Linguistic unity

“ Ethnology, that which studies the various nations which make up the species. To both of these the science of Linguistics is more and more perceived to be a powerful, an indispensable auxiliary. Through it we get nearer to the real man, his inner self, than by any other avenue of approach, and it needs no argument to show that nothing more closely binds men into a social unit than a common language. Without it, indeed, there can be no true national unity. The affinities of speech, properly analyzed and valued, are our most trustworthy guides in tracing the relationship and descent of nations. ”

“ Linguistic pluralism and diversity are not obstacles to the free circulation of men, ideas, goods and services, as would like to suggest some objective allies, consciously or not, of the dominant language and culture. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is at first slight, even to insignificance; not greater than exists between the dialects of different localities or ranks or occupations in the same community, without detriment to the general unity of speech. This unity, namely, rests solely on mutual intelligibility, and is compatible with no small amount of individual and class difference, in vocabulary, in grammar and in pronunciation; indeed, in the strictest sense, each individual has a dialect of his own, different from that of every other, even as he has a handwriting, a countenance, a character of his own. ”

“ It is true that without community of language there may be an artificial nationality, a nationality which may be good for all political purposes, and which may engender a common national feeling. Still this is not quite the same thing as that fuller national unity which is felt where there is community of language. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ There always have been reciprocal relations between communities of signs and groups of people. At one time the ethnic force predominates over the linguistic; and at another period, or in other circumstances, the linguistic influence spreads more victoriously than arms. ”

“ I take as a best example language, which, even in the different branches of the Indo-European race, offers such variety that the primitive unity passed unobserved for centuries, and only the philologist is able to trace the European languages back to the same root. The fairy-tales are, more or less, entirely the same, the changes being relatively slight, when compared with those which differentiate one language from another. ”

“ The men who compose a single nation must think together. Their ideals and aims must be one and they must be conscious of a common destiny. Language, as the currency of thought, naturally becomes the unifier. To a notable degree areas of homogeneous language in Europe have been spared the havoc of battle or siege. On the other hand, linguistic borderlands have always been scenes of armed struggle and destruction.
Community of origin is not essential among members of the same nation. The bond of language and identity of historical destiny suffice for the creation of nationality. ”

“ If these observations regarding the influence of acculturation upon language should be correct, then the whole history of American languages must not be treated on the assumption that all languages which show similarities must be considered as branches of the same linguistic family. We should rather find a phenomenon which is parallel to the features characteristic of other ethnological phenomena—namely, a development from diverse sources which are gradually worked into a single cultural unit. ”

“ We must seek an explanation not merely of the nature of the forces tending to differentiate the individual languages, but also of those which counteract such forces, and whose influence is exerted towards uniformity and the conservation of such unity as exists. ”

“ I wish from the bottom of my heart that there was but one universal language, so that the general sentiments of love, equality, and fraternity, which animate the bosoms of all the pacificators and detesters of tyranny throughout the world, might find a simultaneous echo in your ears, by the medium of a common speech. The diversity of dialects, which now unfortunately prevails, was originally invented under cover of the feudal system, by the minions of despotism, who thought, by such despicable means, for ever to perpetuate their power. ”

“ It must be assumed as a necessity to the success of any common language, that there are a number of persons compelled by circumstances to make themselves acquainted with one or more foreign dialects. This may be brought about by the demands of commerce, or from the fact that the persons in question are compelled to live in the foreign linguistic area, and to employ its tongue. ”

“ Thus there come to exist among the same people two separate tongues; the one an inheritance from the past, becoming ever more stiff and constrained, and employable only for special uses; the other the production of the present, growing constantly more unlike the other by the operation of the ordinary processes of linguistic change; full of inaccuracies and corruptions, if we choose to call them so, but also full of a healthy and vigorous life, which enables it finally to overthrow and replace the learned or sacred dialect of which it is the offspring. ”

“ We have seen that the traces of a common origin in all languages afford a ground of presumption for the unity of the human race. They establish a still stronger probability that mankind had not yet begun to disperse before they were possessed of a means of communicating their ideas by conventional sounds—in short, speech. ”

“ We at once feel that this artificially formed nation, which has no common language, but each of whose elements speaks a language common to itself with some other nation, is something different from those nations which are defined by a universal or at least a predominant language. ”

“ Most of the European languages, as we now see, are derived from one common stock, more archaic than any of them. No one would now trace a French word directly to that old Indo-European root, without going first to the Latin; and so with every other language belonging to the same group. Each nation has put the seal of its own individuality on its language, which it has moulded and shaped according to its own physiological and psychical faculties. ”

