CHAPTER III.

THE THREE CAUSES OF CHANGE IN LANGUAGE.

“Πάντα ῥεῖ.”—HERAKLEITUS.

Sciences may be classed as historical or physical according as they deal

with the mind of man or with external nature. The forces and materials

of nature remain always the same: oxygen and hydrogen, for instance,

are in no way different to-day from what they were a million of ages

ago, and, combined in the same proportions, would always have produced

water. Man and his intellectual creations, on the other hand, have a

history; that is, the same causes do not always act in the same way, nor

do the causes themselves always remain the same. The sum of the forces

set in motion by the human will goes on increasing in an accelerated

ratio: each new generation is influenced and moulded by the one that

preceded it, and that influence becomes itself a fresh factor in the sum

of the forces and causes at work. In place of the simpler processes of

nature, with their unvarying uniformity of action, we have an infinitely

complicated _development_, each stage of which is the immediate growth of

the previous one, and is in turn the origin and germ of all that are to

follow. Unlike the forces and phænomena of nature, thought is infinitely

progressive, for

“through the ages one increasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.”

Wherever we have to deal with the products of human thought, there we

have a constant ever-varying evolution, conditioned, it is true, by the

uniform laws of outward nature, but continually modifying and adapting

them. It is through the conditions thus imposed on the development of

thought that we can discover the direction it has taken, and our inquiry

thus becomes in great measure a historical one. We have to see under

what conditions, in what external shape, as it were, the development of

thought has displayed itself at each particular stage of its progress.

Like sociology, or comparative law, the science of language is

concerned with a product of the human intelligence, and must consequently

be included among the historical sciences. Language, we have seen, is

significant sound; sound without significance is not yet language. As it

is the inward sense and meaning, therefore, which constitute the essence

of language, the primary object of comparative philology ought to be to

discover the nature, origin, and history of the signification we breathe

into our words and sentences. This can only be done, however, by finding

out the conditions under which this signification is put into them, and

by questioning the external side of language, those articulate sounds,

namely, whereby we communicate our meaning to another. Now the external

side of language is purely physiological and governed accordingly by

purely physical laws. Phonology, in short, is as much a physical science

as sematology is a historical one; and if we claim for the science

of language in general the rank of a historical science, it is only

because the meaning, rather than the sound, is the essence of speech,

and phonology the handmaid and instrument rather than the equivalent of

glottology. The method pursued by the science of language is the method

of physical science; and this, combined with the fact that the laws of

sound are also physical—the same conditions producing the same sounds in

all periods of human history,—has occasioned the belief that the science

of language is a physical science. But such a view results in identifying

phonology and glottology, in making a subordinate science equivalent to

the higher one, and in ignoring all those questions as to the nature and

origin of language which are of supreme importance to the philosophy of

speech. If we treat glottology as a physical science we must content

ourselves with an exposition of the laws of sound and a mere description

of the languages of the world and their classification, so far as it is

founded on phonology alone. It is evident that such a classification

must be superficial and incomplete; the relationship of languages is

primarily based on grammar and structure rather than on a community of

roots, and even roots must agree in sense as well as in sound before

they can be admitted in proof of linguistic kinship. The intimate and

inseparable connection between the inward and the outward, between sense

and sound, in articulate speech, is a symbol of the connection between

the historical and the physical methods of investigating it; but inasmuch

as the sense is more important than the sound, so, too, the historical

side of linguistic science is more important than its physical side.

Language and languages are in a constant state of change: nowhere,

indeed, can the maxim of Herakleitus, πάντα ῥεῖ, be better illustrated.

This perpetual flux and change is necessitated by the very fact that

language is a product and creation of the human mind. Thought is ever

shifting, moving, developing, and so, too, is the language in which

it seeks to embody itself. But language is not only changing on this

its inner side, it changes also on its outward, its phonetic side. The

physiological organs of speech may be affected by an alteration in

climate, food, or other physical conditions: they are certain to be

affected by the psychological desire to save trouble or to add emphasis

in speaking.

The three great causes of change in language may be briefly described

as (1) imitation or analogy, (2) a wish to be clear and emphatic, and

(3) laziness. Indeed, if we choose to go deep enough we might reduce

all three causes to the general one of laziness, since it is easier to

imitate than to say something new, while clearness in expression not

only saves our neighbour trouble, but also preserves us from unnecessary

repetition. Nothing is gained, however, by too wide a generalization; and

it is, therefore, better to keep the three causes of linguistic change

distinct and separate.

Imitation has played a far more important part in the history of speech

than is ordinarily admitted. Imitation is the primary instinct of the

infant and the savage, and, under the name of fashion, is a ruling power

among civilized men. The great imitative powers of barbarous tribes

have often been remarked upon by travellers; and a marvellous facility

in mimicry and imitation seems to exist in proportion to the scanty

development of the reasoning faculties. In this respect, at all events,

the savage has not much ground for boasting of his superiority to the

ape. Among the less cultivated races, indeed, the passion for imitation

frequently passes into a morbid mania, and strange stories are related

concerning it. Thus Dr. R. Maak, in his “Journey to the Amur,” states

that “it is not unusual for the Maniagri to suffer from a nervous malady

of the most peculiar kind, with which we had already been made acquainted

by the descriptions of several travellers.[84] This malady is met with,

for the most part, amongst the wild people of Siberia, as well as amongst

the Russians settled there. In the district of the Yakutes, where this

affliction very frequently occurs, those affected by it, both Russians

and Yakutes, are known by the name of _Emiura_; but here the same

malady is called by the Maniagri _Olon_, and by the Argurian Cossacks

_Olgandschi_. The attacks of the malady which I am now mentioning consist

in this, that a man suffering from it will, if under the influence of

terror or consternation, unconsciously, and often without the slightest

sense of shame, imitate everything that passes before him.” So, too, Mr.

Jagor, in his “Travels in the Philippines,”[85] tells us that the malady

in question is well known in those islands under the name of _Mali-mali_,

and in Java under that of _Sakit-latar_; and goes on to relate how his

“companions availed themselves of the diseased condition of a poor old

woman who met us in the highway, to practise some rough jokes upon her.

The old woman imitated every motion as if impelled by an irresistible

impulse, and expressed at the same time the most extreme indignation

against those who abused her infirmity.” The description reminds us of

the feats of our own “electro-biologists.”

It is to the desire of imitation that we owe our first knowledge of our

mother-tongue. The child tries to imitate those about him, and as the

faculties of imitation and memory are the only ones yet developed in

him his efforts are usually successful. The distance at which we stand

from the infantile state, and the development of our reasoning powers,

are measured by the prominence given to individuality and our power of

taking the initiative. The community in which each man acts like his

neighbour is not yet a civilized community; Athens is typical of all

that is highest in human culture, and Athens was emphatically the State

in which individuality had the freest play. It is well for the child who

has to learn the language of his parents that he is rather a member of an

uncivilized community than of Periklean Athens.

The love of imitation is the instrument whereby one language is able to

influence another. Sometimes we find a community giving up its own tongue

altogether and adopting that of his neighbours. Such has been the case

with the Kelts of Cornwall, with the Wends of Prussia, or with the Huns

of Bulgaria. The Negroes of Haiti speak French, the Lapps Finnish, while

according to Humboldt and Bonpland,[86] “a million of the aborigines of

America have exchanged their native for a European language.” Social

contact and not identity of race occasions a similarity of language,

since language is the medium of communication between the members of the

same community, not between the scattered branches of the same race. No

doubt where the languages are essentially distinct, based on radically

different conceptions of the sentence and its parts, even the desire of

imitation will be often not strong enough to cause the one language to

be borrowed by the speakers of the other. Here and there we come across

children who have a difficulty in imitating the pronunciation or use

of the words they hear, and such a difficulty is a main cause of the

origination of dialects; but it is among the speakers of agglutinative

or polysynthetic tongues when brought into contact with an inflectional

language that the difficulty is best exemplified. The Negro of the

United States still speaks a jargon which can be called English only by

courtesy, and Humboldt states[87] that “nothing can exceed the difficulty

experienced by the (South American) Indians in learning Spanish,”

although they “manifest quickness of intellect” in other respects,

and “the missionaries assert that their embarrassment is neither the

effect of timidity nor of natural stupidity, but that it arises from the

impediments they meet with in the structure of a language so different

from their native tongue.” Potent as imitation is, it yet has a limit,

and this limit is reached wherever the element of conscious intelligence

intervenes. The savage, like the child, finds it hard to mimic the

products of civilized man, in so far as these embody the application

of the reasoning faculties, and the mode of thought elaborated through

long ages by a cultivated race necessarily forms a stumbling-block to

the Negro or the South American Chayma. The Ethics of Aristotle could

not have been written in a Semitic language, and a Negro Goethe is a

somewhat incongruous conception. Wherever the distance between the two

languages or the two levels of culture is great enough, the attempt to

imitate is either given up altogether or else becomes a failure. The

modes of thought of the borrower are read into the language he borrows.

The Chinaman endeavoured to assimilate English, and the result was

the Pigeon-English of Canton, a jargon in which we have a framework

of English reared upon Chinese grammar and Chinese pronunciation. The

difficulty of reproducing a cultivated language of foreign origin, or

a language based upon a wholly alien conception of things and their

relations, may be illustrated by the difficulty of translating accurately

books written in another tongue. However closely related two languages

may be, the various shades of meaning they attach to corresponding words

or idioms will necessarily differ, and the more cultivated the style of

a writer, the more impossible will it be to represent it exactly in a

translation.

Where a language is not borrowed bodily, or at any rate engrafted upon

the old modes of thinking and expression, it may yet exercise a greater

or less influence upon a neighbouring language. Words, sounds, idioms,

suffixes, and even grammatical forms may be and constantly are borrowed

from one dialect by another; and it is not too much to say that a

thoroughly pure and unmixed language does not exist among the civilized

races of mankind. Our own English is a superstructure of Norman-French

and Latin upon a foundation of Anglo-Saxon, and nine-tenths of the Hindi

language is Sanskrit. No people can have neighbours close to them without

receiving something from them in the shape of inventions, products,

or social institutions; and these almost inevitably are adopted under

foreign names. Thus the French have taken _meeting_ and _comfortable_

from us, and we have received _naïve_ and _éclat_ in return from them.

