Linguistic change

“ A new language, says the proverb, is a new sense; but a multiplicity of dialects means, for the possessors of the main language, an enlargement of the pleasures of the linguistic sense without the fatigue of learning a totally new grammar and vocabulary. ”

“ Although the speakers may be unconscious that any great fluctuation is going on in their language—although when we observe the manner in which new words and phrases are thrown out, as if at random or in sport, while others get into vogue, we may think the process of change to be the result of mere chance—there are nevertheless fixed laws in action, by which, in the general struggle for existence, some terms and dialects gain the victory over others. ”

“ They use the same accents as ourselves, forming their words either on the palate, the teeth, or the lips, only they have other words for things. Great is the diversity of languages, for in a hundred leagues we found such change in the language that the inhabitants could not understand each other. ”

“ This continual process is called the evolution of language. Slang is a strong element in the process.
As the servant of man, language has acquired a large part of his moral possessions as well as a stewardship of the most precious of his material property. Slowly through many centuries, language has assumed this power and made these acquisitions. The study of language must include, therefore, something more than orthographic change, grammatic loss, and historic speculation. It must deal with the phenomena of the mind, and it must approach them through the field of human interest. ”

“ They present examples of divergence of phonetic character, of differences in structure and vocabulary, that will bring us face to face with the problem of the origin of these divergent elements.
The more detailed study of American languages promises rich returns in the fields of the mechanical processes of linguistic development and of the psychological problems presented by languages of different types. In many American languages the etymological processes are so transparent, that the mechanism of phonetic adaptation stands out with great clearness. ”

“ In short, though we can only prove it with regard to a minority of the multitudinous languages spoken on the globe, this minority embraces all the languages known to us for so long a period that we can talk of their history, and we may, therefore, confidently maintain that what may be briefly termed the tendency towards grammatical simplification is a universal fact of linguistic history. ”

“ My aim in dealing with the linguistic side of my subject has been to show that rules for pronunciation and syntax are not the monopoly of educated people who have been taught to preach as well as practise them. Dialect-speaking people obey sound-laws and grammatical rules even more faithfully than we do, because theirs is a natural and unconscious obedience. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At any rate, for aught that we Unity of Origin of Speech. know or have reason to believe, all existing dialects are equally old, every one alike has the whole immeasurable past of language-life behind it, has reached its present condition by advance along its own line of growth and change from the first beginnings of human expression. ”

“ New dialects are wont to grow up among the common people, while the speech of the educated and lettered class continues to be what it has been. But the nature of the forces in action is the same in the one case as in the other: all change in language is the work of the will of its speakers, which acts under the government of motives, through the organs of speech, and varies their products to suit its necessities and its convenience. ”

“ Is it possible that, in the mesmeric trance, the mind in some cases rejects as artificial fabric all the educated conventionality of tongues, and resumes unconsciously the original and genuine dialect of the world? ”

“ Nevertheless, the primitive language may also have quietly exercised a reciprocal influence upon the more advanced language. An observation that we cannot escape, even on far higher stages of linguistic development, is the fact that, in such a struggle between a superior minority and a less civilized majority, the former determines the main stock of words, and even, under favourable conditions, the grammatical form, whereas the latter exercises a decisive influence on pronunciation. ”

“ In languages thus constituted the only possible external alteration is that phonetic change to which all human speech, from the very beginning of its traditional life, is liable; the only growth is internal, by that multiplication and adaptation and improvement of meanings which is equally an inseparable part of all language-history. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every word, then, in whose examination the linguistic scholar engages, is to be first set alongside its correspondents or analogues in other related languages, that its history may be read aright. Thus the deficiencies of the evidence which each member of a connected group of dialects contains respecting its own genesis and growth are made up, in greater or less degree, by the rest, and historical results are reached having a greatly increased fulness and certainty. ”

“ INTRODUCTION Among common errors still persisting in the minds of educated people, one error which dies very hard is the theory that a dialect is an arbitrary distortion of the mother tongue, a wilful mispronunciation of the sounds, and disregard of the syntax of a standard language. ”

“ The comparative philologist and the educated linguist do not deny, but recognize, the fact that evolution and devolution are both continually going on in every language, causing more or less marked changes which become appreciable at the end of a sufficiently long period of time; neither would they deny that, when the transformation due to these causes has become sufficiently great through dialectic segregations, the resultant language—which is at first only a dialect—may, in time, become a distinct language. ”