“ The sands of the seashore, the drops of the ocean, are few when compared to the mighty current of words which are poured into the world by millions upon millions of human tongues. It is the tie of a common language which indefinably and inexpressibly knits together all those who have inherited it. "The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and most desirable that can unite mankind." [2] The English language is a synonym of English thought, passion, pleasure, pain, suffering. It expresses all our intimate and fundamental ideas of law, religion and politics. ”

“ Of course, everybody talks the language of his own country with his countrymen, but with the rest of the world he talks the general language--that is to say, we have nowadays to acquire but two languages to talk to all peoples--our own, and the universal. ”

“ We of the English-speaking race are apt to wonder at this love of a local dialect. This vigorous attempt to create a first-rate literature, alongside and independent of the national literature, seems strange or unnatural. We are accustomed to one language, spoken over immense areas, and we rejoice to see it grow and spread, more and more perfectly unified. ”

“ When we close our minds to months and years and think in centuries, it is easy to understand the diversity of languages. Tribes going off by themselves, drop words from their vocabulary as time goes on, and use other words that mean the same; after the passing of generations there is an entirely new dialect. It is so in nearly all the countries of the Old World; people living under the same government, neighbors, cannot talk to each other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And the measure of progress will be indicated by the growing replacement of the numerous dialects by a single national language.
Looking back over the stormy centuries during which French, German and Russian nationalities were elaborated, we behold the formative influence of language everywhere. Aspirations which precede the period of free and unfettered national life give way to achievement when national hopes are crowned. ”

“ How can we overrate in this respect the enormous value of a common language—an {109} influence which, according to the use made of it, may be either healing and remedial, unifying and progressive—the source of all that is most beneficial and delightful, or else jarring, discordant, retroactive, and pernicious. Ought it ever to be forgotten that to the mother country belongs the glory of originating and forming this great language? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Civilization, however, demands a universal language, one which will eventually take the place of all modern languages, the present languages to be relegated to the dead class; but natural conditions, association, and patriotism, or the semblance of them, will, undoubtedly, make it extremely difficult to introduce any other form of speech, or of writing, which would interfere with native tongues. ”

“ Assuming the various languages of the Globe to have been derived from one Original Speech, it will be established that the formation of numerous distinct languages from that one Primitive Tongue admits of a complete explanation, by means of causes of which the agency can be traced within the range of the Historical era. The influence of those causes will be shown within a limited period of time to have produced dialects which display—not a destruction—but a dispersion of the elements of the Parent languages from which they are known to have arisen. ”

“ It is a common error in etymology to endeavor the deriving all the radical words of our western European languages from the Latin and Greek; or indeed to derive constantly the primitives of any one language from any particular tongue. When we do this, we seem to forget that all have been subject to alterations; and that the greater and more polite any nation is, the more subject, (partly for improvement, and partly out of a luxurious wantonness) to new model their language. ”

“ Hence, whatever changes a language may undergo, they must all be shared in by the whole community. The idiosyncrasies, the sharp angles and jutting corners, of every man's idiom must be worn off by attrition against those with which it comes in contact in the ordinary intercourse of life, that the common tongue may become a rounded unit. This does not imply an absolute identity of dialect, down to the smallest details, among all the constituent members of a community ”

“ And now that the nineteenth century has drawn to an end, if we can guess at the future from our acquaintance with the past, we are justified in believing that the world-language at the end of the twentieth century—should any one tongue succeed in winning universal acceptance—will be English. If it is not English, then it will not be German or Spanish or French ”

“ With the growth of society, however, language, the great social unifier, became more and more fixed and settled; though dialects continued to branch off, they each occupied a wider area, belonged to a larger community, and retained their marks of relationship to one another. When the first level of civilization had been reached, the history of language entered upon a new phase. Families of speech became possible, and the same causes that produced permanence and stability in the customs and beliefs of the community produced them also in the dialects that it used. ”

“ This tendency of the mother tongue, to break up into as many dialects as there are shades of difference in the position and tendencies of its speakers, is only arrested by the formation of a cultivated dialect, created when the wants of an educated or cultivated class in the community demand a common medium of interchanging their ideas. ”

“ America, said an able exponent of this doctrine the other day in a public debate, will never and never can be a nation till its language is no longer recognisable as English—till its English differs as much from the language of England as German differs from Dutch. ”