Such loan-words are of great use in tracing the history and distribution

of civilization, as well as the geographical and social relationships

of the past. _Boomerang_ proves our intercourse with the natives of

Australia, from whom we have derived both the idea and the name of the

weapon; _pew_, the Dutch _puyde_, _puye_, “a pulpit” or “reading-desk,”

from the Latin _podium_, reveals the close connection that existed

between the Churches of England and Holland in the seventeenth century,

while words like _maize_, _hammock_, _canoe_, and _tobacco_, derived as

they are from Haytian through the medium of Spanish, show as plainly as

ordinary history that the Spaniards must have been the discoverers of

America and the introducers of its products into the West. By similar

reasoning we infer that the Baltic provinces must have been inhabited by

a Teutonic population at the time when the Romans received amber from

them under the name of _glæsum_ (our _glass_), and Professor Thomsen has

proved that the Finns must have bordered on Scandinavians and Teutons

some two thousand or more years ago from the number of words borrowed by

Finnish from their languages.

Sounds, again, may be borrowed from one language by another, or native

sounds modified through the influence of a foreign tongue. The easier

of the Hottentot clicks have been borrowed by the Kafirs, and the

Souletin dialect of Basque has admitted the French vowel _u_. Idioms,

too, may pass readily from one tongue to another. Words like _avenir_

and _contrée_ in French, are the result of an attempt to express

German idioms in the Romance of the conquered provincials, _avenir_

or _ad venire_ being a literal translation of the German _zu-kunft_,

and _contrée_ for _contrata (terra)_, a curious representative of the

German _gegend_, “country,” as derived from _gegen_, “against.” The

great extension of the English plural in -_s_, confined as it was in

Anglo-Saxon to a comparatively few words, seems due to Norman-French

influence, and the use of the genitive and dative of the personal

pronouns in English “of me,” “to me,” in the place of the Anglo-Saxon

_min_ and _me_, is modelled after a French pattern. Bulgarian and

Roumanian seem to have caught the infection of Albanian usage in which

the definite article is attached to the end of the word, as in the

Roumanian _domnu-l_, “the lord,” and Persian has even adopted the Semitic

order of words so repugnant to the general structure of the Aryan group,

in saying _dăst-ĭ-’Umăr_, for “Omar’s hand.” For instances of borrowed

suffixes, we have only to point to our English -_ize_ and -_ist_ from the

Greek -ιζ-ω and -ιστ-ης, which tend to supersede the old corresponding

suffixes of the language, and the French participial termination is

imitated in the letter of Gawin Douglas to Richard II. (1385), where

we find such phrases as “Zour honourable lettres conten_and_,” and

“brek_and_ the trewis.”

The borrowing of grammatical forms is of much rarer occurrence,

inasmuch as grammar is the essence and life blood of language, and

to borrow the forms of grammar, therefore, is to intermingle the

psychological histories of two separate tongues. It is a metamorphosis

of the whole inherited mode of thinking and of viewing the relations of

things to ourselves and one another, and to mix two grammars together is

like mixing two different and incompatible modes of thought. A supposed

instance of a mixed grammar (that is, of a mixed language) generally

turns out to have another explanation. Thus it has been believed that

the modern Aryan languages of India have substituted agglutinated

postfixes for flection, and so have adopted the grammatical machinery

of their Dravidian neighbours. Thus in Gujerati, _dêv-mā̃_ means “in

the god,” like the Hindustani _ãdhe-mē̃ _, “in the blind,” and in

Nepalese _mânis-visê_ is “in man,” _mā̃_ or _mē̃ _ being a contraction

of the Sanskrit _madhyê_ (= _madhya-i_), “in the middle,” and _visê_

of _visayê_, “in the thing.” What has really happened in these cases,

however, is this. The first noun instead of being provided with the

locative suffix (-_i_) is compounded with another noun which still

retains the suffix, and the locative signification accordingly resides

not in the second member of the compound, but in its worn-away flection.

Here, then, there is no example of grammatical confusion. There are other

instances of “mixed grammar,” however, which cannot be so easily disposed

of, and it would really seem that in rare cases there actually has been

an interchange of grammatical forms between two unallied languages. Thus

in Assamese, which appears to be at bottom an Aryan language, the plural

affix (_bilak_) is inserted between the noun and the case-ending, so

that from _manuh-bilak_, “men,” we get the genitive _manuh-bilak-or_,

the dative _manuh-bilak-oloi_, the accusative _manuh-bilak-ok_, the

locative _manuh-bilak-ot_, and the ablative _manuh-bilak-e_, where

the postpositions are all of them said to be of non-Aryan origin. The

language of Harar, in Northern Africa, again, though apparently belonging

to the Semitic family of speech, makes use of postpositions, and reverses

the Semitic order of words when employing the genitive; while, according

to Schott, the Persian affix of the dative and accusative was originally

a Turanian postposition. Cases like these must, of course, be carefully

distinguished from those in which we are dealing with an artificial

language and not with the spoken language of the people. A curious

language of this kind, the Pehlevi, was formed in the courts of the

Sassanian princes of Persia, in which the elements of Aryan and Semitic

grammar were mixed together in a strange fashion, but such a language did

not penetrate beyond the limits of the learned class. Of the same nature

are such affected plurals as _termini_ and _fungi_ from _terminus_ and

_fungus_ in English, or the genitive and dative _Christi_ and _Christo_

in theological German. They would not be understood beyond the boundaries

of a narrow circle.[88]

The most usual way in which the grammar of one language is influenced

by that of another is by the adaptation of existing words and forms to

express new grammatical ideas and relations imported from abroad. Thus

the Assyrians became familiarized with the distinction between present

and past time through their acquaintance with the extinct Accadian of

ancient Chaldea, and they accordingly set apart certain separate phonetic

forms, which had previously existed side by side without any difference

of meaning, to express the present and the past tense.[89] So Spiegel[90]

believes that he has discovered the influence of Semitic grammar in the

Zend use of the feminine to denote a neuter or abstract, and of the dual

to denote a pair. The invariable rule of the ancient Maya of placing the

adjective after its substantive, is sometimes violated in the modern

language through the influence of Castilian,[91] and the Ragusan custom

of using the Illyrian _svoj_, “his own,” in the place of _njegòv_, “his,”

is referred by Brugman to the influence of Italian and German.[92]

But the principle of imitation comes chiefly into play in the sphere

of language in changing the form and meaning of words so as to bring

them into agreement with the form and meaning of other words. When the

true history and significance of certain forms have been forgotten by

those who use them, other words with a totally different history and

significance are very likely to be assimilated to them. When language has

once created a particular mould it is very liable to run all manner of

words into it. This is what is meant by the action of _false analogy_ in

speech. Words, forms, and significations which ought to have been kept

apart are erroneously made like one another; the instinct of imitation

and the desire to save trouble combine to exclude the irregular from

language, and to force all exceptions under a uniform rule. The modern

Greek declines innumerable words which formerly belonged to different

declensions after the type of ταμίας, turning βασιλέας, ἄνδρας, and the

like, into nominatives singular, and in the English which is unchecked

by a literary tradition _I comed_ is already more common than _I came_.

Analogy is constantly at work throughout the whole domain of language—in

pronunciation, in formal grammar, in syntax, and in sematology—building

up and reconstructing what phonetic decay and change of meaning have

tended to pull down. English is rapidly forcing all exceptional cases

under the rule that throws the accent back as much as possible; _balcóny_

has become _bálcony_, and Milton’s line “O argument blasphémous, false

and proud,” would no longer scan. There is good reason to believe that

the vocabulary of the primitive Aryan was for the most part, if not

entirely, accented on the last syllable; the course of centuries has

been continually thrusting the accent back as much as possible, and

Latin and the Æolic dialects of Greece which illustrate this tendency,

only show their want of conservatism and relative decay. Though the old

accent of pitch has become an accent of stress in most of the modern

European tongues, the same process is still going on; and while Polish

still accents its words on the penultima, the accentuation of Bohemian is

upon the first syllable. The same fact reappears in the Semitic family

of speech, where it can be shown that the penultima primarily received

the accent, and that the accentuation of the modern Arabic which agrees

with that of English is a later innovation.[93] Greek words like φῡ́ω,

θῡ́ω, and τῑ́ω, where the length of the vowel compensated for the loss

of an iota (*φυίω), were brought under the general rule of the language

which made one vowel before another short,[94] and when Horace addresses

the fountain of Bandusia as “splendidior _vĭtro_,” the quantity assigned

to _vĭtro_, a contracted form of _vistrum_ for _vid-trum_ (from the

root _vid_, “to see”), arises from the mistaken notion that because a

naturally short vowel could be lengthened before a mute followed by a

liquid every vowel in such a position might be treated as indifferently

long or short. So, again, the termination of the Latin nominative plural

in -_es_ was properly short, as may be seen from a comparison with

the Greek; but the long vowel resulting from the combination of this

termination with the final vowel of stems in -_i_ (such as _nubi-es_) was

extended to other cases, and the nominative plural of consonantal stems

like _voc_ (_vox_) was accordingly regarded as ending in a long syllable.

Apart from accent or quantity, however, the pronunciation of words is

largely affected by the influence of analogy. Our English preference

for diphthongal sounds is changing _either_ and _neither_ into _aither_

and _naither_, in spite of the fact that the only other word in the

language by which such a pronunciation could be supported is the misspelt

_height_ from _high_. The Frenchman “gallicizes” the words he borrows

or the proper names he uses just as the Englishman “anglicizes” his;

it is easier for the one to say _Londres_ and _Biarri’_ than _London_

and _Biarritz_, and for the other _Paris_ and _Marsaels_ than _Pari’_

and _Marseies_. Up to the last Charles James Fox called Bordeaux wine

“Bordox,” maintaining that it had been domesticated in England, and ought

accordingly to follow English customs. The action of analogy throws much

light on Grimm’s laws respecting the shifting of sounds in the various

branches of the Aryan family, which will be specially treated in the

next chapter. When once a particular variety of pronunciation has come

into vogue it absorbs and kills all deviating modes of pronunciation

as surely as the cardoon in Central America has killed the native

plants in its neighbourhood. We are all creatures of fashion, and the

instinct of imitation is at work from the moment we first cease to be

_infants_,—“speechless” embryos of humanity.

In the matter of grammar, a familiar instance of the way in which

analogy can change the current forms of speech is afforded by the

extension of the English perfect in -_ed_, the last relic of the affixed

_dide_, the reduplicated past tense of _do_. The Latin _amamini_ is the

plural masculine of the old middle participle which we find in the Sansk.

_bharamâṇas_, the Greek τυπτόμενοι, and the Latin _alumnus_ (_alomenus_

from _al-o_) or _Vertumnus_, the “changing” year. But when it had

firmly established itself as a substitute for the second person plural

of the present of the middle-passive voice, with _estis_ understood,

its true origin and meaning came to be forgotten, and as _amamini_ was

conjugated with _amamur_ and _amantur_, so the anomalous _amemini_ was

conjugated with _amemur_ and _amentur_, and _amabamini_ with _amabamur_

and _amabantur_. The coexistence of the older and later forms of the

third personal pronoun in Greek, σφέ (Sansk. _swa_, Lat. _se_), and ἕ

caused the one to be employed as a plural and the other as a singular,

although the pronoun was originally reflective and of all genders; and

the new plural pronoun was then provided with cases as well as with a

dual formed on the analogy of those of the first and second pronouns.

