National language

“ 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. ”

“ There is a necessity to choose and to spread the use of an international language, designed not to replace national idioms in the individual life of each people, but to serve in the written and oral relations between persons whose mother-tongues are different. ”

“ We have, therefore, the fairest opportunity of establishing a national language, and of giving it uniformity and perspicuity in North America, that ever presented itself to mankind."
His standard of pronunciation is thus defined: "The rules of the language itself, and the general practice of the nation, constitute propriety in speaking. If we examine the structure of any language we shall find a certain principle of analogy running [Pg 207] through the whole. ”

“ National separatism is worthwhile for one reason only: that it must show attachment to all that is national and, above all, sympathy for the national language.
Language is the means by which we are enabled to understand the thoughts, feelings, and desires of others1 Language contains individual sounds, signs, or words for all man's thoughts, feelings, and desires. ”

“ All educationists, moreover, throughout the country are in favour of a change by which the teaching of the national spoken language shall take the place of the classical language. Inasmuch, therefore, as all desire to promote education in the National Language, we deem it wise not to delay longer in the matter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A universal language shall be adopted and be taught by all the schools and institutions of the world. A committee appointed by national bodies of learning shall select a suitable language to be used as a medium of international communication. All must acquire it. This is one of the great factors in the unification of man. ”

“ Any sort of movement to have English or any other national language adopted officially as a universal auxiliary language would at once entail a 37 boycott of the favoured language on the part of a ring of other powerful nations, who could not afford to give a rival the benefit of this augmented prestige. And it is precisely upon universality of adoption that the great use of an international language will depend. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Certain things are essential to elucidating and preserving Americanism. One of these is a common language. Not until the necessity for national defense was thrust upon us have we considered seriously requiring that all American residents learn English. It is true we said in 1906 that all naturalized citizens must have a knowledge of the English language, but we neglected to define what we meant, so the knowledge may consist of as many words as each of several hundred judges may decide is a fair test. ”

“ Community of language commonly follows upon community of birth. Yet community of language does not of itself determine or secure nationality. The English and ourselves speak the same language, yet are distinct nations. ”

“ No department of inquiry, certainly, within the circle of the historical sciences, has a stronger claim upon the attention of such a national institution; and it becomes all Americans to countenance and aid its efforts by every means in their power.
Before closing this cursory and imperfect survey of the varieties of human language, we have to glance at one or two dialects or groups of dialects which have hitherto resisted all attempts at classification. ”

“ But outside the world of business other languages are entering the field, and striving for equal rights. The tendency is all towards self-assertion on the part of the nationalities that are beginning a new era of national life and importance. ”

“ Again, it is only from the annals of political history that we can learn whether one language has come in contact with another, how long this contact has lasted, which of the two nations stood higher in civilization, which was the conquering and which the conquered, which of the two established the laws, the religion, and the arts of the country, and which produced the greatest number of national teachers, popular poets, and successful demagogues. ”

“ It all comes back to this—you cannot eat your cake and have it too. Il faut souffrir pour être belle. The international language has the defects of its qualities. But then its qualities are great, and the world is their sphere of utility.
XIII
objection to an international language on the ground that it will soon split up into dialects
This is a particularly unfortunate objection, because it displays a radical ignorance of the history of language, and of the conditions under which it develops. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That language, sir, which shall become most generally known in the civilized world, will impart great importance over the nation that shall use it. The language of the United States will, in future times, be diffused over a greater extent of country than any other that we know. ”

“ Let us take up together the work so magnificently performed by the United States and by England down to the commencement of this century. Once for all let prejudices be cast aside. Let us unite in a great English-speaking family. Let us be content to learn from each other. And when the curtain of the twenty-first century is raised, may the successful anglicisation of the world be revealed; may the real spirit of our institutions and laws prevail everywhere, and the English language have become the universal dialect of mankind. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Do you think that one who may probably visit most countries in Europe, and their foreign settlements, should be able to converse in no other language than his own? If the knowledge of languages is not useful to him, I know not to whom it is so. ”

“ An American or an Englishman, or any one speaking English, could take with him a translatophone and travel around the world, understanding the language of every nation, of every people—the polished tongues of civilization, the speech of the scholars of the Orient, and even the jabber of the wild savages of Africa. ”

“ 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? ”

“ How, then, shall we achieve the more immediate, rational and practical aim, of acquiring a single auxiliary medium of international speech, that shall replace no single language, however obscure, that shall remain forever neutral, and that shall be equally acceptable to all? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And when we see how nearly this artificial nation comes, in every point but that of language, to the likeness of those nations which are defined by language, we see that it is a nation defined by language which sets the standard, and after the model of which the artificial nation forms itself. ”

“ It seems strange, also, when we recollect that in the employ of every nation there are numerous persons skilled in the language of every other nation of political or commercial importance, to serve the one as interpreters of the thoughts and words of the other, and to translate the ideas and ideals of these peoples for each other in any emergency that may arise. ”

“ 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 the civilized West, where pleasure, business, and science are daily forging new ties of common interests between the nations, those engaged in such pursuits have clearly much to gain from the simplification of their pursuits by a common language. ”

“ In America the events of the last hundred years, especially the vast tide of immigration, have greatly impaired our purity of race and our unity of religion and even threatened our inheritance of English speech. If our English language is saved it will be due in no small degree to the growing world power of the language itself and of its literature, as well as to the world-wide ocean commerce of Great Britain and her overseas empire. ”

“ 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! ”

“ To the lonely youth upon the New Zealand sheep farm, to the young Hindu, to the trapper under a Labrador tilt, to the half-breed assistant at a Burmese oil-well, to the self-educating Scottish miner or the Egyptian clerk, the Empire and the English language should exist, visibly and certainly, as the media by which his spirit escapes from his immediate surroundings and all the urgencies of every day, into a limitless fellowship of thought and beauty. ”

“ Will the speech of the British sink into dialectic corruption, or will the British resolutely stamp out their undue local divergences from the normal English of the main body of the users of the language in the United States? Will they frankly accept the inevitable? Will they face the facts as they are? Will they follow the lead of the Americans when we shall have the leadership of the language, as the Americans followed their lead when they had it? ”

“ Everywhere, in short, wherever a power is supposed to be founded on nationality, the common feeling of mankind instinctively takes language as the test of nationality. We assume language as the test of a nation, without going into any minute questions as to the physical purity of blood in that nation. A continuous territory, living under the same government and speaking the same tongue, forms a nation for all practical purposes. If some of its inhabitants do not belong to the original stock by blood, they at least belong to it by adoption. ”

“ To enable the learner to make direct use of his knowledge with persons of any nationality, whether the language be universally accepted or not; in other words, the language is to be directly a means of international communication. ”

“ But it is not for me to decide the very momentous question, as to which nation speaks the best English. The Americans generally improve upon the inventions of others; probably they may have improved upon our language. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The site of populous cities and of trim little towns was once wild waste or sunless woodland. Our rude forefathers, wandering upon uninhabited tracts, converted them into fair fields and domains which their descendants rounded out eventually into nations. Humanity has prospered and today we often think of countries in terms of their characteristic landscape and scenery. But the thought naturally suggested by the name France or England is that of a nation whose people speak French or English. To separate the idea of language from that of nationality is rarely possible. ”