Common language

“ But when we thus speak of the common notions of our age and country being deficient, and thus, in effect, commend notions which would be singular, do we not hold a language inconsistent with our common language and practice? ”

“ This common ground is assumed by everyone who maintains the idea of literacy-how else to establish it?-as a necessity, but understood in many different ways: the common ground as embodied in vocabulary and grammar, in logic, spelling, phonetics, cultural heritage. Granted that a common language is a necessary condition for communication, such a common language is not simultaneously a sufficient condition, or at least not one of most efficient, for communication. ”

“ We must content ourselves with saying that certain groups of mankind have a common history, that they have languages, creeds, and institutions in common, but that we have no evidence whatever to show how they came to have languages, creeds, and institutions in common. ”

“ The language is, of course, a dying one—English is slowly superseding it—but it seems safe to say that for a generation or two yet to come it will be the basis of the common speech of the people and the language of worship. ”

“ As there are fifty or more diverse languages, spoken by mankind, to say nothing of hundreds of different dialects, and as people now travel freely to all parts of the earth, the advantages of one common language for all nations are apparent to all who reflect on the subject. ”

“ In other words, we notice that while language constituted a projection of the human being in the conventions of abstract systems of expression, representation, and communication, it also exercised an impoverishing function in that it excluded the wealth of senses-possibly including common sense-and the signs addressing them. Language made of us one monolithic entity. ”

“ That in each community there are elements common to the individuals constituting it only says that the sum total of individual practical experiences of language is different from the language characteristic of the social experience. The difference between the language of the individual and the language of a community is indicative of social relationships. A more general thesis deserves to be entertained: The nature and variety of human interactions, within and without practical experiences of self-constitution in language, describe the complexity of the pragmatic framework. ”

“ But languages, by changing their signs, modify also the ideas they represent. Minds are formed upon languages; thoughts take coloring from idioms. Reason alone is common to all. In each language the mind has its peculiar conformation, and this may be in part the cause or the effect of national character. The fact that every nation's language follows the vicissitudes of that nation's morals, and is preserved or altered with them, seems to confirm this theory. ”

“ Under the present standard of evidence in comparing languages and tracing allied groups to a common origin, the crude speculations as to a single primeval language of mankind, which formerly occupied so much attention, are acknowledged to be worthless. ”

“ Now, if we compare the general principles of our constitution, which fit us for receiving information from our fellowcreatures by language, with the general principles which fit us for acquiring the perception of things by our senses, we shall find them to be very similar in their -nature and manner of operation.
When we begin to learn our mother tongue, we perceive by the help of natural language, that they who speak to us, use certain sounds to express certain things: we imitate the same sounds when we would express the same things, and find that we are understood. ”

“ In the first place, Language not only extends enormously the possibilities of [20] co-operation and common action, but also renders possible the consolidation of customs and their preservation by oral tradition. In the next place, Writing enables a society to record all that it considers worth remembering. ”

“ The postulate or common understanding involved in speech is certainly co-extensive, in the obligation it carries, with the social organism of which language is the instrument, and the ends of which it is an effort to subserve. ”

“ In the greater number of instances, they may be traced to some natural and universal associations of ideas, founded in the common faculties, common organs, and common condition of the human race.... According to the different degrees of intimacy and strength in the associations on which the transitions of language are founded, very different effects may be expected to arise. ”

“ Indeed, in many respects, she was quite English, and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language. ”

“ The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms. ”

“ The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter, and a scarcity of words; for whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both; ”

“ Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator. ”

“ Beside all the various national languages and local dialects, our language will be used as a means of universal conversation. So shall our every word, for good or for ill, be a word spoken in authority to the whole world. ”

“ but methinks no language is rude that can boast polite writers, and not a few such have flourished in this country in times past, bringing our common speech to very great perfection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The classification of Languages is the classification of mankind. A scientific analysis of language proves the unity of the human race. "One blood"! What a wealth of brotherhood and kindness lies hid in that short phrase. ”

“ And, universally, a good example of this social force, is the veracity of language, which cannot be debauched. In any controversy concerning morals, an appeal may be made with safety to the sentiments, which the language of the people expresses. ”

“ But after all, this is only what may be called a variety of expression, the same general idea being differently brought out, just as in speech the same thoughts are displayed in various idioms. All arts and all machines are but dialects of one language—reasonings and conclusions in tangible forms and figures—a universal speech, understood by all men. ”

“ How can a spirit who thinks and speaks from the universal language of ideas, address a man in an earthly language, so that if a dozen men of different nationalities were listening, each one would hear his own language spoken? ”

“ He is human only when the thought reaches us through articulate speech. Language, as a means of communication between him and his fellows, denotes the existence of the social state, the play of the social evolution which gives the impetus to ideas. Language is the outcome of man’s social needs and nature; he speaks not so much because he thinks and feels as because he must perforce tell his thoughts and feelings to others. ”

