Glossolalia

“ Our ears do not catch them exactly, or we unconsciously substitute for the foreign sound some sound from our own language. Our vocal organs, too, do not adapt themselves readily to the reproduction of the strange sounds in another tongue, as we know from the difficulty which we have in pronouncing the French nasal or the German guttural. Similarly English differs somewhat as it is spoken by a Frenchman, a German, and an Italian. The Frenchman has a tendency to import the nasal into it, and he is also inclined to pronounce it like his own language, while the German favors the guttural. ”

“ But the groups of ideas in the mind of a speaker are constantly forming themselves anew, and finding expression in forms which do not tally with actual and received linguistic expression, and, as they change, give rise to so-called irregularities of grammar. The philologist must therefore discard neither the linguistic processes which are described and registered by grammar, nor the psychical ones which manifest themselves in speaking and hearing, but are not represented in linguistic expression, and yet are always operative in the direction of change in Language. ”

“ This popularity, which arose from the fact that French and Latin had for so long been the language of the ruling section of the community, is still the distinction which marks off our prose from that of other nations. In Italy, for example, the language of literature is practically incomprehensible to the dwellers on the soil. But what English prose has gained in breadth and comprehension by representing the tongue of the people, it has lost in subtlety. ”

“ Briefly summed, it would appear that dialect means something more than mere rude form of speech and action—that it must, in some righteous and substantial way, convey to us a positive force of soul, truth, dignity, beauty, grace, purity and sweetness that may even touch us to the tenderness of tears. Yes, dialect as certainly [Pg 200] does all this as that speech and act refined may do it, and for the same reason: it is simply, purely natural and human.
Yet the Lettered and the Unlettered powers are at swords' points; and very old and bitter foemen, too, they are. ”

“ The pronunciation of no man is in exact accord with the ideal standard of the dictionary; all have mannerisms of speech and accent. In some sections such mannerisms are so common and marked as to form a dialect, almost a patois, and, if a story involves a character from such a district, fidelity to fact requires the writer to write dialect when the person is speaking. Dialect in a story must be intelligible to one unfamiliar with it, which requires the writer to iron out its greatest divergences from the normal in an endeavor to retain its piquancy while avoiding its obscurity. ”

“ One of the elementary principles of linguistics is the tendency and ability of every living language to absorb words and phrases from outside sources, including other languages, without losing its individuality and its essential characteritsics. There is no fact better known than the fact that in all languages additions are continually made to the vocabulary by the legitimization of slang and dialectic words and phrases. Among the thousands of slang words that live for a day, there are some that have sprung into favor and have become immortal. ”

“ So far as this second cause of sheer ignorance goes, the gaps in knowledge are continually resulting in slang and the addition of needless neologisms to the language. People come upon ideas that they know no English to express, and strike out the new phrase in a fine burst of ignorant discovery. ”

“ But though it may be allowed to use some of these terms occasionally in familiar discourse, no one of any sense or good taste will ever think of indulging in slang language, either spoken or written. It is, no doubt, a bad sign of the times, and much to be deplored, that it is so common. Some writers have calculated that there are, at least, three thousand slang terms in common use. The above are but a few examples of this widespread corruption. ”

“ During the 6th, 7th and 8th centuries glossography developed in various ways; old glossaries were worked up into new forms, or amalgamated with more recent ones. It ceased, moreover, to be exclusively Latin-Latin, and interpretations in Germanic (Old High German, Anglo-Saxon) and Romanic dialects took the place of or were used side by side with earlier Latin ones. The origin and development of the late classic and medieval glossaries preserved to us can be traced with certainty. ”

“ These are the features of the older language which an English reader is predisposed to pass over, satisfied with a half-recognition: and space seldom permits of their adequate treatment in a compendious general dictionary or the word-list to a single text. So in making a glossary for use with a book itself designed to be a preparation for the reading of complete texts, I have given exceptionally full treatment to what may rightly be called the backbone of the language. ”

“ And yet all the while our popular idiom is racy with life and vigor and originality, bucksome (as Milton used the word) to our new occasions, and proves itself no mere graft by sending up new suckers from the old root in spite of us. It is only from its roots in the living generations of men that a language can be reinforced with fresh vigor for its needs; what may be called a literate dialect grows ever more and more pedantic and foreign, till it becomes at last as unfitting a vehicle for living thought as monkish Latin. ”

“ As in the course of the mixture by which our language has been formed, we have thus lost all habitual consciousness of the difference of its ingredients, (Greek, Latin, Norman-French, and Anglo-Saxon) : we have also ceased to confine to each ingredient the mode of grammatical inflexion which originally belonged to it. Thus the termination ive belongs peculiarly to Latin adjectives, yet we say sportive, talkative. In like manner, able is added to words which are not Latin, as eatable, drinkable, pitiable, enviable. ”

“ It is too true a confession when he says that he does not aim at beauty of language. His sentence will begin well, and then grow intricate and involved—in breaks an allusion, not always very relevant, and brings with it a quotation that has captured his fancy and paralyses his grammar—several perhaps—some accommodation is made, and the sentence straggles on, and will end somehow—with a pile of long words, for which others have been patiently waiting since before the quotation, in pendent genitives, accusatives and so forth. ”

