Spoken language

“ How can a spirit who thinks and speaks from the universal language of ideas, address a man in an earthly language, so that if a dozen men of different nationalities were listening, each one would hear his own language spoken? ”

“ In the vernacular, we pass from hearing to reading. It is spoken language, the first manifestation of our thought, which gives us the key to written language. In the same way, but in an inverse order, those who learn a language in books should often hear the written text, to familiarize themselves with the pronunciation and to recognize the written words in the spoken words. Their progress in understanding the spoken language will be much more rapid, if they comprehend the written language without translating it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are so in the habit of using language that we are likely never to have thought of it in its real meaning as a part of our mental activity. We know that we have two kinds of language, spoken and written, and that spoken language consists of certain sounds, and written language of certain visual symbols. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sounds which are distinct in one generation may be confounded in another, and new distinctions may be made, new sounds may arise. A spoken language is, therefore, necessarily a vague and floating entity, and English is no exception to the rule. ”

“ The introduction of culture and knowledge, of art and science, may bring in a vocabulary of expressions for the knowledge communicated, the conceptions taught or prompted; but it cannot touch the most intimate fund of speech, the words significant of those ideas without whose designation no spoken tongue would be worthy of the name. ”

“ Our language, which is about the simplest, in its grammatical construction, of any in the world, will be rendered accessible to the whole of mankind, and will be much more extensively read and spoken. ”

“ V. Dialectal and Popular Words.
Whether words may, by conscious effort, be preserved in colloquial usage is an unsolved question, though perhaps our Society may help to solve it; there is, however, another and more certain benefit which its members, or at any rate such of them as are writers, may confer upon the language. There are many excellent words spoken in uneducated speech and dialect all about us, which would be valuable additions to our standard vocabulary if they could be given currency in it. ”

“ Language is the conventional means by which man communicates his thoughts. It is a complex unity composed of thought and symbol, spoken or written. Because it is the means by which different minds are identified in thought, it becomes an essential factor in social organization. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is commonly supposed that there are but two kinds of language among men—the written and the spoken: whereas it follows, from the very nature of language itself, that there must necessarily be as many modes of conveying our impressions to our fellow-creatures, as there are senses or modes of receiving impressions in them. ”

“ It is necessary, for instance, to give much attention to the understanding of the language as spoken rapidly and idiomatically by natives; but if this occupies the whole of our time we shall be able to do nothing else, and shall neither learn to speak, nor to read, nor to write. ”

“ In order to learn to write and read our own modern living language, which we have spoken from childhood—in order to appreciate the system employed in representing it upon paper, we are to acquire a considerable knowledge of two foreign ancient dead languages, the pronunciation of which no one knows, and all dispute about!! ”

“ As soon as language becomes a medium of communication between two speaking persons, a threefold distinction at once arises between the here or subject, the there or object, and the person spoken to or considered as a subject in himself, though an object in regard to the speaker. ”

“ Where nearly all who speak the language also read and write it, as in our own country, the written tongue, even in its highest literary forms, is apt to be much more familiar and colloquial, but at the same time the written and the spoken tongue keep closer together. ”

“ The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not. ”

“ In an astonishingly short time I reached the point where the language taught itself—where I learned to speak merely by speaking. This point is the place which students taught foreign languages in our schools and colleges find great difficulty in reaching. I think the main trouble is that they learn too much of a language at a time. A French child with a vocabulary of two hundred words can express more spoken ideas than a student of French can with a knowledge of two thousand. ”

“ Reading and writing are not spontaneous processes; they are even unnatural processes if we do not already possess the spoken form. Learning how to use classical or artificialized forms of language such as poetry or rhetoric is a more or less studial process, an unnatural process if we do not already possess the normal colloquial. ”

“ and all speech, written or spoken, is in a dead language until it finds a willing and prepared hearer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You may not be able to understand the language they speak, for many of them are foreign born, but in time you come to talk to them through the smile, the touch on the arm, or the clap of the hands, which signals are, after all, the universal language of the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But after all, this is only what may be called a variety of expression, the same general idea being differently brought out, just as in speech the same thoughts are displayed in various idioms. All arts and all machines are but dialects of one language—reasonings and conclusions in tangible forms and figures—a universal speech, understood by all men. ”

