phonetic corruption leads to the first appearance of so-called grammatical
forms. We are not in the habit of looking on _twenty_ as the plural or
dual of _ten_. But how was a plural originally formed? In Chinese, which
from the first has guarded most carefully against the taint of phonetic
corruption, the plural is formed in the most sensible manner. Thus, man in
Chinese is _ģin_; _kiai_ means the whole or totality. This added to _ģin_
gives _ģin-kiai_, which is the plural of man. There are other words which
are used for the same purpose in Chinese; for instance, _péi_, which means
a class. Hence, _ĭ_, a stranger, followed by _péi_, class, gives _ĭ-péi_,
strangers. We have similar plurals in English, but we do not reckon them
as grammatical forms. Thus, _man-kind_ is formed exactly like _ĭ-péi_,
stranger-kind; _Christendom_ is the same as all Christians, and _clergy_
is synonymous with _clerici_. The same process is followed in other
cognate languages. In Tibetan the plural is formed by the addition of such
words as _kun_, all, and _t’sogs_, multitude.(27) Even the numerals,
_nine_ and _hundred_, are used for the same purpose. And here again, as
long as these words are fully understood and kept alive, they resist
phonetic corruption; but the moment they lose, so to say, their presence
of mind, phonetic corruption sets in, and as soon as phonetic corruption
has commenced its ravages, those portions of a word which it affects
retain a merely artificial or conventional existence, and dwindle down to
grammatical terminations.
I am afraid I should tax your patience too much were I to enter here on an
analysis of the grammatical terminations in Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin, in
order to show how these terminations arose out of independent words, which
were slowly reduced to mere dust by the constant wear and tear of speech.
But in order to explain how the principle of phonetic decay leads to the
formation of grammatical terminations, let us look to languages with which
we are more familiar. Let us take the French adverb. We are told by French
grammarians(28) that in order to form adverbs we have to add the
termination _ment_. Thus from _bon_, good, we form _bonnement_, from
_vrai_, true, _vraiment_. This termination does not exist in Latin. But we
meet in Latin(29) with expressions such as _bonâ mente_, in good faith. We
read in Ovid, “Insistam forti mente,” I shall insist with a strong mind or
will, I shall insist strongly; in French, “J’insisterai fortement.”
Therefore, what has happened in the growth of Latin, or in the change of
Latin into French, is simply this: in phrases such as _forti mente_, the
last word was no longer felt as a distinct word, and it lost at the same
time its distinct pronunciation. _Mente_, the ablative of _mens_, was
changed into _ment_, and was preserved as a merely formal element, as the
termination of adverbs, even in cases where a recollection of the original
meaning of _mente_ (with a mind), would have rendered its employment
perfectly impossible. If we say in French that a hammer falls
_lourdement_, we little suspect that we ascribe to a piece of iron a heavy
mind. In Italian, though the adverbial termination _mente_ in _claramente_
is no longer felt as a distinct word, it has not as yet been affected by
phonetic corruption; and in Spanish it is sometimes used as a distinct
word, though even then it cannot be said to have retained its distinct
meaning. Thus, instead of saying, “claramente, concisamente y
elegantemente,” it is more elegant to say in Spanish, “clara, concisa y
elegante mente.”