In the case of the dative alone a difficulty occurred, since here ἡμῖν

or ὑμῖν could not be distinguished in form from σφί(ν) still used as

singular by Herodotus; but the difficulty was overcome by having recourse

to the noun-declension and creating a σφίσι as a parallel to ναῦσι.

The contracted plural accusative πόλεις could not be derived from the

original πολιας (for πολιανς) by any known rule of Greek phonology; it

owes its existence to the habit of making the accusative plural like

the nominative. The whole of the so-called fifth declension in Latin

has grown up from the unconscious blunders of speech. _A_ before _m_

tended to become _e_, as in _siem_ for _siam_, and accordingly by the

side of _materiam_ was heard _materiem_. The accusative _materiem_ was

then confounded with accusatives like _nubem_, and so a new nominative

came into being, _materies_ by the side of _materia_. Meanwhile the

vowel of the accusative case-ending had influenced the vowel of the

other case-endings, and changed the old ablative _materiâ_ and genitive

_materiai_ into _materie_ and _materiei_. The same process was next

extended to the plural, _materiarum_, _materiabus_, and _materias_ became

_materierum_, _materiebus_, and _materies_, and nothing remained but to

assimilate nominative and accusative as in nouns of the third declension

whose accusative plural also terminated in -_es_.

Analogy will sometimes alter the whole structural complexion of a

language. The Coptic, formerly an affix-language like Old Egyptian or the

Semitic tongues, has become a prefix-language, denoting by prefixes the

relations of grammar; and this metamorphosis seems due to the influence

of the neighbouring Berber and cognate dialects. The tendency must have

first shown itself in a few instances, and then by degrees have extended

to the whole language. It has been held that the Aryan conjugation with

a vowel between the root and the suffix, as in the Sanskrit _bhav-â-mi_

or the Latin _(e)s-u-m_, has grown up in the same manner, verbs like

the Sanskrit _ad-mi_, “I eat,” alone surviving as the remains of a past

in which the personal pronoun was attached immediately to the verbal

root. This, however, is very doubtful, the latter class of verbs being

more probably the result of phonetic decay which has obliterated the

connecting vowel, or more correctly the final syllable of the stem.

Syntax has not escaped the all-prevailing action of analogy and

imitation. The relics of English flection are rapidly disappearing

under its influence, and the use of the conjunctive _were_ will soon

be as obsolete as that of _be_. The relative pronoun was originally a

demonstrative like our _that_, which drew attention to the idea contained

in the principal clause, but with the extension of its use as a relative

its demonstrative signification was lost, and it came to be used in

instances where the demonstrative could not be employed.

Examples of the power of analogy in changing and extending the meaning

of words are almost needless. The process is going on before our eyes

every day. A new object or a new idea is named from its likeness to

something with which we are familiar. The Kuriaks call the ox the

“Russian elk” (_Ruski olehn_), just as the Romans spoke of the elephant

as the _Luca bos_, and we are all familiar with the significant name

of the _Sugarloaf_ Mountain. There is a long distance from the primary

signification of _post_ as something “placed” or “fixed” to its

signification as the arrival of correspondence, but every stage of the

way can be traced and shown to be the work of analogy. The post fixed

in the ground became a station, and when such stations were established

for the conveyance of messages, news was said to travel “by post.” To

transfer the name “post” from the machinery whereby the news was carried

to the news itself was at once obvious and easy. The _foot_ of a mountain

is as much a metaphorical expression as the _arm_ of the sea or the _arm_

of law, and every metaphorical expression is an example of analogy.

Three-fourths of our language, indeed, may be said to consist of worn-out

metaphors. In no other way can terms be found for the spiritual and the

abstract. _Spirit_ is itself “the breath,” the _abstract_ that which is

“drawn apart.” Our knowledge grows by comparing the unknown with the

known, and the record of that increase of knowledge grows in the same

way. Things are named from their qualities, but those qualities have

first been observed elsewhere. The _table_ like the _stable_ originally

meant something that “stands,” but the idea of standing had been noted

long before the first table was invented. The only abstract notion the

Tasmanians had attained was that of resemblance. When they wanted to

express the conception of roundness they had to say “like the moon” or

some other round object, and similarly in the case of other abstract

adjectives.

But as in pronunciation and grammar, so too in the matter of

signification the analogy may sometimes be a wrong one. The men who

coined the term “whale-fishery” were ignorant of the fact that the whale

is a mammal, and that its only resemblance to a fish consists in its

living in the sea. The name of _guinea-pig_, again, as applied to the

small animal imported from Brazil, is singularly inappropriate. At other

times the process whereby a new idea or object has been brought into

relation with what was already familiar has been fair and legitimate.

Thus the sense of the French _canard_ as “idle gossip” can be traced back

step by step to the primary meaning of the Low-Latin _canardus_. The

feminine of _canard_ is _cane_, and just as _cane_ is the German _kahn_,

“a skiff,” so _canardus_ properly signified “a small boat.” Then by the

force of analogy the words came to denote “a duck,” and as the duck

was frequently used to decoy other birds by its cry, _canard_ ended in

signifying a mere decoy, a mere empty cry calculated to deceive.

Mythology, as we shall see hereafter, is in large measure based upon

the metaphors of speech. The phænomena of nature were explained by

likening them to those human actions with which primitive man was

acquainted, and when in course of time a higher level of knowledge had

been reached, and the original meaning of the traditional epithets had

been forgotten, they came to be taken literally and interpreted as

referring to beings of a super-human world. The dawn had been likened to

a rosy-fingered maiden, the sun to a charioteer, and so the myths of Eôs,

the ever-fleeing maiden, and of Phœbus Apollo, the heavenly charioteer,

came into existence. Mythology is not so much a disease of language as a

misunderstanding of its metaphors and a misconception of the analogical

reasoning of our early forefathers.

Exactly the converse of this are those popular etymologies whereby

words whose meaning is unknown or forgotten are assimilated to others

with which the speakers are familiar. A gardener has been heard to call

_asphalt_ “ashes-spilt,” and thus render an explanation of the word to

his own mind, and the modern spelling of the German _sündfluth_ is due to

the popular belief that the word, really a compound of _sint_, “great,”

the Anglo-Saxon _sin_, “everlasting,” was invented to denote the deluge

of Noah, which punished the “sins” of mankind. Luther still writes

_sindfluth_ (_sindefluth_), and in his translation of the Bible uses

it in other passages besides those which relate to the Noachian flood

(_e.g._, Ps. 29, 10, and Sirach 39, 22). Proper names have naturally

suffered, especially from the attempt to give a meaning to them. Burgh de

Walter has become Bridgewater and Widder Fjord, “the Creek of Wethers,”

Waterford. The name of Madrid is explained by a popular legend which

makes a boy, pursued by a bear, fly to a tree and cry to his mother

“Madre id, Madre id” (“Mother, he comes”);[95] the Lepontii, we are told

by Pliny,[96] received their title from having been the companions of

Hercules who were “left behind” (λιπόντες!); and the Kirgises were so

named from forty maidens, the mothers of the race, _qyrg_ being “forty”

in Turkic and _qyz_ “a maiden.”[97] Similarly the modern Greeks have

changed the meaningless _Athens_ into Ἀνθῆναι, “the Flowery,” while

Krisa has become Χρυσό, “the Golden.”[98] Where all other means failed

the name was explained by the clumsy device of turning it into the

name of an individual, and so there arose those eponymous heroes like

Hellen and Asshur from whom tribes and nations were supposed to have

been designated. The same process of etymologizing by the help of false

analogy meets us in literature as well as in popular speech. The Homeric

Poems are full of instances of the fact. In the Odyssey the old epic

epithet ἐπηέτανος, “long lasting” (from ἐπὶ, ἄει, and τείνω), has come to

be derived from ἔτος, which had lost its initial digamma (ϝετος, Sanskrit

_vatsas_), and is accordingly employed in the sense of “lasting all the

year,” while the Aorist infinitives χραισμεῖν and ἰδεῖν were taken to

be presents and so provided with the futures χραισμήσω and ἰδήσω. Our

own absurd mode of spelling presents us with parallel cases. Because

_should_, the past tense of _shall_, has an _l_, _could_, the past tense

of _can_, is given one; and _further_, the comparative of _forth_, has

been written and pronounced _farther_ as if derived from _far_.

The desire of clearness and emphasis, the second cause of change in

language, is, like analogy, a creative and constructive power, and is

often found at work in company with analogy. The object of speech is to

communicate our thoughts to one another; where, therefore, our meaning is

not clearly grasped, we begin to pronounce our words more distinctly than

usual and to lay greater stress upon them. The result of this is a clear

enunciation of all the syllables of a word, and sometimes a phonetic

addition to the word itself. In this way we may explain the adventitious

dental that has attached itself to the end of a word like _sound_, Latin

_sonus_, French _son_, or the aspirate which is inserted in the wrong

place by persons who are conscious of a difficulty in pronouncing it in

the right place. So, again, in talking to a foreigner we instinctively

raise the voice and repeat our remarks in a louder tone should he fail

to comprehend them. The more readily our thoughts are understood, the

less need there is of our dwelling upon the sounds which express them.

Hence it is that with the progress of culture and education, and the

consequent advance in quickness of perception, our words get worn away

and slurred over, and a fragment only of the original word or the

original sentence is often sufficient to convey our meaning. English and

French are prominent examples of this fact, French cutting off its final

consonants, and English softening its harder letters and avoiding the

free play of the lips. Classical Italian, nurtured on the pedantic and

metrical pronunciation of literary Latin and screened by the mountains of

Tuscany, cannot, it has been well said, be spoken rapidly; but if we go

to the Bolognese dialect, where these influences have not been at work,

we shall find “A n’ vuoi t’ m’ in parl, S’nor,” doing duty for, “I won’t

have you to speak to me about it, sir.”[99] While the educated Frenchman

leaves the negative to be supplied by the mind when using _pas_, _point_,

or _jamais_ by themselves, the uneducated Englishman strengthens his

negative by repeating it. Indeed, the repetition of the negative in

order to emphasize the negation is a mark of most early languages, and

runs parallel with the gesture and gesticulation which characterize the

tongues of savages and barbarians. The muscular effort called forth by

the latter necessarily extends also to the elocution, and a speaker

generally finds that the clearness of his utterances is assisted by the

exercise of the muscles of the arms and face.