“ Not only is some knowledge of dialects needful for any true understanding of the history and character of our language, but the standard speech has in the past derived much enrichment and what is called 'regeneration' from the picturesque vocabularies of local vernaculars. ”

“ It is well enough to record a dialect, nor will any one grudge him credit for his observation and diligence, but to reduce a dialect to theoretic laws and then impose those laws upon the speakers of it is surely a monstrous step. ”

“ How entangled and wild with foreign growth will, on the contrary, after some centuries, the English language be, for instance, with its native but powerless stem full of engrafted word-shrubbery, capable only of inoculation, and fetching back from its duplicate, America, more new words than wares! ”

“ On the other hand, the natural progress of language will account also for the opposite qualities displayed by the dialects of modern Europe. As Society advanced, the severe features that belonged to Language at its first commencement must have gradually softened down. Words originally intelligible only as imitations of the qualities of objects, or by reason of the signs with which they were accompanied, must have gradually acquired conventional meanings, calculated to render the use of signs and of rough and painful articulations unnecessary. ”

“ Clever, Comical, Conceit, Discourse The linguistic study of the dialects becomes an entertaining pursuit when we turn our attention to the dialect usage of literary words in a sense other than that to which we are accustomed in standard English. This can only be illustrated by quotations, for only thus can the true inwardness of the dialect meaning be appreciated. Adapted (Hmp.) means accustomed to: a man adapted to pigs is a man experienced in the rearing of swine ”

“ The development of a future universal language seems improbable. It is true that dialects become merged in languages, and these languages lost in others still more extensive, just as streams flow into rivers, and rivers into the sea. It is true that diversity of idioms is the characteristic of barbarism, and unity the slow result of civilisation. ”

“ CORRUPTIONS AND POPULAR ETYMOLOGIES If we are to avoid on the one hand the danger of regarding a dialect as nothing better than a wilful perversion of standard English, we yet must not allow ourselves to be beguiled by the smooth-running course of true sound-laws, or the rural charm of quaint words, into the opposite error of supposing that irregularities and distortions do not exist. ”

“ In the great enrichment of the vocabulary of the romantic movement by means of words like murk, gloaming, glamour, gruesome, eerie, eldritch, uncanny, warlock, wraith—all of which were dialect or local words, we find a good example of the expressive power of dialect speech, and see how a standard language can be enriched by the use of popular sources. All members of our Society can help this process by collecting words from popular speech which are in their opinion worthy of a larger currency ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Surely the mental habit of people who express their thoughts in so very different a manner, the one rapid, the other slow, the one plain, the other embarrassed, the one trailing, the other striding, cannot be essentially the same. The English language, strange compound as it is, with its want of inflections, and with all the difficulties which this want of inflections brings upon it, has yet made itself capable of being, in good hands, a business-instrument as ready, direct, and clear, as French or Latin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain working men, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we would so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted English language, no book which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed. ”

“ How our English vernacular has changed ever since the days of the famous virgin queen, not to mention the more radical changes of the far-remote days of the ill-starred Richard II! A spoken language is constantly changing. It grows and develops, or languishes and decays, upon the lips of those who employ it as their mother-tongue, now incorporating into itself new expressions and idioms and now casting off such as are old and worn out. ”

“ I have no room to argue the pro's of dialect here, but it always seems strange that those lazy critics who are unwilling to take the trouble to translate the occasional hard words in a dialect form of their own tongue, should be so inconsistent as ever to study a foreign language. ”

“ The spread of education may profoundly modify them, but the spoken language of the people will ever continue to devise new variations and to initiate developments of its own. Even the “standard” language is continually losing old words and admitting new ones, as was noted long ago by Horace; and our so-called “standard” pronunciation is ever imperceptibly but surely changing, and never continues in one stay. ”

“ A language may thus be overloaded with foreign words, yet, while its pronouns, articles and prepositions remain, they stand as living protests against the invasion of words, and point with no uncertain light, through the night of ages, to the origin and parentage of the captive tongue. ”

“ Would an universal idiom result from this fusion of societies, or would there be a dialect of compromise, employed for daily use, while each nation would talk its own language, or else would the different languages be understood by all? ”

“ PHONOLOGY AND GRAMMAR The average educated Englishman has no accurate conception of what a dialect really is, beyond a vague notion that the term covers a mass of barbarisms, corruptions, and mispronunciations of the King’s English, devoid of any order or system, and used by the illiterate rustic in a haphazard fashion with no regard to consistency. ”