It is difficult to form any conception of the extent to which the whole
surface of a language may be altered by what we have just described as
phonetic change. Think that in the French _vingt_ you have the same
elements as in _deux_ and _dix_; that the second part of the French
_douze_, twelve, represents the Latin _decim_ in _duodecim_; that the
final _te_ of _trente_ was originally the Latin _ginta_ in _triginta_,
which _ginta_ was again a derivation and abbreviation of the Sanskrit
_da’sa_ or _da’sati_, ten. Then consider how early this phonetic disease
must have broken out. For in the same manner as _vingt_ in French,
_veinte_ in Spanish, and _venti_ in Italian presuppose the more primitive
_viginti_ which we find in Latin, so this Latin _viginti_, together with
the Greek _eikati_, and the Sanskrit _vin’sati_ presuppose an earlier
language from which they are in turn derived, and in which, previous to
_viginti_, there must have been a more primitive form _dvi-ginti_, and
previous to this again, another compound as clear and intelligible as the
Chinese _eúl-shĭ_, consisting of the ancient Aryan names for two, _dvi_,
and ten, _da’sati_. Such is the virulence of this phonetic change, that it
will sometimes eat away the whole body of a word, and leave nothing behind
but decayed fragments. Thus, _sister_, which in Sanskrit is _svasar_,(30)
appears in Pehlvi and in Ossetian as _cho_. _Daughter_, which in Sanskrit
is _duhitar_, has dwindled down in Bohemian to _dci_ (pronounced
_tsi_).(31) Who would believe that _tear_ and _larme_ are derived from the
same source; that the French _même_ contains the Latin _semetipsissimus_;
that in _aujourd’hui_ we have the Latin word _dies_ twice!(32) Who would
recognize the Latin _pater_ in the Armenian _hayr_? Yet we make no
difficulty about identifying _père_ and _pater_; and as several initial
h’s in Armenian correspond to an original _p_ (_het_ = _pes_, _pedis_;
_hing_ = πέντε; _hour_ = πῦρ), it follows that _hayr_ is _pater_.(33)
We are accustomed to call these changes the growth of language, but it
would be more appropriate to call this process of phonetic change decay,
and thus to distinguish it from the second or dialectical process which we
must now examine, and which involves, as you will see, a more real
principle of growth.
In order to understand the meaning of _dialectical __ regeneration_ we
must first see clearly what we mean by dialect. We saw before that
language has no independent substantial existence. Language exists in man,
it lives in being spoken, it dies with each word that is pronounced, and
is no longer heard. It is a mere accident that language should ever have
been reduced to writing, and have been made the vehicle of a written
literature. Even now the largest number of languages have produced no
literature. Among the numerous tribes of Central Asia, Africa, America,
and Polynesia, language still lives in its natural state, in a state of
continual combustion; and it is there that we must go if we wish to gain
an insight into the growth of human speech previous to its being arrested
by any literary interference. What we are accustomed to call languages,
the literary idioms of Greece, and Rome, and India, of Italy, France, and
Spain, must be considered as artificial, rather than as natural forms of
speech. The real and natural life of language is in its dialects, and in
spite of the tyranny exercised by the classical or literary idioms, the
day is still very far off which is to see the dialects, even of such
classical languages as Italian and French, entirely eradicated. About
twenty of the Italian dialects have been reduced to writing, and made
known by the press.(34) Champollion-Figeac reckons the most
distinguishable dialects of France at fourteen.(35) The number of modern
Greek dialects(36) is carried by some as high as seventy, and though many
of these are hardly more than local varieties, yet some, like the
Tzaconic, differ from the literary language as much as Doric differed from
Attic. In the island of Lesbos, villages distant from each other not more
than two or three hours have frequently peculiar words of their own, and
their own peculiar pronunciation.(37) But let us take a language which,
though not without a literature, has been less under the influence of
classical writers than Italian or French, and we shall then see at once
how abundant the growth of dialects! The Friesian, which is spoken on a
small area on the north-western coast of Germany, between the Scheldt and
Jutland, and on the islands near the shore, which has been spoken there
for at least two thousand years,(38) and which possesses literary
documents as old as the twelfth century, is broken up into endless local
dialects. I quote from Kohl’s Travels. “The commonest things,” he writes,
“which are named almost alike all over Europe, receive quite different
names in the different Friesian Islands. Thus, in Amrum, _father_ is
called _aatj_; on the Halligs, _baba_ or _babe_; in Sylt, _foder_ or
_vaar_; in many districts on the main-land, _täte_; in the eastern part of
Föhr, _oti_ or _ohitj_. Although these people live within a couple of
German miles from each other, these words differ more than the Italian
_padre_ and the English _father_. Even the names of their districts and
islands are totally different in different dialects. The island of _Sylt_
is called _Söl_, _Sol_, and _Sal_.” Each of these dialects, though it
might be made out by a Friesian scholar, is unintelligible except to the
peasants of each narrow district in which it prevails. What is therefore
generally called the Friesian language, and described as such in Friesian
grammars, is in reality but one out of many dialects, though, no doubt,
the most important; and the same holds good with regard to all so-called
literary languages.