Emphasis acts upon the outward sounds of a word as well as upon its

inner meaning, and like analogy, though by the contrary process of

differentiation, tends to build up new grammatical forms. The English

_thunder_ and _jaundice_ go back to an Anglo-Saxon _thunor_ and a French

_jaunisse_, where the intrusive dental must be referred to the desire of

clearness, since it can hardly be said to facilitate the pronunciation.

So, too, in _impregnable_ and _groom_, the French _imprenable_ and

Anglo-Saxon _guman_, we have other instances of the same striving after

distinct and emphatic utterance, and the extension of the Greek πόλις

(Sanskrit _puris_) into πτόλις, or of πόλεμος into πτόλεμος must be put

down to a similar cause. People who wish to be very particular in the

pronunciation of their words are apt to say _kyind_ for _kind_, and the

Italian _luogho_ has arisen in no other way out of the Latin _locus_.

The varying quality of a vowel, or an apparent exception to Grimm’s laws

of letter-change may be explained by this principle of emphasis. Thus

the Greek οἶδα, like the Sanskrit _vêda_ or the Gothic _vait_, has a

diphthong in the singular, whereas in the dual and plural the vowel is

short (_ĭ_). This has resulted from the fact that the primitive Aryan

laid the accent on the first syllable of the word in the singular; the

less familiar flections of the dual and plural, however, were accented,

and so preserved the short vowel of the root from being changed. In the

same way the Old High German perfect _laiþ_ in the singular observes the

rule which makes an Old High German _þ_ answer to an original _d_; in

the plural, however, where the corresponding Sanskrit form accents the

suffixes and not the root (as in the singular) the rule is violated and

we have _lidum_, _liduþ_ and _lidun_. So, too, by the side of the Old

High German _brôþar_ (_bruder_), answering to a primitive _bhrâ´tar_, we

find _môdar_ (_muther_) and _fadar_ (_vater_) answering to a primitive

_mâtár_ and _pitár_ (_pâtár_); while the accent of the Vedic _saptán_ and

the Greek ἑπτά, “seven,” shows why the Old High German _seban_ and the

Gothic _sibun_ have _b_ instead of the regular _f_.[100]

Emphasis enriches the vocabulary, first of all by introducing synonyms,

and then by making a distinction of meaning between them. To set

two synonyms side by side is the best way of giving clearness and

intelligibility to our thoughts. Much of the charm of our authorized

version of the Bible is due to the attempt of the translators to bring

out the meaning of a Greek or Hebrew word by using two equivalents, one

from a Romanic, the other from a Teutonic source. There comes a time,

however, when we begin to contrast and differentiate the two synonyms;

and so _love_ comes to include much more than its New Testament synonym

_charity_, and _pastor_, the synonym of _shepherd_, is confined to

ecclesiastical language, while custom only allows us to say “_much_

obliged,” and “very grateful.”[101]

Of a similar nature is the process whereby two varying forms of the

same word become distinguished in use and signification. Thus the Latin

_tepor_ and _tempus_ both go back to an earlier _tapas_, “heat,” but the

strengthening of the first syllable of the one, and the change of _s_

into _r_ in the other, caused them to break apart and in course of time

to be employed with a totally different meaning. The difference of sense

brought with it a difference of gender, and thus introduced a grammatical

change. The analogy of other nouns in final -_or_ or -_os_ preserved the

masculine use of _tepor_, while _tempus_ followed the gender of neuters

like _genus_. The history of the termination of the nominative singular

of Latin comparatives has been much the same. This was indifferently

-_ior_ or -_ios_ (-_ius_), like the Greek -ίων and the Sanskrit -_yan_

from an earlier -_yans_, and in Valerius Antias[102] we find _prior_

still used for the neuter in the phrase “senatus-consultum prior,” while

the title of the fourth book of Cassius Hemina’s Annals was, “Bellum

Punicum posterior.” _Arbor_ and _robur_ were originally identical,

and M. Bréal has shown that this was also the case with _cruor_ and

_crus_.[103] The two latter words both represent the Sanskrit _kravis_

and the Greek κρέας in the sense of “bloody flesh” or “bloody limb,”

and their differentiation was aided by the introduction of a new word,

_caro_, in the sense of “flesh.” _Caro_ originally meant simply “part”

or “portion,” a sense in which the Umbrian _karu_ is still employed in

the Engubine Tables,[104] and the Oscan _carneis_ in the Tabula Bantina.

Roots, too, as well as derivatives, may be differentiated and gradually

assume independent meanings. Thus in Greek, if we follow the usual

theory, the old root _ar_ or _ara_ has been split up into three, ἀρ-,

ἐρ-, and ὀρ-, in accordance with the threefold representation of the

Sanskrit _ă_ in European Aryan. Accordingly by the side of ἀρόω, the

Latin _arare_, the Gothic _arjan_ (Old English _ear_), which appropriated

to itself the sense of “ploughing,” we have also ἐρέσσω (_remus_) in the

sense of “rowing,” and ὄρ-νυμι (_orior_) in the sense of “rising” to

one’s work. This differentiation of the three roots, however, seems to

have come about after the separation of the several members of the Aryan

group, as we find no trace of it in the Asiatic branch of the family, and

it must, therefore, have really taken place in the fully-formed words

of the European tongues.[105] Greek with its delicate sense of vocalic

difference shows a special tendency towards utilizing vowel changes for

grammatical purposes. Thus the reduplicated syllables in δίδωμι and

δέδωκα were originally identical, but in course of time, while the sound

of _ĭ_ was appropriated to the present tense, the sound of _e_ came

to mark the perfect. In the same way Greek verbs in -αω, -εω, -οω all

go back to the form which we have in the Sanskrit -_ayâmi_, but later

usage tended to assign a transitive meaning to the form in -οω, and an

intransitive one to that in -εω, while that in -αω floated between the

two. It is probable that the three Semitic case-endings in _u_, _i_, _a_,

which respectively denoted the nominative, genitive, and accusative, all

went back to a primary indeterminate -_a_. In the Negro Dinka language

certain plurals are formed by lengthening or sharpening the vowel of the

singular, like _rōr_, the plural of _ror_, “wood,” _nim_, the plural

of _nom_, “head,” _līb_, the plural of _lyep_, “tongue,” or _tut_, the

plural of _tuot_, “goose;” and since we find that a verb becomes passive

by simply lengthening the final _i_ of the formative elements (as _ran

a-tšī tšōl_, “the man has been called,” by the side of _ran a-tši tšōl_,

“the man has called”), it is possible that the vowel change in all these

cases is due to differentiation for the sake of clearness and emphasis.

Such at least has been the origin of the tones which form so marked a

feature in Chinese. Dr. Edkins has shown that the confusion between words

of different signification occasioned by the loss of various initial and

final letters in pronunciation was obviated by the substitution of tones,

and the effects of phonetic decay have been thus neutralized by the

action of the contrary principle of emphasis.

One of the modes in which this principle comes into play is what

Professor Max Müller has called Dialectic Regeneration. The words and

grammatical forms which have become effete in the literary dialect, are

often replaced by others taken up from the fresh fountain of “provincial”

speech. There is nothing any longer to attract attention in what has

become so prosaic an expression as “the four cardinal points,” striking

as the phrase once was; but when Carlyle goes to the Scotch and borrows

from it the “four airts,” we are at once arrested by the unusual

character of the word, a special emphasis is laid upon it, and we begin

to realize its full meaning. It is in a period of social revolution, like

that of the Norman Conquest in England, that Dialectic Regeneration is

best seen at work on the literary language. As soon as the latter loses

the support of the educated classes, it fails to withstand the attack of

the less favoured but more deeply rooted dialects which have surrounded

it, and, as in the case of literary Anglo-Saxon with its inflections

and learned terms, it disappears for ever. The unwritten languages of

savages and barbarians are in a continual state of flux and change. Old

words and expressions which have ceased to possess the needed amount

of clearness and emphasis have to make way for new ones. The slang of

the schoolboy, or the cant of thieves and costermongers, exemplifies

the same fact. It is not so much the desire of revolting against the

proprieties of a civilized society, or of framing a secret jargon which

shall be unintelligible to others, that produces these wild outgrowths

of language; it is rather the feeling that the conventional terms have

become mere symbols, or, as Hobbes said, the counters of wise men, and

that the ideas which are perceived and felt clearly should be expressed

with equal clearness and force. Man is not wholly ruled by the wish to

save himself trouble and attain his object with the least effort; the

healthy love of physical exertion for its own sake is also a powerful

motive in human life. It is only with the growth of civilization and

thought that the exertion is transferred from the muscles to the brain,

that words become so many algebraic signs, and that syntax takes the

place of elocution. It has been often noticed that the tendency of the

modern languages of Europe is towards a monotonous level of both accent

and tone; but it must be remembered that, as long as poetry exists,

there will exist also a tendency in the opposite direction, as well as a

protest against the reduction of all language into a mere reflection of

the dry light of reason. Laziness will not explain everything in speech

any more than it will in the ordinary dealings of mankind. As Sievers

states:—“We even now often find it stated in works on the science of

language, that all phonetic change results from a striving to facilitate

the pronunciation and simplify the articulation; or, in other words,

that change of sound always consists in a weakening of sound and not in

a strengthening of it. We may allow that although many of the phænomena

observable in the history of speech can be brought under this rule, the

general application of the statement is absolutely false.... The idea of

facilitating the pronunciation, if it is to be any longer maintained,

must be regarded as an essentially relative one. Speaking generally, we

must never forget that the different degrees of difficulty in uttering

various sounds are in themselves extraordinarily slight, and that real

difficulties in forming them are usually experienced only in the case of

sounds belonging to a foreign language.... In short, real difficulties

in pronunciation are never specially felt by the members of a community

which speaks a given language, and with them only a further development

of their language is possible.”

This brings us to the third and last cause of change of language,

laziness, or, as it has also been termed, the principle of least effort.

As the results of laziness show themselves principally in the alterations

undergone by the sounds of speech, this cause of change is commonly known

under the name of Phonetic Decay.[106] But the meanings of words as well

as the expression of grammatical relations are as much subject to decay

as the sounds of speech; the outward form of _age_ which can be traced

back to the Low Latin _ætaticum_ and the classical _ætas_, has suffered

no less from the wear and tear of time than its inward signification,

which goes back to a root meaning “to go.” Like the present strata of the

earth which are the _débris_ of the earlier rocks, the present strata

of language are the worn-out relics of older formations. The power of

laziness, more especially in the shape of phonetic decay, is conspicuous

in almost every word we utter; it is the first agent of linguistic

change that strikes the student, and it has accordingly attracted more

than its due share of attention. The influence of laziness has been

insisted on to the exclusion of the two other equally important causes

of change in speech, and the growth of grammatical consciousness, the

discovery of new grammatical relations and the development of fresh

mental points of view, have even been ascribed to its action. No doubt

its influence is great and far-reaching, but we must be on our guard

against regarding laziness as sufficient of itself to explain all the

phænomena of language. Phonology is rather affected by it than either

morphology or sematology. Owing, however, to the large place assigned to

it in works on comparative philology, it will not be necessary to dwell

upon it here in any great detail. We naturally seek to make ourselves

understood by our neighbours with the least possible amount of trouble.