“ So was it also with the human race; the acquisition of speech constituted the first stage in the progressive development of its capacities. We, as individuals, have forgotten both the labour that the task cost us and the enlightenment its successful accomplishment brought us: the whole lies too far back in our lives to be reached by our memories; we feel as if we had always spoken, as directly and naturally as we have thought. As a race, too, we have done the same thing: neither history nor tradition can penetrate to a period at all approaching that of the formation of language ”

“ If the most eminent speakers are not to direct our practice, where shall we look for a guide? The answer is extremely easy; the rules of the language itself, and the general practice of the nation, constitute propriety in speaking. If we examin the structure of any language, we shall find a certain principle of analogy running through the whole. We shall find in English that similar combinations of letters have usually the same pronunciation; and that words, having the same terminating syllable, generally have the accent at the same distance from that termination. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A foreigner, unacquainted with the language, could not glean the drift of a conversation in English, except perhaps a trifle from the tone of the voices and more from the natural signs used—the smiles and frowns, the expressions of the faces, the play of eyes, lips, hands and whole body. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has been the effort of the author to connect the study of language with the study of other branches of anthropology, for a language is best understood when the habits, customs, institutions, philosophy—the subject-matter of thought embodied in the language—are best known. ”

“ It will be readily admitted that the pleasures of reading and conversing, the advantage of accuracy in business, the necessity of clearness and precision in communicating ideas, require us to be able to speak and write our own tongue with ease and correctness. But there are more important reasons, why the language of this country should be reduced to such fixed principles, as may give its pronunciation and construction all the certainty and uniformity which any living tongue is capable of receiving. ”

“ The continuity and similarity of the course of linguistic history in all its stages, and the competency of linguistic correspondences, wherever we find them, to prove unity of origin and community of tradition, are truths which we need to bear in mind as we proceed with our inquiries into language. ”

“ The children of to-day resemble those children of humanity, the first framers of articulate speech, and the children of a single household, if left to themselves, would have each his own jargon, his own dialect. ”

“ It is thus that it has become “scientific” to analyze language as itself a commanding element in man’s life. The history of word-roots, their modification under the influences of changes wrought in the vocal organs by habit or by climate, the laws of phonetic change to which they are obedient, and their persistence under all disguises of dialect, as if they13 were full of a self-originated life, a self-directed energy of influence, is united with the study of grammatical forms in the construction of scientific conceptions of the evolution and uses of human speech. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The pure human language, in conjunction first with the speech-organ of the people when its first sound was uttered, and the product of these, in conjunction further with all the developments which this first sound in the given circumstances necessarily acquired—all this together gives as its final result the present language of the people. ”

“ Far be it from me to underrate the value of the development of the instinct of speech and of the increased comprehension of our own language which comes from philological studies. By the study of a foreign language, especially of one which differs widely from ours, the signs and forms of words are first clearly distinguished from the thoughts which they express. ”

“ Examine the adult who is supposed to have ‘learnt’ a foreign language; in the majority of cases you will find that his speech is pidgin-speech, that his sounds are wrong and wrongly distributed, that his inflexions are inaccurate, that his sentences are constructed on the model of his native language, that he uses foreign words in a way unknown to the native users of these same words. ”

“ Thus, while language in general may be classed as a natural phenomenon, a particular tongue must be regarded as an acquired means to an end—an artifice of conventionality—one, therefore which is subordinate to the purposes of society—one that is superior but helpful to the individual ”

“ It was they who moulded their tongues into so brief and expressive a form, and, in the course of their progressive formation through successive centuries, rendered them daily more brief and more comprehensive. It was the men who made the language—not the language the men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The English vocabulary offers a fruitful field of study. First of all, the cast of thought that it expresses is individual. Ours is a distinct, not necessarily superior, civilization; and all the forms of intellectual activity represented by our tongue are so characteristic that one may well believe in the formative influence of a language over the people speaking it. ”