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“ While cautious philologists are slow in admitting distinct affinities between the generic families of speech,—as the Semitic and Indo-European,—which would be indicative of a common origin, they agree in the judgment, that, on account of the mutability of language, especially when unwritten, and while in its earlier stages, no conclusion adverse to the monogenist doctrine can be drawn from the diversities of speech now existing, or that are known to have existed at any past time. ”

“ But another important question still remains to be considered, namely, whether the trifling changes which can alone be witnessed by a single generation, can possibly represent the working of that machinery which, in the course of many centuries, has given rise to such mighty revolutions in the forms of speech throughout the world. Everyone may have noticed in his own lifetime the stealing in of some slight alterations of accent, pronunciation or spelling, or the introduction of some words borrowed from a foreign language to express ideas of which no native term precisely conveyed the import. ”

“ It is a pity, indeed, that the Delawares, the Wyandots and the Potowatamies, with languages formed on a construction which had not been before thought of, come to destroy their beautiful theories. What then? are we to suppress the languages of our good Indians, or to misrepresent them, that the existing systems on Universal Grammar and the origin of language may be preserved? No, my friend, we shall on the contrary, I hope, labour with all our might to make them known, and provide, at least, additional facts for future theorists. ”

“ We then have the discoveries of modern philologists, not only to positively deny the infallibility of the common-origin theory, but to bring forward a number of other claimants for the greatest antiquity, as well entitled to a hearing as the Hebrew.
UNIVERSALITY OF SPEECH.
Diversity in the origin of speech does not of necessity imply diversity in the origin of race. Thus with a unity of race, circumstances may be conceived in which independent tongues may have arisen in different localities; whereas with a diversity of race, but one language hypothetically may have been given to all. ”

“ The unity of language of the whole human race follows from the unity of its descent from one human pair (vid., Gen 2:22) . But as the origin and formation of the races of mankind are beyond the limits of empirical research, so no philology will ever be able to prove or deduce the original unity of human speech from the languages which have been historically preserved, however far comparative grammar may proceed in establishing the genealogical relation of the languages of different nations. ”

“ The absurdity of assuming that the student of Philology could separate a single language or dialect from the group to which it belongs, that he could isolate Anglo-Saxon from Gothic, or Middle English from Anglo-Saxon, the Celtic of the Cymbry from the Celtic of the Gaels, is not greater than to assume that the study of our Literature can be severed from the study of those literatures which stand in precisely the same relation to it as one of those dialects stands to the others in the same group. ”

“ Where one race imposes a new language on another, the change is most marked in the vocabulary while the ancient usage in syntax or the construction of sentences is the more apt to survive and these ancient forms often give us a valuable clew to the aboriginal speech. This same Anaryan syntax is particularly marked in the Irish language, a condition which fits in with the other Pre-Aryan usages and types found there. ”

“ It is possible for a population to substitute a wholly new language and type of civilization for the old ones, as the American negro has done, and yet to remain relatively unmodified racially, or at least to carry on its former physical type unchanged in a large proportion of its members. On the other hand, a change of speech without some change of culture seems impossible. Certainly wherever Greek, Latin, Spanish, English, Arabic, Pali, Chinese have penetrated, there have been established new phases of civilization. ”

“ Where languages have rules of etymology and syntax, that differ greatly, which is the case of the Hebrew compared with Greek or Latin, this will become a new source of difformity. For the rules of etymology and syntax determine the application and purport of words in many cases. Agreeably to which we see that children, while yet unacquainted with that propriety of words and phrases which custom establishes, often make new words and constructions, which, though improper according to common usage, are yet very analogous to the tenor of the language in which they speak. ”

“ The imperfections for which such reforms were designed in great part still perplex us. Our written language still remains to the utter confusion of the eye and the ear of the baffled foreigner, who often discovers that what is written is not spoken, and what is spoken is not written. The orthography of some words leads to their false pronunciation. Hence originated that peculiar invention of our own, that odd-looking monster in philology, “a pronouncing dictionary,” which offends our eyes by this unhappy attempt to write down sounds. ”

“ That a group of languages need not in the least correspond to a racial group or a culture area is easily demonstrated. We may even show how a single language intercrosses with race and culture lines. The English language is not spoken by a unified race. In the United States there are several millions of negroes who know no other language. ”

“ They differ so much, that a stranger fully conversant with one cannot understand the other. This jargon originated, probably, from intermixing prisoners of war of different nationalities who were enslaved, and their languages mingled with each other, and with that of their conquerors. The pure-blooded Nez Percés all understand the jargon, learning it when children, together with their own proper language. Nor is this all. The jargon is more or less modified by each of the several languages, or dialects, in which it is spoken. ”

“ Of course, the community must be one which has reached a certain level of culture, and its customs and institutions must imply organization and recognition of fixed principles. Where the customs and institutions are founded on mere unreasoning habit and precedent, we are dealing with a community of barbarians, and consequently with languages or dialects in a perpetual state of flux.
The changes wrought by phonetic decay are sometimes sufficient to alter the whole aspect of a language, and are at once the foundation and the riddle of etymology. ”