Muscular and still more mental fatigue is distasteful to us, and the less

we have to exert our vocal organs and powers of thinking when making our

meaning clear to another, the better satisfied we are sure to be. Hence

it happens that we constantly use words with a very dim appreciation

indeed of their full and exact significance. We select that part of the

meaning only which for some reason or other has made an impression upon

our minds, and very often this part of the meaning is merely subsidiary

and accidental to the proper signification of the word. But we are too

lazy to realize that proper signification, and so pass words on to others

the mere shadow and fragment of their former selves. It may often happen

that a sense originally imported into a word by the context in which

it accidentally found itself becomes appropriated to it to the gradual

exclusion of its real signification. The word _silly_, for example, which

once meant “blessed,” like its German cousin _selig_, from being applied

euphemistically to half-witted persons, has entirely lost its true

meaning. A word like _impertinent_ is still in process of being changed.

Its positive _pertinent_ has hitherto preserved its proper sense, at

all events in literature; but the popular mind has already forgotten

the meaning of the negative, and only a short while ago a member of

Parliament was called to order for describing a remark as “impertinent.”

Here the accidental application of a word has caused its primary meaning

to fall into neglect. Still more striking is the fate which has befallen

words like _transpire_ and _eliminate_. The newspapers speak of events

“transpiring” in absolute disregard of the fact that events can hardly

“breathe through,” while _eliminate_ has been used not in the sense of

removing out of the way but of bringing in.[107] It is so much easier to

guess at the meaning of a word from the context in which it occurs than

to trace it back to its real signification, and so long as our use of

it is intelligible there is little care among ordinary speakers as to

whether that use is correct or not.

In this way general terms come to be restricted to individuals, while

words which denote the particular are extended to denote the universal.

_Deer_, which, like the cognate German _thier_ and Latin _fera_,

originally signified wild animals of all kinds, is now confined to a

particular species; while, on the other hand, the Latin _emere_, which

properly signified “to take” in general, came to be restricted to the

special meaning of taking when we “buy.” The older significations of

words are continually decaying and being supplanted by new ones. Those

who use them are too lazy to find out their exact significance.

The principle of laziness is equally active in the province of grammar.

Here, too, the relations formerly conceived to exist between the several

parts of the sentence may be forgotten altogether or replaced by other

relations. The inflections of the Anglo-Saxon noun have been almost all

lost, and the datives _him_ and _whom_ have become objective cases.

Prepositions have taken the place of the case-endings, the adjective

no longer “agrees” with its noun, but is now conceived of as a simple

attribute, while all remembrance of the dative relation has faded out of

the expressions “give me a book,” “send it away.” The subjunctive is fast

ceasing to exist, and the modern Englishman troubles himself but little

about the difference between _be_ and _is_ or between _if I was_ and _if

I were_.

It is in phonology, however, that the principle of laziness is most

active. As far back as we can follow the history of language we see the

stronger and harder sounds perpetually changing into weaker and easier

ones; and so uniform and constant is this tendency that in the absence of

counter-indications we are justified in referring most cases of phonetic

change with which we may meet to the operation of decay. Mr. Douse[108]

has lately made an ingenious but unsuccessful attempt to assign the

phænomena of Grimm’s law to what he terms the principle of least effort,

by supposing that the different phonetic systems of the several branches

of the Indo-European family were evolved out of the _tenues_ or hard

consonants, at a time when these branches were still co-existing dialects

of a single language, through the influence of “Reflex Dissimilation.”

Reflex dissimilation is explained to be a more complicated and somewhat

varying instance of that simple cross compensation which we see

exemplified in the Cockney interchange of _v_ and _w_, or the perverse

persistency with which the same persons, who leave out the aspirate where

it ought to exist, insert it where it ought to be omitted. In both cross

compensation and reflex dissimilation, however, we have a compound action

of the two antagonistic principles of laziness and emphasis.

The age of a language is marked by the extent to which it has been

affected by phonetic decay, and when we find how large its influence

has been upon the Old Egyptian and the Accadian of Chaldæa, as they

appear in the earliest monuments we possess, we may form some idea of

the length of time that must have elapsed since those languages were

first being moulded and fixed. At the same time we must not forget that

phonetic decay will act more readily upon some classes of languages than

upon others. Wherever there is no clear consciousness of the distinction

between root and grammatical suffix, as in our own inflectional family

of speech, there we may expect a greater and more rapid amount of change

than in agglutinative dialects where the relations of grammar are

expressed by independent or semi-independent words. But even the latter

cannot escape the law of gradual decay. To pass over the incorporating

Basque in which words like _dakarkiotezute_, “ye eat it for them,” or

_detzadan_, “that I should have them,” have to be decomposed into _da_,

“it” or “him,” _ekarri_, “to eat,” _ki_, sign of the dative, _o_, “for

him,” _te_, sign of the plural, _zute_, “ye,” and _d_, “him,” _ez_

(_izan_), “to be” or “have,” _za_, sign of the plural, _ta_, “I,” and

_n_, conjunctive affix, we find Yakute Turkish changing _bin_ + _śän_

(“I + thou”) into _biś_, “we,”[109] while the written Japanese _taka-si_

and _taka-ki_, “high,” are pronounced _takai_. Chinese itself is not

exempt from the universal rule. As Dr. Edkins[110] and M. de Rosny

have shown, the modern Mandarin dialect has lost numerous initial and

final consonants, and words like _yi_, “one,” and _ta_, “great,” were

once _tit_ and _dap_. Along the southern bank of the Yang-tsi-kiang and

through Chekiang to Fuh-kien the old initials are still preserved, while

in the northern provinces no less than three finals have been lost and

the tones by which Chinese words of similar form are distinguished from

one another are so many compensations for the loss of letters. Here again

we have the principle of emphasis endeavouring to repair the damage

wrought by the principle of decay.

A literary dialect is naturally less subject to the inroads of

decay than an unwritten one. The spelling of words reacts upon their

pronunciation and preserves it from extensive alteration. There is a

wide chasm between that Tuscan Italian which has been preserved from

corruption by the genius of Dante and the modern dialect of Bologna

or Naples. In the age of Cicero the _cave ne eas_ of polite society

had become _cauneas_ in the language of the people,[111] and how

artificial was the attempt of pedants and purists to maintain the older

pronunciation, even to the restoration of the final _s_ which had already

been dropped by Ennius, appeared pretty plainly as soon as the decline

of the Roman empire and the extinction of the literary class deprived

it of support. Latin at once fell away into the Romance dialects of

modern Europe, just as literary Anglo-Saxon with its inflections and its

learned vocabulary disappeared before the Norman Conquest. The language

of the Assyrian inscriptions remains almost unaltered throughout the long

period of nearly 2,000 years, during which we can watch its fortunes; but

this language was the stereotyped one of literature and education, and

differed very considerably from the spoken language of the people. The

late linguistic character of Hebrew, the extent, that is, to which it has

been influenced by phonetic decay as compared with its sister tongues,

is an incontrovertible proof of the backward literary condition of its

speakers. But even literature and cultivation are unable to preserve

a language altogether from decay and change. The pronunciation of the

educated slowly changes; words become clipped and shortened in spite

of their spelling, and notwithstanding printers and schoolmasters the

spelling in the end has to follow the pronunciation. Mr. Alexander Ellis

has shown in his “Early English Pronunciation” how widely our modern

pronunciation of English has departed from that of Shakspeare’s time,

and the spelling of _though_, _through_, and _enough_ bears witness to a

period when they ended in a guttural aspirate. Our pronunciation is still

undergoing change; the vowels are becoming more and more indistinct and

merged in a common obscure _ĕ_; while such contractions as _I’ll_, _I’d_,

_won’t_, and _can’t_ can hardly be distinguished from Basque forms like

those mentioned above. The educated Englishman speaks, as the French

say, with his lips closed; he finds that he can be understood without

the trouble of opening and rounding them, and his vowels are accordingly

formed in the front rather than in the back part of the mouth. No wonder

that he has a difficulty with the French _eu_; the effort to pronounce it

is too great a strain upon the unexercised muscles of the lips, and so

the English gentleman who told the waiter not to let the _feu_ go out in

his absence found on his return that his friend had been strictly watched

and guarded as a dangerous _fou_.

But though a literature and more especially a widely extended literary

education form the chief obstacle to the action of phonetic decay, there

are other social influences which operate to the same end. Wherever there

is a fixed and stable society, cut off from close intercourse with its

neighbours and handing down unchanged its customs and institutions, we

are likely to find a more or less fixed and stable language. For language

is the mirror of the community that uses it, and where the community

alters but little the language will alter but little too. It is in this

way that we must explain the fact that Lithuanian, though unprotected by

a literature and spoken by the least progressive of the European members

of the Aryan family, is yet the most conservative of all the Western

languages of our group, or that the Bedouin of Central Arabia is said to

speak at the present day a more archaic language than those of Nineveh

or Jerusalem 3,000 years ago. Since the institution of an annual fair

among the Rocky Mountains the idioms of the eastern and western Eskimaux,

who at first were hardly understood by one another, became more and

more assimilated;[112] and the stationary character of Icelandic may be

ascribed as much to the isolation of the settled Norse community in the

island as to the existence of a literature. Of course, the community must

be one which has reached a certain level of culture, and its customs and

institutions must imply organization and recognition of fixed principles.

Where the customs and institutions are founded on mere unreasoning

habit and precedent, we are dealing with a community of barbarians, and

consequently with languages or dialects in a perpetual state of flux.

The changes wrought by phonetic decay are sometimes sufficient to alter

the whole aspect of a language, and are at once the foundation and the

riddle of etymology. Who would recognize in the French _même_, for

instance, any derivative from the Latin pronoun _se_? And yet _même_

goes back to the Low Latin _semetipsissimum_ through the Old Provençal

_smetessme_, the later Provençal _medesme_ and the Old French _meïsme_.

