R. G. Latham

“ The Hungarian emigrants, who are now removing thither from the vengeance of Austria, may perpetuate their native Magyar, and America may in time present a surface as checkered as Europe, or in some parts, as Hungary itself, where the traveller often in passing from one village to another, finds himself in the domain of a different language. That this consummation may be averted must be the wish not only of every Englishman and of every Anglo-American, but of every sincere friend of the advancement of literature and civilization. ”

“ The prospect is so glorious that it seems an ungrateful task to interrupt its enjoyment by a shade of doubt: but as the English language has attained to this eminent station from small beginnings, may it not be advisable to consider whether obstacles are not in existence, which, equally small in their beginnings, have a probability of growing larger? The first consideration that presents itself is that English is not the only language firmly planted on the soil of America, the only one to which a glorious future is, in the probable course of things, assured. ”

“ Compare the Sanscrit with the Gothic, the Gothic with the Anglo-Saxon, and again the Anglo-Saxon with the English: or what is even better, take two periods of the Anglo-Saxon itself, the eighth and tenth centuries for example. Always we perceive a compression, a gradual loss of fine distinctions, a perishing of forms, terminations and conjugations, in the younger state of the language. ”

“ Those of them who are only masters of one language are in a sort of prison; those who are masters of two, might, if English had been their original speech, have had their choice of the remaining languages of the world to exert the same degree of labour on, with a better prospect of advantage. In the case of Welsh, the language has many ties: even those who see most clearly the necessity of forsaking it, must lament the harsh necessity of abandoning to oblivion the ancient tongue of an ancient nation. ”

“ But though all these are termed dialects of the Greek, it does not follow that there was ever a Greek language of which these were variations, and which had any being apart from these. Dialects then are essentially languages: and the name dialect itself is but a convenient grammarian's phrase, invented as part of the machinery by which to carry on reasonings respecting languages. We learn the language which has the best and largest literature extant; and having done so, we treat all very nearly resembling languages as variations from what we have learnt. ”

“ The Anglo-Saxon, in the spirit and analogy of his whole language, could have used words which had never been heard before, and been at once understood: if we would introduce a new name for a new thing, we must take refuge in the courtesy of our neighbours, and borrow from the French, or Greek, or Latin, terms which never cease to betray their foreign origin, by never putting off the forms of the tongue from which they were taken, or assuming those of the tongue into which they are adopted. The English language is a dead one. ”

“ Compared with a man, the words the man are very definite. Compared, however, with the words that man, they are the contrary. Now, just as an and a have arisen out of the numeral one, so has the arisen out of the demonstrative pronoun þæt, or at least from some common root. It will be remembered that in Anglo-Saxon there was a form þe, undeclined, and common to all the cases of all the numbers.
In no language in its oldest stage is there ever a word giving, in its primary sense, the ideas of a and the. As tongues become modern, some noun with a similar sense is used to express them. ”

“ Is it to be in the first person in order to agree with ego, or in the third in order to agree with ille? For the sake of laying down a rule upon these and similar points, the classical grammarians arrange the persons (as they do the genders) according to their dignity, making the verb (or adjective if it be a question of gender) agree with the most worthy. In respect to persons, the first is more worthy than the second, and the second more worthy than the third. Hence, the Latins said—
Ego et Balbus sustulimus manus. ”

“ In this respect the phenomena of language stand apart from the other phenomena of either mind or organized matter. No amount of false argument can make a fallacy other than a fallacy. No amount of frequency can make physical disease other than a predisposing cause to physical disorganization. The argument that halts in its logic, is not on a par with the argument that is sound. Such also is the case with any bodily organ. No prevalence of sickness can ever evolve health. Language, however, as long as it preserves the same amount of intelligibility is always language. ”

“ All fled but John.—If this mean all fled, but John did not fly, the word but is a conjunction, the word John is a nominative case, and the propositions are two in number. If, instead of John, we had a personal pronoun, we should say, all fled but he.
From the fact of the great convertibility of conjunctions it is often necessary to determine whether a word be a conjunction or not. If it be a conjunction, it cannot govern a case. If it govern a case, it is no conjunction but a preposition. ”

“ That the men of the North should acquire an easy and harmonious southern language seems in itself much more probable than that the men of the south should study a northern language, not only rugged in its pronunciation, but capricious in its orthography. The dominion of Spanish in America is, however, interrupted and narrowed by that of Portuguese, and to a singular degree by that of the native languages, some of which are possibly destined to be used for literary purposes in ages to come. ”

“ No new verb ever takes a strong præterite. The like takes place with nouns. No new substantive would form its plural, like oxen or geese, by adding -en, or by changing the vowel. It would rather, like fathers and horses, add the lene sibilant.
Now, the processes that change fall, ox, and goose into fell, oxen, and geese, inasmuch as they cease to operate on the language in its present stage, are obsolete processes; whilst those that change move into moved, and horse into horses, operating on the language in its present stage, are vital processes. ”

“ Monument as is the Deutsche Grammatik of learning, industry, comprehensiveness, and arrangement, it is not a book that should be read to the exclusion of others: nor must it be considered to exhibit the grammar of the Gothic languages, in a form unsusceptible of improvement. Like all great works, it is more easily improved than imitated. One is almost unwilling to recur to the old comparison between Aristotle, who absorbed the labour of his predecessors, and the Eastern sultans, who kill-off their younger brothers. But such is the case with Grimm and his fore-runners in philology. ”