“ Can we imagine a naturalist who would refuse to examine a viper, a bat, a scorpion, a scolopendra, or a tarantula, and throw them into the darkness, saying, "Fie, how ugly they are!" The thinker who turned away from slang would resemble a surgeon who turned away from an ulcer or a wart. He would be a philologist hesitating to examine a fact of language, a philosopher hesitating to scrutinize a fact of humanity. For we must tell all those ignorant of the fact, that slang is at once a literary phenomenon and a social result. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is something more at fault than the language when we turn from or flinch at it; and, as has been intimated, the wretched fault may be skulkingly hidden away in the ambush of ostensible dialect—that type of dialect so copiously produced by its sole manufacturers, who, utterly stark and bare of the vaguest idea of country life or country people, at once assume that all their "gifted pens" have to do is to stupidly misspell every word ”

“ Of unrestrained mouth And of lawless folly Is disaster the end, ought not to be understood as directed only at those who spoke impiously or lawlessly, but might even with special propriety be used also of men who prate foolishly and immoderately, whose tongues are so extravagant and unbridled that they ceaselessly flow and seethe with the foulest dregs of language, the sort of persons to whom the Greeks apply the highly significant term κατάγλωσσοι, or “given to talk.” ”

“ It is characteristic of the interest which science is now taking in things formerly deemed unworthy of consideration that philologists no longer speak of slang in contemptuous terms. Perhaps, indeed, it was not the scholar, but the amateur philologist, the mere literary man, who affected to despise slang. To the trained investigator into the mutations of language and into the transformations of the vocabulary, no word is too humble for respectful consideration; and it is from the lowly, often, that the most valuable lessons are learned. ”

“ If the master’s Greek and Latin is such poor stuff, what about the children? They have scarcely learnt their primer by heart, without understanding a word of it, when they are set to translate a French speech into Latin words ”

“ Those who say 'doctrínal' on the ground that the second vowel is long in Latin commit themselves to 'medicínal', 'natúral', 'nutríment', 'instrúment', and, if their own principle be applied, they make false quantities by the dozen every day of their lives.
Three words mostly mispronounced are, from their rarity, perhaps not past rescue. They are 'décanal', 'ruridécanal', and 'prébendal'. There is no more reason for saying 'decánal' than for saying 'matrónal' or for saying 'prebéndal' than for saying 'caléndar'. Of course words like 'tremendous', being imported whole, keep the original stress. ”

“ Nothing else in language is more strange, more strong, uglier, or more beautiful. It is the element in language that lives most, lasts longest, and decays quickest. It is vital. It belches words which become miasma. It spews words that fall into the gutter and disappear—cruel, warty, misshapen, monstrous! words that are ashamed in the light—words that are the seed of hideous fungi growing in darkness from decay. Slang also drops words that quiver, palpitate in the light—words that strike hard, that smell of sulphur and trail smoke. ”

“ In English the history of h is very similar to that in Latin. While the parts above the glottis are in position to produce a vowel, an aspirate is produced without vibration of the vocal chords, sometimes, like the pronunciation of Arrius, with considerable effort as a reaction against the tendency to “drop the h’s.” Though h survives in Scotland, Ireland and America as well as in the speech of cultivated persons, the sound in most of the vulgar dialects is entirely lost. ”

“ I attack your race. That takes your mind off yourself by making it turn towards your race, and making you individually hate me.' 'That is not an ordinary theory.' 'Ordinary theories are, sir, never sound.' 'Mr Nevill,' said Miss Gordon, 'you are a great traveller.' 'Yes, I have been about a bit; but I'm not old, and I intend doing better before I die.' 'Are you a good linguist?' 'No. Don't speak a word of any language but English.' 'There is a general theory that linguists have prominent eyes. ”

“ Of Latin glossaries of the first four centuries of the Roman emperors few traces are left, if we except Verrius-Festus. Charis, 229. 30, speaks of glossae antiquitatum and 242. 10 of glossae veterum, but it is not known whether these glosses are identic, or in what relation they stand to the glossemata per litteras Latinas ordine composita, which were incorporated with the works of this grammarian according to the index in Keil, p. 6. Latin glosses occur in Ps.-Philoxenus, and Nonius must have used Latin glossaries; there exists a glossarium Plautinum (Ritschl, Op. ii. 234 sqq.) ”

“ Instances in point are the numerous Greek words introduced into classical Latin, 385 such as techinæ (Plautus, Most., II. i. 23) , and the numerous French words borrowed by German and English, such as étiquette, chaperon, à outrance.
If a speaker has an imperfect mastery of a foreign tongue, he will be apt to employ, when endeavouring to speak it, numerous loan-words from his mother tongue. He will, in fact, insert into the foreign tongue any number of words which may serve the purpose of expressing the idea which he feels necessary. ”

“ Thus the strong stress accent existing in the transition period between Latin and French led to the curtailing of long Latin words like latrocínium or hospitále into the words which we have borrowed from French into English as larceny and hotel. It will be observed that the first syllable and that which bears the accent are the two which best withstand change, though the strong tendency in English to stress heavily the first syllable bids fair ultimately to oust the e in the pronunciation of larceny. ”

“ Latin, like Greek glossography, had its origin chiefly in the practical wants of students and teachers, of whose names we only know a few. No doubt even in classical times collections of glosses (“glossaries”) were compiled, to which allusion seems to be made by Varro (De ling. Lat. vii. 10, “tesca, aiunt sancta esse qui glossas scripserunt”) and Verrius-Festus (166b .6, “naucum ... glossematorum ... scriptures fabae grani quod haereat in fabulo”) , but it is not known to what extent Varro, for instance, used them, or retained their original forms. ”