Words of different origin, like _scale_ from the Latin _scala_ and the

Anglo-Saxon _scalu_ and _scealu_, may come to assume the same form;

while words of the same origin, like the French _captif_ and _chétif_,

from _captivus_, or _noel_ and _natal_ from _natalis_, may appear under

different forms. The processes of assimilation and swarabhakti, of

metathesis and epenthesis, to be described in the next chapter, are so

many forms under which phonetic decay displays itself. The history of

language is the history of the continual weakening of uttered sounds and

the gradual lessening of the demands made upon the organs of speech, and

attempts like that to reduce the triliteral roots of the Semitic tongues

to biliteral ones are contrary to the whole tendency of language. Accent

alone is able to hold out against the assaults of phonetic decay; it is

only the accented syllable that remains unchanged when all around it is

perishing, and, as in the case of _age_ from _ætaticum_ or _dine_ from

_desinere_, is often all that is left of the primitive word. It is again

the struggle between the principle of emphasis and the principle of

laziness, between conservatism and revolution. Only when the accent is

shifted to another syllable can phonetic decay gain the victory, and the

shifting of the accent is itself the work of the principle of decay.

The principle of laziness has much to do with the creation of

dialects. Slight variations of pronunciation and of the usage of words

are as inevitable in language as variations of species in zoology, and

where there is no correcting standard these variations are perpetuated

and intensified. Helped by the two other causes of linguistic change,

the dialect of a household becomes in time the dialect of a clan or

tribe, and as soon as its characteristics are sufficiently numerous

and distinct, the dialect is transformed into a language. An isolated

community will by slow degrees form a new language for itself. Just as

the history and character of one society differ from those of another,

so too must the dialect or language differ in which the society finds

expression. Even where the rapid and intimate intercourse of modern

civilization and the safeguard of a common and widely-studied literature

stand in the way, as in the case of England and America, dialectical

differences and peculiarities will yet spring up. In savage and barbarous

communities the growth of innumerable dialects is a matter of necessity.

The manifold languages of the Malayan and Polynesian Archipelago can

be traced back to a common source, but the natives of two neighbouring

islands are often unintelligible to one another; while von der Gabelentz

says of the Melanesians, that “every small island has its own language

or even several languages.”[113] Before the utter extinction of the

Tasmanians, with a population of no more than fifty persons there were

four dialects, each with a different word for “ear,” “eye,” “head,” and

other equally common objects. The language of a shifting unorganized

community will reflect the condition of those who speak it, and we are

not surprised, therefore, at Captain Gordon’s assertion that “some”

of the Manipuran dialects “are spoken by no more than thirty or forty

families, yet (are) so different from the rest as to be unintelligible

to the nearest neighbourhood.” Humboldt tells us[114] that in South

America, together with a great analogy of physical constitution, “a

surprising variety of languages is observed among nations of the same

origin, and which European travellers scarcely distinguish by their

features.” Greece, with its small extent of country and still smaller

amount of population, was said a few years back to possess no fewer

than seventy dialects,[115] and no less than eight principal dialects

besides several subordinate ones exist among the modern Basques, whose

whole population is under 800,000.[116] Indeed, considering the isolation

of the Basques, socially, politically, and linguistically, as well as

the narrow tract of country into which they have been compressed, it

is remarkable that natives of places not forty miles distant from one

another are yet mutually unintelligible.[117] But the natural condition

of language is diversity and change, and it is only under the artificial

influences of civilization and culture that a language becomes uniform

and stationary. As soon as the coercive hand of civilization is removed

it breaks out again into a plentiful crop of dialects. Of course, the

vicissitudes through which semi-civilized peoples are continually

passing greatly assist the process of change. Conquest and the mixture

consequent upon it, famine, disease, and migration, are all powerful aids

to dialect-making. The women of a tribe who stay at home, or who have

been married out of another tribe, sometimes possess a language different

from that of the men; thus, the Carib women in the Antille Isles used a

different tongue from that of their husbands, while the Eskimaux women

in Greenland turn _k_ into _ng_ and _t_ into _n_.[118] Even religion

and superstition play their part in the work; the sacred language of

the “medicine-men” in Greenland, for instance, is for the most part an

arbitrary perversion of the significations of known words; thus _tak_,

“darkness,” is used in the sense of “the north,” and so gives rise to two

new words of this secret speech, _tarsoak_, “earth,” and _tarsoarmis_,

“roots.” The custom of _tapu_ among the Pacific Islanders, according

to which every word which contains a syllable identical with some part

of the name of the reigning chief has to be dropped or changed, is due

to the belief that all things belonging to a chief are consecrated and

inviolable. Since the reign of Queen Pomare _mi_ has been substituted

for _po_, “night,” in Tahitian, and Hale tells us of this language[119]

that its “manner of forming new words seems to be arbitrary. In many

cases the substitutes are made by changing or dropping some letter or

letters of the original word, as _hopoi_ for _hepai_, ... _au_ for

_tau_, &c. In other cases the word substituted is one which had before

a meaning nearly related to that of the term disused.... In some cases

the meaning or origin of the new word is unknown, and it may be a mere

invention, as _ofai_ for _ohatu_ ‘stone,’ _papai_ for _vai_, ‘water,’

_pohe_ for _mate_, ‘dead.’” Similar to the Polynesian _tapu_ is the

Chinese custom of tabooing the elements of the reigning emperor’s name,

and the _ukuhlonipa_, which forbids the Kafir women to pronounce a word

containing a sound like one in the names of their nearest relations.

Thus, “Mr. Leslie states that the wives of Panda’s sons would never

call him (Mr. Leslie) by his Kafir name of u’ Lpondo, on account of its

partial identity with that of the chief, their father-in-law. In the name

of the river Amanzimtoti, ‘Sweet Waters,’ in like manner, _mtoti_ has

been substituted for _mnandi_, hlonipaed or tabooed on account of its

occurring in the name of Tsaka’s mother Unandi.”[120]

The Abipones of South America similarly alter the names of the friends

and relatives of a dead member of the tribe, and the words which entered

into the composition of his name are dropped out of use.[121] For a

parallel superstition we have only to think of the old European belief

in the omen involved in the mere pronunciation of a word, which caused

the Greek to speak of his left hand as ἀρίστερος, “the better one,” and

the Roman to change Maleventum into Beneventum. The belief in the power

of words, in the _vis verbi_ as the Latin termed it, is even now not

extinct, and the same feeling which altered the “Cape of Storms” into the

“Cape of Good Hope” is still prevalent among us.

The sacred jargon of the Eskimaux sorcerer, which finds its analogue in

the slang of the schoolboy, is merely one step lower than the ceremonial

dialects which are to be met with all over the world. The _Bhasa Krama_

or ceremonial language of Java, for example, like the ceremonial

languages of the larger islands of Polynesia, or the ceremonial

conjugation of the ancient Azteks, hedges in the upper classes of the

community with a veritable _tapu_. So, too, the Japanese when addressing

a superior has to speak of himself as _gu-sau_, “a stupid vegetable,” or

_yátsŭ-ko_ (contracted _yákko_), “house-boy,” and of another as _nandzi_,

“famous,” or _te-máye-san_, “the gentleman at hand,” while _o_ or _on_,

“great,” is prefixed to all words which relate to the latter[122] and

distinctive verbs and verbal forms employed expressive of courtesy.[123]

The Chinaman is equally the slave of an artificial politeness; he is

himself “the thief” (_ts’ie_), “the soft-brained” (_’iu_), while the

person he addresses is “the honourable” (_ling_) or “the noble brother”

(_ling hiung_).[124] The Indian _bhavan_, “present,” is construed with

the third person in order to denote the second with ambiguous courtesy,

and the same reluctance to place oneself on a footing of equality by a

blunt “thou” shows itself in the Latin of the Hungarian, who will say

“Dominus dignetur commodare mihi librum,” meaning the second person.[125]

The ceremonial use of the pronouns reaches a still greater extreme in

German, where in addition to the various titles with which “His Highly

well-born,” “His most serene,” or “His Transparency” require to be

addressed, the second person singular has to be represented sometimes by

a masculine _Er_ (“he”), sometimes by a feminine _Sie_ (“she”), sometimes

by a plural _Sie_ (“they”). The latter reminds us of the Hebrew “pluralis

majestatis,” and recalls our own employment of the plural _you_ for the

singular _thou_. Our usage in this respect was probably influenced by the

French use of _vous_, and it is perhaps to the same influence that we may

ascribe the Basque use of _Zute_, “you,” instead of _Zu_, “thou,” which

seems of comparatively late introduction. Two Basque dialects, indeed,

the Souletin and the east Low Navarese, have even developed a ceremonial

conjugation, every person of which, except the second plural, assumes

a special form when a superior is addressed. Besides the ceremonial

conjugation there is also a feminine one, employed whenever a woman is

spoken to. It must be remembered that the Basque verb is an amalgamation

of the verbal root with the personal pronouns.

The rapid changes undergone by languages in a natural state can only

be appreciated by those who have had experience of a tribe of wandering

savages, or who have observed the alterations children would make in

the language they learn if left to themselves. According to Waldeck, a

dictionary compiled by Jesuit missionaries in Central America became

useless within ten years; and Messerschmidt states that the inhabitants

of Ostiak villages, only a mile or two apart, are unintelligible to

one another.[126] The Hurons, Sagard stated in 1631, spoke such a

variety of dialects that not only was the same language hardly to be

heard in two adjacent villages, but even in two adjacent houses, and

these multitudinous dialects he further described as changing every

day. Mr. Trumbull, however, points out that Sagard’s account must be

received with caution, since he says that the instability of language

among the French was almost as great as among the Hurons, and his “very

imperfect dictionary of this unstable language, 200 years or more after

it was compiled, enabled Duponceau to make himself understood without

apparent difficulty by the Wyandots, a remnant of the last nation of the

Hurons.”[127]

But the following account given by Sir C. Lyell in his “Antiquity

of Man,”[128] shows that it is not necessary for a community to be

semi-civilized or barbarous in order to prove how rapidly a non-literary

language can be transformed. “A German colony in Pennsylvania,” he says,

“was cut off from frequent communication with Europe for about a quarter

of a century, during the wars of the French Revolution, between 1792 and

1815. So marked had been the effect even of this brief and imperfect

isolation, that when Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar travelled among them

a few years after the peace, he found the peasants speaking as they had

done in Germany in the preceding century, and retaining a dialect which

at home had already become obsolete. Even after the renewal of the German

emigration from Europe, when I travelled in 1841, among the same people

in the retired valleys of the Alleghanies, I found the newspapers full of

terms half-English and half-German, and many an Anglo-Saxon word which

had assumed a Teutonic dress, as ‘fencen,’ to fence, instead of umzäunen;

‘flauer,’ for flour, instead of mehl, and so on.” Destroy literature and

facility of intercommunication, and the languages of England and America

would soon be as different as those of France and Italy.