It is a mistake to imagine that dialects are everywhere corruptions of the
literary language. Even in England,(39) the local patois have many forms
which are more primitive than the language of Shakespeare, and the
richness of their vocabulary surpasses, on many points, that of the
classical writers of any period. Dialects have always been the feeders
rather than the channels of a literary language; anyhow, they are parallel
streams which existed long before one of them was raised to that temporary
eminence which is the result of literary cultivation.
What Grimm says of the origin of dialects in general applies only to such
as are produced by phonetic corruption. “Dialects,” he writes,(40)
“develop themselves progressively, and the more we look backward in the
history of language the smaller is their number, and the less definite
their features. All multiplicity arises gradually from an original unity.”
So it seems, indeed, if we build our theories of language exclusively on
the materials supplied by literary idioms, such as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin,
and Gothic. No doubt these are the royal heads in the history of language.
But as political history ought to be more than a chronicle of royal
dynasties, so the historian of language ought never to lose sight of those
lower and popular strata of speech from which these dynasties originally
sprang, and by which alone they are supported.
Here, however, lies the difficulty. How are we to trace the history of
dialects? In the ancient history of language, literary dialects alone
supply us with materials, whereas the very existence of spoken dialects is
hardly noticed by ancient writers.
We are told, indeed, by Pliny,(41) that in Colchis there were more than
three hundred tribes speaking different dialects; and that the Romans, in
order to carry on any intercourse with the natives, had to employ a
hundred and thirty interpreters. This is probably an exaggeration; but we
have no reason to doubt the statement of Strabo,(42) who speaks of seventy
tribes living together in that country, which, even now, is called “the
mountain of languages.” In modern times, again, when missionaries have
devoted themselves to the study of the languages of savage and illiterate
tribes, they have seldom been able to do more than to acquire one out of
many dialects; and, when their exertions have been at all successful, that
dialect which they had reduced to writing, and made the medium of their
civilizing influence, soon assumed a kind of literary supremacy, so as to
leave the rest behind as barbarous jargons. Yet, whatever is known of the
dialects of savage tribes is chiefly or entirely due to missionaries; and
it is much to be desired that their attention should again and again be
directed to this interesting problem of the dialectical life of language
which they alone have the means of elucidating. Gabriel Sagard, who was
sent as a missionary to the Hurons in 1626, and published his “Grand
Voyage du pays des Hurons,” at Paris, in 1631, states that among these
North American tribes hardly one village speaks the same language as
another; nay, that two families of the same village do not speak exactly
the same language. And he adds what is important, that their language is
changing every day, and is already so much changed that the ancient Huron
language is almost entirely different from the present. During the last
two hundred years, on the contrary, the languages of the Hurons and
Iroquois are said not to have changed at all.(43) We read of
missionaries(44) in Central America who attempted to write down the
language of savage tribes, and who compiled with great care a dictionary
of all the words they could lay hold of. Returning to the same tribe after
the lapse of only ten years, they found that this dictionary had become
antiquated and useless. Old words had sunk to the ground, and new ones had
risen to the surface; and to all outward appearance the language was
completely changed.
Nothing surprised the Jesuit missionaries so much as the immense number of
languages spoken by the natives of America. But this, far from being a
proof of a high state of civilization, rather showed that the various
races of America had never submitted, for any length of time, to a
powerful political concentration, and that they had never succeeded in
founding great national empires. Hervas reduces, indeed, all the dialects
of America to eleven families(45)—four for the south, and seven for the
north; but this could be done only by the same careful and minute
comparison which enables us to class the idioms spoken in Iceland and
Ceylon as cognate dialects. For practical purposes the dialects of America
are distinct dialects, and the people who speak them are mutually
unintelligible.
