Modern languages

“ Exercises in modern languages should be vehicles of thought without the intervention of the national idiom, and they should be so familiar as to become, through reading and hearing, sources of natural instruction.
The complete knowledge of a language includes four distinct arts—reading, hearing, speaking, writing. In an ancient language we need only the first of these arts. Its study should have no aim but that of giving the pupils the ability to read the classical authors, and appreciate the charm of their compositions. ”

“ Modern languages, which were formerly treated like Cinderella in our schools and universities, begin to feel of age, and want to have a word to say, because they cannot put up with various arrangements which may have been more or less satisfactory for the classical languages, but do not suit modern languages at all. ”

“ With the diffusion of the study of modern languages, with the multiplication of translations—some famous works have appeared simultaneously in eleven tongues—with the growing international vocabulary of science, commerce and pleasure, the world feels more and more its essential unity. We can live and prosper without an international language ”

“ The assertion is often heard that the ancient languages supply a permanent standard by which to judge of the progress and the decay of modern languages; also that the ancient classics must be regarded as furnishing the models for purity and beauty in style. ”

“ The stimulating, quickening, liberalizing tendency of these chivalric enterprises was one of the most potent forces concerned in the mental movement we are tracing.
Rise of Modern Languages and Literatures.—Between the tenth and the fourteenth century the native tongues of Europe began to form literatures of their own. We have already spoken of the formation and gradual growth of these languages (see p. 386) . As soon as their forms became somewhat settled, then literature was possible, and all these speeches bud and blossom into song and romance. ”

“ Those who have a good knowledge of one or two modern languages will have no great difficulty in taking up Latin or Greek say at fourteen or fifteen. They will have a large etymological store, which will make it easy to acquire the vocabulary, and they will have to study only the differentia of the grammars of the different languages—may we not rather say dialects?—of the Indo-European stock. ”

“ The study of languages still in their original state, which we have first really begun to make acquaintance with in modern times, has shown on this point that they contain a very elaborate grammar and express distinctions which are lost or have been largely obliterated in the languages of more civilised nations. ”

“ However great the natural capabilities of a language, it cannot become suited to the wants of a highly civilised people, except by the cultivation of those languages which already have a classical literature of their own. ”

“ And, in all these respects, the study of language need fear a comparison with no one of the physical sciences. Its field is the speech of all mankind, cultivated or savage; the thousands of existing dialects, with all their recorded predecessors; the countless multitudes of details furnished by these, each significant of a fact in human history, external or internal. The wealth of languages is like the wealth of species in the whole animal kingdom. ”

“ That therefore the improvement of language was formerly the first and most necessary work of a growing race, and that the most refined perfection of its comprehension and its use is, and must ever be, the primary problem in the education of each individual, is undoubted. The culture of modern European nations has a peculiarly intimate connection with the study of the remains of antiquity; and, thereby, directly with the study of language. ”

“ In their power of taking up foreign words into healthy circulation and making them truly their own, languages differ much from one another, and the same language from itself at different periods of its life. ”

“ When, therefore, I propose modern language-study instead of ancient, as a chief instrument of school education, I mean much more than the mere substitution of the study of some modern language as language, for some ancient language as language—German, for instance, instead of Greek, as has sometimes been suggested. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And though, perhaps, to correct the language of nations by books of grammar, and amend their manners by discourses of morality, may be tasks equally difficult; yet as it is unavoidable to wish, it is natural likewise to hope, that your Lordship's patronage may not be wholly lost; that it may contribute to the preservation of antient, and the improvement of modern writers; that it may promote the reformation of those translators, who for want of understanding the characteristical difference of tongues, have formed a chaotic dialect of heterogeneous phrases ”

“ You have been trained to read, to speak and to think in one of the leading languages of the West—a language which possesses the richest and most varied literature in all departments of human thought, and which for you constitutes the only pathway to all that is best in Philosophy, in History and in Science. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Without going very profoundly into the subject, he gives some hints as to the mode in which languages are formed,—whence words are derived, how they become transformed and worn out. But they come at first fresh from Nature. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is in meditating on the thoughts of the great writers of antiquity, and in translating their masterpieces, that we discover their beauties, and are able to transfer them into our native language.
In living languages these four arts should be the object of study. To say that one class of languages is learned to be spoken, and the other class to be read, does not express the exact difference of aim in the two cases. The art of speaking is useless unless we understand what is said, and this talent of understanding is a hundred times more useful than that of speaking. ”