It is civilization which counteracts the natural tendency to multiply

dialects, and which is ever striving to absorb the manifold dialects

that exist into a single tongue. All the social conditions of civilized

life tend to break down dialects, to assimilate languages, and to

create a common medium of intercourse. A common government, a common

literature, a common history and a common law, all require a common

language. The Macedonian Empire made Greek the language of the East,

and Rome effectually stamped out the various idioms of its subjects in

the West. It needed an invasion of barbarism and the overthrow of Roman

organization and culture to restore the period of linguistic disunion.

The Church remained the sole representative of civilization, and

consequently the sole possessor of a common tongue. In fact, wherever

civilization has made an advance, the action of the great causes of

change in language has received a check. Every conquest over a horde of

barbarians, every attempt to found a settled government, to establish a

code of laws, to systematize a religion, or to originate a literature, is

a step forward in the direction of linguistic unity. The practical aim

of the science of language is the formation of a universal speech, and

the time may yet come when the dream will be converted into a reality.

The inventions of the present century—the steamer, the railway, and the

telegraph—are bringing all parts of the world into a closer connection

with one another, and abolishing the barriers created by differences of

speech. Commerce demands a _lingua franca_, and now that commerce is

world-wide its _lingua franca_ must be world-wide also.

The language of the chief trading nations must finally prevail in the

struggle for existence, and the prophecy has already been hazarded that

pigeon-English, or a similar grammarless jargon, will be the future

medium of universal intercourse. However this may be, the endeavour to

revive the perishing languages of Europe, and to make the limits of

speech the limits of nationality, is a reversal of the lesson of history

and a return to primitive barbarism. It is but the transient reaction

against the Empire of the first Napoleon, based on the false belief that

language and race are convertible terms. But the endeavour, however

flattering to nations without a history, is doomed to failure. Little

by little the weaker languages and dialects of Europe are disappearing

before the schoolmaster and the railway, and artificial nurture can

alone protract their lingering existence. Gaelic and Welsh in our own

islands, like Breton in France or Lithuanian in Germany and Russia, must

share the fate which has already overtaken Cornish and Wendic. The last

Wendic speaker, Frau Gülzsin, died on the Island of Rügen as long ago as

1404,[129] while Lithuanian is now used by scarcely a million and a half

persons, in spite of the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s plea for it as “a

still unmixed language of an old people, now isolated and confined within

narrow bounds,” which would throw light on the history of the past.[130]

The tendency of time is to unify and simplify, and exact science even now

has but one tongue throughout the world. The attempt of Bishop Wilkins

to invent a universal language failed, not because it was premature, but

because such a language, like all others, must be a spontaneous growth; a

better fortune may await the Pasigraphy of Bachmaier,[131] which attempts

to do for the man of literature what the Arabic ciphers have done for the

mathematician, since writing differs from language in being a conscious

human invention.

The history of the extinction of languages is similar to that of the

extinction of dialects. We see the same process at work in both cases,

only on a different scale. Where several dialects exist together, the one

which belongs to the dominant class will finally prevail over the others.

The “Queen’s English” is really the court dialect of Chaucer’s day, which

became the dialect of literature and education, and so has succeeded in

degrading its sister-dialects into illiterate provincialisms, and in

many cases in destroying them altogether. Where the educated and ruling

caste is small, the other dialects will continue to flourish among the

mass of the people, and on the overthrow of the cultured class will

once more assert their own. But in a democratic age like the present,

when books and newspapers are multiplied by the printing press, and the

whole nation is being leavened by the general spread of education, the

dialect of civilization will sooner or later swallow up its less favoured

sisters. The remarkable sameness of dialect which prevails among the

Arabic-speaking populations of the East may be largely accounted for

by the democratic spirit of Mahommedanism which holds all men equal

before the supreme Khalif. It is, therefore, of the highest importance

to comparative philology that the decaying dialects of our own or

other countries should be observed and written down before they have

perished. The history of a language can be traced only by a comparison

of its dialects, which often preserve words and forms that have become

obscure and inexplicable in the standard dialect itself. Where the allied

dialects have disappeared, the chasm that divides the language we are

studying from those with which it was once connected may be too wide to

be easily spanned. For in language, as in everything else, dialect passes

gradually and insensibly into dialect, and it is not until we compare

the two extremes in the series that we are made aware of the accumulated

differences which the transitions have involved.

The progress of civilization, then, implies a continuous diminution of

the languages and dialects of the world, and a corresponding extension

of a single tongue. Just as we have seen that language advances

from complexity to simplicity, so we now see that it advances from

multiplicity to unity. The more barbarous a society is, the more numerous

will be the languages that it speaks. The further back we go into the

past, the greater must be the linguistic anarchy with which we meet. A

language begins with dialects, and since language is the product and

reflection of the community that uses it, the primæval languages of the

world must have been as infinitely numerous as the communities that spoke

them. We start with the Babel of confusion, with the houseless savage

who did that which was right in his own eyes. Language, it is true,

first cemented society together, but it also made each society a body of

hostile units. Many as are the existing languages of the earth, they are

but the selected relics of an infinitely greater number which have passed

away. Here and there we still come across the last waifs of an otherwise

extinct family of speech, the last survivors of a group of languages

and dialects which has long since been forgotten. The Basque, like the

scattered languages of the Caucasus, seems to have no connection with any

other known speech; sheltered by the mountain fastnesses of Biscay, it

remains to bear witness to the linguistic character of an extinct world.

So far as appears at present, the mysterious Etruscan which has left us

some 3,000 short inscriptions is another forlorn waif, without kith or

kin in the world of known tongues. Perhaps, too, the language of the

Lykian inscriptions, which still refuses to be “classified” in spite of

the efforts that have been made to turn it into an Iranian idiom, is a

further example of the same kind. The boulders that have been left on our

hilltops do not tell us with more certainty of the icebergs and icefloes

which brought them thither, than do these stray languages of the manifold

forms of speech of which they are the scanty remnants. Our only wonder

should be not that there are any tongues which refuse to be classed

with others, but that there are so few which thus maintain an isolated

existence.

As we shall see hereafter, families of languages are exceptional in the

history of speech. Professor Max Müller very truly says:[132] “Families

of languages are very peculiar formations; they are, and they must

be, the exception, not the rule, in the growth of language. There was

always the possibility, but there never was, as far as I can judge, any

necessity for human speech leaving its primitive stage of wild growth

and decay.” “If we confine ourselves to the Asiatic continent, with

its important peninsula of Europe, we find that in the vast desert of

drifting human speech, three, and only three oases have been formed, in

which, before the beginning of all history, language became permanent

and traditional; assumed, in fact, a new character—a character totally

different from the original character of the floating and constantly

varying speech of human beings.” And these oases, these families of

speech, it is important to remember, are themselves made up of dialects,

only dialects with a common grammar and a common stock of roots. We may,

if we like, construct a hypothetical “parent-speech,” from which we

may derive the several dialects and languages which are the only facts

we have to work upon; but we must not forget that such a parent-speech

is purely hypothetical, the product of reflective analysis and logical

deduction. Fick’s dictionary of the Parent-Aryan is as much the creation

of the comparative philologist’s closet as Schleicher’s “restoration”

of its grammatical forms. Because the Sanskrit _panchan_ and the Latin

_quinque_ can both be reduced to the same form _quemquem_, it does not

follow that the latter form was ever actually existent. As far back as

we can go, we still find ourselves in the presence of allied dialects,

never of a single tongue. The east-Aryan primitive _ghard_, “heart,”

cannot be reduced to the same form as the west-Aryan _kard_, with the

same meaning; the two variant forms of the root testify to a dialectical

difference from the outset.[133] Such, too, is the evidence of words like

those for “daughter,” Greek θυγάτηρ, but Sanskrit _duhitâ_, or “door,”

Greek θύρα, Sanskrit _dwâram_ (not _dhwâram_), while the demonstrative

pronouns appear from the first under two incompatible forms _sa_(s) and

_ta_(s). For the sake of convenience we may assume a parent-speech; we

may even go so far as to picture to ourselves a family of languages like

a family in social life, except that it springs not from two ancestors

but from one; but unless we bear in mind that these assumptions are like

the assumptions of the geometer, ideal creations, never realized in the

actual world, we shall be betrayed into numberless absurdities and false

conclusions. It is to them, indeed, that we owe the belief that the

primitive Aryans had but the single vowel _a_ in their alphabet besides

the three tenues _k_, _t_, _p_, the labials _r_, _m_, _n_, and the

sibilant _s_. Even Dr. Murray, with his nine primæval roots _ag_, _bag_,

_dwag_, _gwag_, _lag_, _mag_, _nag_, _rag_, and _swag_, did better than

this.[134]

Repulsion and division, then, is the natural condition of language. The

three causes of change are ever actively at work, and the influence of

civilization cannot entirely destroy their power. But with the advance

of culture, the dividing barriers are broken down, and to borrow a

metaphor from mechanics, the centrifugal is exchanged for the centripetal

force. Dialects make way for languages, and languages in their turn

tend to centralization. Where thought is of more consequence than the

vocal symbols in which it is expressed, means will be found for making

the symbols uniform and constant. Language begins with multiplicity

and disunion, but its end is unity. The theory that would derive the

idioms of the world from three or four primæval centres, or even from

a single centre, is contrary to the facts. In the very act of being

formed a language necessarily splits itself into dialectical variety.

The children of to-day resemble those children of humanity, the first

framers of articulate speech, and the children of a single household,

if left to themselves, would have each his own jargon, his own dialect.

So it was, too, with primitive man. Where circumstances were favourable

the inhabitants of the same locality, breathing the same air, and

enjoying the same food, would maintain a family likeness in the tongues

they spoke; but elsewhere all the causes of change would have had free

play, and the languages of mankind would have been as numerous as the

songs of birds. With the growth of society, however, language, the great

social unifier, became more and more fixed and settled; though dialects

continued to branch off, they each occupied a wider area, belonged to

a larger community, and retained their marks of relationship to one

another. When the first level of civilization had been reached, the

history of language entered upon a new phase. Families of speech became

possible, and the same causes that produced permanence and stability

in the customs and beliefs of the community produced them also in the

dialects that it used. The first step had been made towards counteracting

the anarchy of primæval speech and attaining that ideal unity to which

language tends. Here and there the race may have deteriorated; the

Hottentots, for instance, with their developed dialects, may be the

degenerate descendants of more civilized ancestors; but the movement on

the whole has been forward and not backward. Science with a myriad voices

declares the ascent and not the descent of man. Our civilization, it is

true, like the languages that reflect it, is still imperfect, is still

far from the goal that it has in view. But we may take heart from what

has been achieved, and perhaps even look forward to the day when there

shall be not only one hope and one faith, but also one language in which

they shall find utterance.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.

SPECIMENS OF MIXED JARGONS.

_Maltese._

St. John i. 1-14. (1.) Fil bidu kienet il kelma, u il kelma kienet

’aand Alla, u Alla kien il kelma. (2.) Dina kienet fil bidu ’aand Alla.