“ But, you all know that the manifestations of speech vary from people to people. Each of these manifestations—the languages, as we call them—constitutes one of the most essential characters of the different human groups. You all know a German, a Spaniard, an Englishman, by his language. But this is not the limit of the scientific importance of this character. Unhappily, I cannot here enter into details. I shall only attempt to show you, in a few words, how the study of language throws light on the history of human groups, even in the case of those who have lost all historic data. ”

“ Language is the conventional means by which man communicates his thoughts. It is a complex unity composed of thought and symbol, spoken or written. Because it is the means by which different minds are identified in thought, it becomes an essential factor in social organization. ”

“ Spoken language is shared between us. A meaningful utterance is only made possible by drawing on the words that freely circulate within a linguistic community of speakers and listeners. Language, then, is necessarily non-owned and free. ”

“ The first language of mankind, the most universal and vivid, in a word the only language man needed, before he had occasion to exert his eloquence to persuade assembled multitudes, was the simple cry of nature. ”

“ The community that speaks a language has learnt it, and modified it by processes almost all of which are not deliberate, but the results of causes operating according to more or less ascertainable laws. ”

“ How much more important when the general uses and benefits are considered. The adoption of a universal language would remove the greatest obstacle from the path of the general diffusion of knowledge and innumerable difficulties from methods of communication. ”

“ The knowledge more particularly useful and necessary for you, considering your destination, consists of modern languages, modern history, chronology, and geography, the laws of nations, and the ‘jus publicum Imperii’. You must absolutely speak all the modern Languages, as purely and correctly as the natives of the respective countries: for whoever does not speak a language perfectly and easily, will never appear to advantage in conversation, nor treat with others in it upon equal terms. ”

“ The history of language, the mouth speaking from the fulness of the heart, is the history of human action, faith, art, policy, government, virtue, and crime. When society progresses, the language of the people necessarily runs even with the line of society. ”

“ Language.—In order to lead to a greater degree of clarity it may be well to be even more specific in explaining this process of rectification. Language is fundamental in all the operations of society. It is indispensable to the grocer, the farmer, the lawyer, the physician, the manufacturer, the housewife, and the legislator. It is the means by which members of society communicate with one another, and without communication, in some form, there can be no social intercourse, and, therefore, no society. ”

“ We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of a common mint. ”

“ The continuity and similarity of the course of linguistic history in all its stages, and the competency of linguistic correspondences, wherever we find them, to prove unity of origin and community of tradition, are truths which we need to bear in mind as we proceed with our inquiries into language. ”

“ Thus, while language in general may be classed as a natural phenomenon, a particular tongue must be regarded as an acquired means to an end—an artifice of conventionality—one, therefore which is subordinate to the purposes of society—one that is superior but helpful to the individual ”

“ It is a question how to live as well as how to express life. Each race uses its own tongue, each age its dialect; but, change the language as man may, he ever remains the questioner of his few great thoughts. ”

“ When they have become well acquainted with their language, let them study other languages, and make themselves fully acquainted with the manners, customs, laws, governments, and literature of other nations, peoples, and tongues. ”

“ It must be such a language that every intelligent citizen of each nation can and will learn it, as the first language to be mastered after his mother-tongue, to be able to read it, speak it and write it, in his capacity as a citizen of the world, and as an intelligent citizen of his own nation. ”

“ In short, and trying not to preclude future discussion of these phenomena, the historic development of language and logic within the many cultures we know of-more than the Western and Far Eastern mentioned-bears witness to the very complex relation between who and what people are: their language and the logic that the language makes possible and later embodies. ”

“ Regardless of the level of language acquired, language overwrites the senses. It projects integrated human beings-a unity of nature and language-prone to identify themselves in the culture that they continuously shape. ”

“ What may now sound to us like a perverted sense is often historically correct, for whereas learned influences, the introduction of foreign words—which makes for further specialization and differentiation of meaning—and the general march of civilization affecting manners, customs, and habits of thought, all tend to divert the normal course of language, the dialects have meanwhile kept the noiseless tenor of their way unmolested. ”

“ We shall next pass in review the other great families into which the known forms of human speech are divided, noticing their most striking characteristics. Then will be taken up certain general questions, of prime interest and importance, suggested by such a review—as the relative value and authority of linguistic and of physical evidence of race, and the bearing of language upon the ultimate question of the unity or variety of the human species. Finally, we shall consider the origin of language, its relation to thought, and its value as an element in human progress. ”

“ It is less necessary, I imagine, for the mutual understanding of persons conversing together, that the language should be the same, than that their ordinary mode of thinking, and habits of life should, in some degree, assimilate ”