“ They are careful in the use of words, and are regarded as standards of purity in the language. They appear to have an accurate ear for sounds, and delight in rounding off a period, for which the languages afford great facilities, by their long and stately words, and multiform inflexions. ”

“ Such is the life of language in a state of nature; and in a similar manner, we have a right to conclude, languages grew up which we only know after the bit and bridle of literature were thrown over their necks. It need not be a written or classical literature to give an ascendency to one out of many dialects, and to impart to its peculiarities an undisputed legitimacy. ”

“ Now that the ground has been prepared—now that the principles of linguistic science are the common property of the educated world, and the chief languages of the earth have been made accessible, and whole families of languages have been included in comparative grammars and dictionaries—we have a right to ask that no one shall henceforth come before the public as the inventor of a new language till he has made himself acquainted with those branches of the science of language which form the natural foundation for such a work. ”

“ Different nations would advance, by very different degrees of rapidity, to a state of civilization, and as [Pg 43] words multiply with ideas, one language would become more copious than another, as well as more regular and polished. In the course of many centuries, these causes would obscure the common radicals, and make such accessions of new words to each dialect, as to form them all into distinct languages. An uncivilized people have occasion for few words ”

“ But languages may be tempted to borrow beyond their actual needs when the foreign language and culture is higher prized than the native, and when, accordingly, the usage of such words is considered fashionable or tasteful. ”

“ The method whereby a standard language may best secure the greatest possible agreement over the largest possible area, and may join to this agreement the necessary adaptation to the changed circumstances of civilisation, is by keeping to the ancient models in syntax and accidence, and by allowing, at the same time, a certain freedom in the creation of new words, and in the application of new significations to old ones.
Our great national languages are at once literary and colloquial, and hence they possess a standard literary language and a standard colloquial pronunciation and vocabulary. ”

“ But while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. ”

“ It is true, also, that if you consult the works of the most distinguished modern philosophers you will find that whenever they speak of language, they take it for granted that language is a human invention, that words are artificial signs, and that the varieties of human speech arose from different nations agreeing on different sounds as the most appropriate signs of their different ideas. ”

“ They are only a man-made language, a conceptual shorthand, as someone calls them, in which we write our reports of nature; and languages, as is well known, tolerate much choice of expression and many dialects. ”

“ But a fatal objection to the hypothesis as explaining the universal and complete principle of the phenomenon of language in all its ramifications, is the fact that the noblest and most cultivated languages are found, upon investigation into their earliest state, to possess, even at this date, the most artificial form, and to be manifoldly rich, and at the same time highly regular and simple. ”

“ How different would the case be had we but two languages to learn; we should know them infinitely better, and the languages themselves would grow richer, and reach a higher degree of perfection than is found in any of those now existing. ”

“ As the languages of the world, as the forms of speech mutually unintelligible, are counted by the hundred, and the dialects by the thousand, the field is a large one—one supplying much exercise, work, and labour. But the applications of the results obtained are wide also; for, as long as any form of mental philosophy remains susceptible of improvement, as long as its improved form remains undiffused, so long will a knowledge of the structure of language in general, a knowledge of comparative philology, a knowledge of general grammar (for we may choose our term) , have its use and application. ”

“ LINGUISTIC CLASSIFICATION
While, in the broadest sense, language is a trait of culture, its characters are so distinct as to require very different methods of investigation. The study of the different forms of speech in the Old World has become a separate learned pursuit and one in which the problems are so complex as to demand great specialization. The same is true of primitive languages in the New World, as well as in the less cultured parts of the Old. ”

“ Awareness of the fact that language is not a neutral means of expression, communication, and signification, but comes loaded with all the characteristics of our practical endeavors, prejudices included, motivated attempts to generate languages reflecting an improved view of the world. Regardless of the intention, and especially of the success they had, such languages allow us a closer look at their cognitive condition, and hence at their contribution to increases in the efficiency of human practical activities. ”

“ We are told of numerous indirect and secondary advantages of cultivating language in general and the classic languages in particular, which make the acquisition a rewarding labor, even without one particle of the primary use. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All these things being considered, it is easy to understand how mankind have come at length to possess between three and four thousand languages, all different at least as much as French, German, and English, though, as has been shewn, the traces of a common origin are observable in them all. ”

“ 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. ”