hold its own in the obstinate struggle for the survival of the fittest. Greek works, th» heirlooms of past da)B will still bo studied by scholars. Dante, Cervantes, Boccassio, Rabelais, Calderon — these, and our own Chaucer, almost as unintelligible now to most of us as " Piers Ploughman " or Skelton, will **t ill be read for love of themselves, as men even now toil through the Vedas, wander with Phcedrus on the banks of the IHssuh, and with Lucretius contemplate the fretful folly of men and the grand uni verse of things. But for the busy toilers in the world's hive, for the men who ore to knit tho whole world into one, and to make it of one sentiment and of ono speech, the- English tongue will be tho weapon of conquest Tho mero foree — the dead weight or that obst maey which, while others learn English, nnkes the English unwilling lo acquire any speech save their own, tells in our favour. Numbers are with us Everything, it may be said is on our side. Already English w ill carry a man apparently farther than any other vehicle of expression. It will one day bo the language of the world.

Anvnn riSKMi:\T. — 'the folowing advertisements, says Once a Week, have been from time to limp clipped from Irish papers : — From the Freeman* Journal, 1870 • — " One pound reward.' — Lo«t, a cameo brooch, representing Vcmis nnd Adonic on the Prnmcondra Eoad, about ton o'clock on Tupßchiv PTpninjj." From the Cork Reporter (advertisement of a ■wine niercliant) : — "The advertiser, having made an advantageous purehasp, offers for sale, on very low terms, about fiO dozen prime port wine, lately the property of a gentleman forty years of atje, full in tho body, and with n high bouquet." The two following advertisements appealed in all the Dublin papers, an.l emanated from a well-known livery -stable keeper: '"To bo sold, oheap a mail phreton, the property of a gentleman with a move.ible head as good as new." Fiom Sautulfi's 1 iV<n« Letter — "Teu shillings rcwaid — Lost, by a gentleman, a white tenior dog except the head, «\ hicli is Mack, To be hrougbt to, &c. To these Irish advertisements may be added one English, which was the subject of a humourous article in tho Saturday Review, about four or five years since-— "To be sold, aErard grand piano, the property of a l.idy about to travel in a walnut case with carved legs." The //«'(' Ttiiies understands that tho necessary steps aio beinc taken to defend the Tiohbornc claimant with vigour. Leading counsel have beeu applied to, although not at the time wo write actually rctaincl, whose uauics, if mentioned, would be sufficient guaiantoc that th<s best possible case wvll be mvdc foy tho defendant,