“ It may be said in favor of this claim of the Alpine race to be the original inventor of synthetic speech, that language is ever a measure of culture and the higher forms of civilization are greatly hampered by the limitations of speech imposed by the less highly evolved languages, namely, the monosyllabic and the agglutinative, which include nearly all the Non-Aryan languages of the world. ”

“ Anglo-Saxon Aboriginal
But for all this we could almost as ill spare this side of the language as the other. It represents and supplies needs not less real than the other does. Philosophy and science and the arts of a high civilization find their utterance in the Latin words of our language, or, if not in the Latin, in the Greek, which for present purposes may be grouped with them. How they should have found utterance in the speech of rude tribes, which, never having cultivated the things, must needs have been without the words which should express those things. ”

“ Where many peoples, each few in number, are thrown together, an intertribal language is developed. To a large extent this is gesture speech; but to a limited extent useful and important words are adopted by various tribes, and out of this material an intertribal “jargon” is established. Travelers and all others who do not thoroughly study a language are far more likely to acquire this jargon speech than the real speech of the people; and the tendency to base relationship upon such jargons has led to confusion. ”

“ No local practice, however respectable, will justify the attempt. There is great dignity, as well as propriety, in respecting the universal and long-established usages of a nation. With these views of the subject, I feel myself bound to reject all modern innovations which violate the established principles and analogies of the language, and destroy or impair the value of alphabetical writing. I have therefore endeavored to present to my fellow-citizens the English language in its genuine purity, as we have received the inheritance from our ancestors, without removing a landmark. ”

“ It is scarcely necessary to state, of course, that no one dreams of supplanting the French language anywhere on French soil. What attitude shall they assume toward the "patoisants," that is, those who insist on using the local dialect, and refuse to conform to the usage of the Félibres? Is it not useless, after all, to hope for a more perfect unification of the dialects of the langue d'oc, and, if unification is the aim, does not logical reasoning lead to the conclusion that the French language already exists, perfectly unified, and absolutely necessary? ”

“ It is only dialects like those of Slavs and [377] Lithuanians which still cling to an elaborate system of flection. English has fitted itself to become a universal language by struggling to assimilate its condition to that of Chinese. Even the polysynthetic languages of America can, with a certain show of reason, claim a higher place for themselves than inflectional speech. If the object of language is to express thought, it is obvious that that thought should be expressed as a whole, as in a picture; and this is just what is done by a polysynthetic sentence. ”

“ An isolated community will by slow degrees form a new language [203] for itself. Just as the history and character of one society differ from those of another, so too must the dialect or language differ in which the society finds expression. Even where the rapid and intimate intercourse of modern civilization and the safeguard of a common and widely-studied literature stand in the way, as in the case of England and America, dialectical differences and peculiarities will yet spring up. In savage and barbarous communities the growth of innumerable dialects is a matter of necessity. ”

“ We in America, with our formal manners, our bloodless complexions, our perpetual decorum and self-suppression, are about as much in sympathy with the real element of Shakespeare's plays as a Baptist parson is with a fox-hunt. Our blood is stirred by the narration, but our constitution could never stand the reality. As we read we translate all things into the dialect of our province; or if we must mouth, let us say that we translate the dialect of the English province into the language of our empire ”

“ While speech and mode of writing are distinct and independent, the one of the other, the influence of language structure in the evolution of graphic systems is conspicuous. Thus a sentence of English speech might be expressed by Chinese characters or Egyptian hieroglyphics. In the Tel Armana tablets, more than one language appears in the cuneiform. We have seen how the so called Hittite characters were found on occasion yielding Greek words, and the use of the Roman alphabet for French, German, Italian and other languages, are every day examples. ”

“ If, for example, this leads us to the conclusion that grammatical simplicity is the last point reached in the evolution of language, we must go to savage dialects for confirmation before we can accept the conclusion as proven. Moreover, there is much of the primitive machinery of speech which has been lost in the languages of the civilized nations of the world, but preserved in the more conservative idioms of savage tribes—for savages, it must be remembered, are the most conservative of human beings ”

“ But in the stimulating study of certain of the laws of linguistics, which M. Bréal, one of the foremost of French philologists, has called ‘Semantics,’ we are told that to condemn neologisms absolutely would be most unfortunate and most useless. “Every progress in a language is, first of all, the act of an individual, and then of a minority, large or small. A land where all innovation should be forbidden would take from its language all chance of development.” ”

“ How absurd, therefore, to suppose that primeval savages originated a language which has held its own like the old Aryan and become the prolific mother of the three or four thousand dialects now in existence! Before a durable language can arise, there must be an aggregation of numerous tribes into a people, so that there may be need of communication on a large scale, and so that tradition may be strengthened. ”

“ But the word is purely ethnical—a proper adjective like our words French or English, and, like these, capable of substantive use in naming either the people or their language, but not their land. Needless to say, these errors have no currency whatever among European peoples excepting the English, and they have very little currency in England. It seems high time for us of America to amend not only our false pronunciation, but our false usage, and the false spelling upon which these rest. ”

“ For example, if materials from only one dialect are published to a greater extent than another, this may result in de facto promotion of that one dialect to the status of “standard”, and may privilege that variety over others for use in future language revitalisation efforts (Muhlhauser 1996; Hale 2001; Eisenlohr 2004; Hill 2002) . In Native North America, there is today not a single speech community that is not endangered at some level. ”