“ So is it with language long before the grammarian undertakes its investigation. It may even be said, that the commencement of the age of self-consciousness is identical with the close of that of vitality in language; for it is a great error to speak of languages as dead, only when they have ceased to be spoken. They are dead when they have ceased to possess the power of adaptation to the wants of the people, and no longer contain in themselves the means of their own extension. ”

“ Let the Greek for art be a word in the feminine gender; e.g., τέχνη (tekhnæ) , so that the musical art be ἡ μουσίκη τέχνη (hæ mousikæ tekhnæ) . Let, in the progress of language (as was actually the case in Greece) , the article and substantive be omitted, so that, for the musical art, or for music, there stand only the feminine adjective, μουσίκη. Let there be, upon a given art or science, a series of books, or treatises; the Greek for book, or treatise, being a neuter substantive, βίβλιον (biblion) . ”

“ Over what extent of language have we a plural? The Latins say, bonus pater=a good father; boni patres=good fathers. In the Latin, the adjective bonus changes its form with the change of number of the substantive that it accompanies. In English it is only the substantive that is changed. Hence we see that in the Latin language the numbers were extended to adjectives, whereas in English they are confined to the substantives and pronouns. Compared with the Anglo-Saxon, the present English is in the same relation as it is with the Latin. ”

“ It would seem that the time required for producing a perceptible increase in the loudness or sharpness of a tone is greater than that of pronouncing some of our shorter syllables. If we attempt, for instance, to throw the accent on the first syllable of the word become, we must either lengthen the vowel, and pronounce the word bee-come, or add the adjoining consonant to the first syllable, and so pronounce the word bec-ome. We often find it convenient to lengthen the quantity even of the longer syllables, when we wish to give them a very strong and marked accent. ”

“ A second conjugation is a second mode of expressing the same idea, and a second tense is no more. Real criticism is as unwilling to multiply the one as the other. Furthermore, the tendency of English criticism is towards the very doctrines which the Greek grammarian wishes to get rid of. We have the difficulty of a second conjugation: but, on the other hand, instead of four past tenses (an imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, and aorist) , we have only one (the aorist) . ”

“ Derivation, like etymology, is a word used in a wide and in a limited sense. In the wide sense of the term every word, except it be in the simple form of a root, is a derived word. In this sense the cases, numbers, and genders of nouns, the persons, moods, and tenses of verbs, the ordinal numbers, the diminutives, and even the compound words, are alike matters of derivation. In the wide sense of the term the word fathers, from father, is equally in a state of derivation with the word strength, from strong. ”

“ Of the Gypsy language I need only say, that it is not only Indo-Germanic, but that it is Hindoo. Few words from it have mixed themselves with our standard (or even our provincial) dialects.
Thieves' language, or that dialect for which there is no name, but one from its own vocabulary, viz. Slang, is of greater value in philology than in commerce. It serves to show that in speech nothing is arbitrary. Its compound phrases are either periphrastic or metaphorical; its simple monosyllables are generally those of the current language in an older form. ”

“ Still, for the very honour of human nature, one of whose greatest and most universal privileges is the recognition of and voluntary subjection to the laws of beauty and harmony, it is necessary to state that no developed language exists which does not acknowledge some internal laws of euphony, from which many of its peculiarities arise, and which by these assimilates its whole practice and assumes an artistical consistency. ”

“ As to the inflection of the word -self, all its compounds are substantives; inasmuch as they all take plural forms as far as certain logical limitations will allow them to do so—ourselves, yourselves, themselves.
Myself, thyself, himself, itself, and herself, are naturally singular, and under no circumstances can become plural.
Themselves is naturally plural, and under no circumstances can become singular.
Ourselves and yourselves are naturally plural; yet under certain circumstances they become singular. ”

“ Mixed syntax requires two sorts of knowledge—metaphysical, and historical.
1. To account for such a fact in language as the expression the man as rides to market, instead of the usual expression the man who rides to market, is a question of what is commonly called metaphysics. The idea of comparison is the idea common to the words as and who.
2. To account for such a fact in language as the expression I have ridden a horse is a question of history. We must know that when there was a sign of an accusative case in English the word horse had that sign ”

“ Let a change in language affect the final vowel, so that a word which was originally pronounced nama, should become, first, namë, and afterwards nām, naim, or næm; the vowel being sounded as the a in fate. Let the final e, although lost in pronunciation, be retained in the spelling. The chances are that, the above conditions being given, such an e (final and mute) shall, whenever it occurs, occur at the end of a long syllable. The next process is for a succeeding generation to mistake a coincidence for a sign, and to imagine that an e mute expresses the length of syllable. ”

“ The injury done to the community itself is perhaps the greatest; but there is a damage done to the world in general. It will be a splendid and a novel experiment in modern society, if a single language becomes so predominant over all others as {572}to reduce them in comparison to the proportion of provincial dialects. To have this experiment fairly tried, is a great object. Every atom that is subtracted from the amount of the majority has its influence—it goes into the opposite scale. If the Germans succeed in establishing their language in the United States, other nations may follow. ”