(3.) Kollosh biha sar; u minn ’aayrha sheyn ma sar, milli sar. (4.) Fiha

il ḥaỹa kienet, u il ḥaỹa kienet id dawl tal bniedmin. (5.) U id dawl

yilma fid dlamiyiet, u id dlamiyiet ma fehmuhsh. (6.) Kien hemma bniedem

mib’aut mn’ Alla, li ismu Jwan. (7.) Dana jie b’shiehed biesh yished

mid Dawl, biesh il koll yemmnu bih. (8.) Hua ma kiensh id Dawl, izda

kien biesh yishhed mid Dawl. (9.) Kien Dawl tas sew̃a, li yuri lil koll

bniedem li yiji fid dinya. (10.) Hu kien fid dinya, u id dinya bih saret,

u id dinya ma ’aarfetush. (11.) Jie fiḥ weyju, u niesu ma laq’auhsh.

(12.) Izda lil dawk kollha li laq’auh, tahom il yedd illi isiru ulied

Alla, lil dawka li yemmnu b’ Ismu: (13.) Li le twieldu(sh) mid demm, u

la mir rieda tal jisem, lanqas mir rieda tar rajel, izda mn’ Alla. (14.)

U il kelma saret jisem, u ’aammret fostna (u rayna sebḥu [_or_ kburitu],

bḥala sebḥ li mnissel-waḥdu mil missier), mimlia bil graẓya u bis sew̃a.

_Creolese_ (or broken Danish), the language of 39,000 negroes in Danish

West Indies, possessing no genders or numbers, declension or conjugation.

See Klauer-Klattowski, “Deutsche Orthoepie,” p. 108, and J. C. Kingos,

“Kreool A B C Buk” (_S. Croix_, 1770). The language is really Dutch with

Danish words intermixed.

St. John i. 1-14. (1.) In die Begin die Woord ha wees, en die Woord ha

wees bie Godt, en Godt ha wees die Woord. (2.) Die selve ha wees bie Godt

in die Begin. (3.) Almael gut ka maek door die selve; en sonder die niet

een gut ka maek, van almael, wat ka maek. (4.) Die Leven ha wees in hem,

en die Leven ha wees die Ligt van die Mensen. (5.) En die Ligt ha skien

in die Dysternis, en die Dysternis no ha begriep die. (6.) Die ha hab een

mens, Godt ha stier hem, en sie naem ha wees Johannes. (7.) Hem ha kom

tot een Getiegnis, dat hem ha sal getieg van die Ligt, dat almael ha sal

gloov door hem. (8.) Hem no ha wees die Ligt, maer dat hem ha sal getieg

van die Ligt. (9.) Die ha wees die waeragtig Ligt, die verligt almael

Mensen, die kom na die Weereld. (10.) Hem ha wees in die Weereld, en die

Weereld ka maek door hem, en die Weereld no ka ken hem. (11.) Hem ha kom

na sie Eigendom, en sie eigen no ha neem hem an. (12.) Maer sooveel ka

neem hem an, na sender hem ka giev magt for kom kinders van Godt, die

gloov in sie Naem; (13.) Die no bin gebooren van Blud, ook niet van die

Wil van Vleis, ook niet van die Wil van man, maer van Godt. (14.) En die

Woord ka kom Vleis, en ka woon onder ons, en ons ka kik sie Heerligheid,

een Heerligheid, als van die eenig gebooren Soon van die Vaeder, vol van

Gnaede en Waerheid.

_Surinam Negro-English_ (or rather Negro-English-Dutch), spoken in the

Dutch colony of Guiana by at least 100,000 persons, of whom 10,000

are Europeans. See Greenfield, “Defence of the Surinam Negro-English

Version,” p. 17. It includes Spanish, Portuguese, and French words.

Nearly all its words end in a vowel, and it is nearly devoid of grammar.

It is called by the Negroes, _Ningre-tongo_ or _Bakra_.

St. John i. 1-14. (1.) Na begin da Woord ben de, da Woord ben de nanga

Gado, en da Woord ben de Gado srefi. (2.) Da ben de nanga Gado na begin.

(3.) Nanga hem allasanni ben kom, en sondro hem no wansanni ben kom,

dissi de. (4.) Da Liebi ben de na inni va hem, en da Liebi ben de da

kandera va somma. (5.) En da kandera de krieni na dongroe, ma dongroe no

ben teki da kandera. (6.) Gado ben senni wan somma, hem neem Johannes;

(7.) Da srefiwan ben kom vo wan getingenis, va a getinge vo da kandera,

va dem allamal kom briebi nanga hem. (8.) Hem srefi no ben de da kandera,

ma a ben kom va takki vo da kandera. (9.) Datti da reti troe kandera,

dissi kieni gi alla somma dissi kom na kondre. (10.) A ben de na kondre,

en em srefi ben meki kondre; en kondre no ben sabi hem. (11.) A ben kom

na hem Eigendom, en dem somma va hem no ben teki hem. (12.) Ma sa menni

va dem dissi ben teki hem, na dem a ben gi trangi, va kom pikien va Gado;

dem, dissi briebi na hem neem. (13.) Dissi no komoppo na broedoe, effi na

wanni vo skien [nanga broedoe], effi na wanni vo wan man, ma dissi ben

kom gebore na Gado. (14.) En da Woord ben kom somma, a ben liebi na wi

mindri, en wi ben si hem Glori, wan Grangglori, dissi fitti da wan Pikien

va Tatta Gado, foeloe va Gnade en Troefasi.[135]

The broken Negro-Spanish of _Curaçao_ which belongs to the Dutch in the

Caribbean Sea. See J. J. Putman: “Gemeenzame Zamenspraken” (1853).

Matt. v. 1-12. (1.) Anto ora koe Hezoes a mira toer e heende nan, eel

a soebi oen seroe; deespuees eel a sienta i soe desipel nan a bini seka

dje. (2.) I eel a koemisa di papia i di sienja nan di ees manera. (3.)

Bieenabeentoera ta e pober nan na spiritoe, pasoba reina di Dioos ta di

nan. (4.) Bieenabeentoera ta ees nan, koe ta jora, pasoba lo nan bira

konsolaa. (5.) Bieenabeentoera pasifiko nan, pasoba lo nan erf tera. (6.)

Bieenabeentoera ees nan, koe tien hamber i sedoe di hoestisji, pasoba

lo nan no tien hamber i sedoe mas. (7.) Bieenabeentoera ees nan, koe

tien mizerikoordia, pasoba lo heende tien mizerikoordia koe nan. (8.)

Bieenabeentoera ees nan, koe ta liempi di koerasoon, pasoba lo nan mira

Dioos. (9.) Bieenabeentoera ees nan, koe ta perkoera paas, pasoba lo nan

ta jama joe di Dioos. (10.) Bieenabeentoera ees nan, koe ta persigido pa

motiboe di hoestisji, pasoba reina di Dioos ta di nan. (11.) Bosonan lo

ta bieenabeentoerado, koe ta koos nan Zoendra i persigi bosonan, i koe

ta koos pa mi kausa nan ganja toer soorto di maloe ariba bosonan. (12.)

Legra bosonan i salta di legria, pasoba bosonan rekompeensa ta grandi

deen di Ciëloe; pasoba nan a persigi di ees manera e profeet nan, koe

tabata promee koe bosonan.

_Indo-Portuguese_, spoken in Ceylon and on the Indian coast by the mixed

descendants of Dutch and Portuguese, 50,000 of whom are to be found

in Ceylon. It omits cases, verbal suffixes, &c., and uses auxiliary

particles, being a mixture of Dutch, Portuguese, and Indic.

St. John i. 1-14. (1.) Ne o começo tinha a Palavra, e a Palavra tinha

junto de Deos, e a Palavra tinha Deos. (2.) O mesmo tinha ne o começo

junto de Deos. (3.) Todas cousas tinha feitas de elle; e sem elle naõ

tinha feita ne huã cousa que tinha feita. (4.) Em elle tinha vida; e a

vida tinha o Lume de homens. (5.) E o Lume te luze em escuridade; e a

escuridade nunca ja conhece aquel. (6.) Tinha hum homem mandado de Deos,

quem seu nome tinha Joaõ. (7.) O mesmo ja vi por hum testimunha, pera da

testimunho de o Lume, que todos de elle pode cré. (8.) Elle naõ tinha o

Lume, mas tinha mandado pera da testimunho de o Lume. (9.) Aquel tinha o

Lume verdadeiro, que te alumia per cada hum homem quem ta vi ne o mundo.

(10.) Elle tinha ne o mundo, e de elle o mundo tinha formado, e o mundo

per elle nunca ja conhece. (11.) Elle ja vi per seu mesmo povo, e seus

mesmos nunca ja recebe per elle. (12.) Mas per todos quantos quem ja

recebe per elle, per ellotros elle ja da poder pera fica os filhos de

Deos, até, per ellotros quem ja cré em seu nome: (13.) Quem tinha nacido,

nem de sangue, nem de a vontade de a carne, nem de a vontade de homem,

mas de Deos. (14.) E a Palavra tinha feita carne, e ja mora entre nos (e

nos ja olha sua gloria, a gloria como de o unigenito de o Pai), enchido

de graça e verdade.

It is needless to give a specimen of the Judæo-Spanish of Turkey, which

the Turkish Jews regard as their sacred language, since it is merely the

old Spanish of three centuries ago, moulded in accordance with Hebrew

idiom. Similarly the sacred language of the Polish Jews is old German,

mixed with Hebrew words and idioms.

Negro-Portuguese, originally introduced into Surinam by Portuguese

Jews, is now spoken only by one tribe of the free Bush Negroes, the

Saramaccans, on the Upper Surinam, who call it _Djoe-tongo_, “Jews’

language.” There are no printed specimens of it.

Negro-French, spoken in Trinidad, San Domingo, Guadaloupe, and

Martinique, is explained in the excellent “Theory and Practice of Creole

Grammar” of J. J. Thomas (1869), and in a “Catéchisme en la Langue

Créole” (1842). Here is a specimen:—

St. John iv. 6. Apouésent, pîts Jacob té nans place là. Jésis, con li

té lasse épîs route li, assise bôd pîts la; et cété coté mindi con-ça.

(7.) Yon femme, gens Samarie, vinî haler dleau. Jésis dîe li: Bâ-moèn

boèr. (8.) Discipes li étant té aller nans boûq la gañèn povisions. (9.)

Alosse, femme Samaritaine la dîe li: coument fair ous, qui yon Juif, ca

mander dleau poû boèr nans lamain moèn, qui yon femme Samaritaine? pâce

Juifs pas ca méler épîs gens Samarie.