We hear the same observations everywhere where the rank growth of dialects
has been watched by intelligent observers. If we turn our eyes to Burmah,
we find that there the Burmese has produced a considerable literature, and
is the recognized medium of communication not only in Burmah, but likewise
in Pegu and Arakan. But the intricate mountain ranges of the peninsula of
the Irawaddy(46) afford a safe refuge to many independent tribes, speaking
their own independent dialects; and in the neighborhood of Manipura alone
Captain Gordon collected no less than twelve dialects. “Some of them,” he
says, “are spoken by no more than thirty or forty families, yet so
different from the rest as to be unintelligible to the nearest
neighborhood.” Brown, the excellent American missionary, who has spent his
whole life in preaching the Gospel in that part of the world, tells us
that some tribes who left their native village to settle in another
valley, became unintelligible to their forefathers in two or three
generations.(47)
In the north of Asia the Ostiakes, as Messerschmidt informs us, though
really speaking the same language everywhere, have produced so many words
and forms peculiar to each tribe, that even within the limits of twelve or
twenty German miles, communication among them becomes extremely difficult.
Castren, the heroic explorer of the languages of northern and central
Asia,(48) assures us that some of the Mongolian dialects are actually
entering into a new phase of grammatical life; and that while the literary
language of the Mongolians has no terminations for the persons of the
verb, that characteristic feature of Turanian speech had lately broken out
in the spoken dialects of the Buriates and in the Tungusic idioms near
Njertschinsk in Siberia.
One more observation of the same character from the pen of Robert Moffat,
in his “Missionary Scenes and Labors in Southern Africa.” “The purity and
harmony of language,” he writes, “is kept up by their pitches, or public
meetings, by their festivals and ceremonies, as well as by their songs and
their constant intercourse. With the isolated villagers of the desert it
is far otherwise; they have no such meetings; they are compelled to
traverse the wilds, often to a great distance from their native village.
On such occasions fathers and mothers, and all who can bear a burden,
often set out for weeks at a time, and leave their children to the care of
two or three infirm old people. The infant progeny, some of whom are
beginning to lisp, while others can just master a whole sentence, and
those still further advanced, romping and playing together, the children
of nature, through their livelong day, _become habituated to a language of
their own_. The more voluble condescend to the less precocious; and thus,
from this infant Babel, proceeds a dialect of a host of mongrel words and
phrases, joined together without rule, and _in the course of one
generation the entire character of the language is changed_.”
Such is the life of language in a state of nature; and in a similar
manner, we have a right to conclude, languages grew up which we only know
after the bit and bridle of literature were thrown over their necks. It
need not be a written or classical literature to give an ascendency to one
out of many dialects, and to impart to its peculiarities an undisputed
legitimacy. Speeches at pitches or public meetings, popular ballads,
national laws, religious oracles, exercise, though to a smaller extent,
the same influence. They will arrest the natural flow of language in the
countless rivulets of its dialects, and give a permanency to certain
formations of speech which, without these external influences, could have
enjoyed but an ephemeral existence. Though we cannot fully enter, at
present, on the problem of the origin of language, yet this we can clearly
see, that, whatever the origin of language was, its first tendency must
have been towards an unbounded variety. To this there was, however, a
natural check, which prepared from the very beginning the growth of
national and literary languages. The language of the father became the
language of a family; the language of a family that of a clan. In one and
the same clan different families would preserve among themselves their own
familiar forms and expressions. They would add new words, some so fanciful
and quaint as to be hardly intelligible to other members of the same clan.
Such expressions would naturally be suppressed, as we suppress provincial
peculiarities and pet words of our own, at large assemblies where all
clansmen meet and are expected to take part in general discussions. But
they would be cherished all the more round the fire of each tent, in
proportion as the general dialect of the clan assumed a more formal
character. Class dialects, too, would spring up; the dialects of servants,
grooms, shepherds, and soldiers. Women would have their own household
words; and the rising generation would not be long without a more racy
phraseology of their own. Even we, in this literary age, and at a distance
of thousands of years from those early fathers of language, do not speak
at home as we speak in public. The same circumstances which give rise to
the formal language of a clan, as distinguished from the dialects of
families, produce, on a larger scale, the languages of a confederation of
clans, of nascent colonies, of rising nationalities. Before there is a
national language, there have always been hundreds of dialects in
districts, towns, villages, clans, and families; and though the progress
of civilization and centralization tends to reduce their number and to
soften their features, it has not as yet annihilated them, even in our own
time.