ENGLISII GRAMMAR AND THE ANGLO-SAXON. § 103. English Grammar is almost exclusively occupied with what is of Anglo-Saxon origin. The few inflections that we have are all Anglo-Saxon. The English genitive, the general mode of forming the plural of nouns, and the terminations by which we express the comparative and superlative of adjectives, er and est, the inflections of the pronouns and of the verbs, and the most frequent terminations of our adverbs, ly, are all AngloSaxon; so are the auxiliary verbs. THE STABILITY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. § 104. "Look at the English," says Halbertsma, "polluted by Danish and Norman conquests, distorted in its genuine and noble features by old and recent endeavors to mould it after the French fashion, invaded by a hostile force of Greek and Latin words, threatening by increasing hosts to overwhelm the indigenous terms. In these long contests against the combined might of so many forcible enemies, the language, it is true, has lost some of its power of inversion in the structure of sentences, the means of denoting the differences of gender, and the nice distinctions by inflection and termination; almost every word is attacked by the spasm of the accent and the drawing of conso nants to wrong positions, yet the old English principle is not overpowered. Trampled down by the ignoble feet of strangers, its spring retains force enough to restore itself; it lives and plays through all the veins of the language; it impregnates the innumerable strangers entering into its dominions, and stains them with its color; not unlike the Greek, which, in taking up Ori. ental words, stripped them of their foreign costume, and bid them appear as native Greeks."-BOSWORTH's Dict., p. 39. THE ENGLISH THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE. § 105. The time was when the Latin was the universal language of the civilized world, so far as any language can be said to have been universal. From Rome, as a common centre, went forth the Christian religion in the Latin language, which was read and written by all learned scholars. More recently, the French has had a stronger claim than any other to be considered the universal language. It was more generally studied and spoken than any other in Europe. "Several foreigners," says Gibbon, "have seized the opportunity of speaking to Europe in the common dialect, the French; and Germany pleads the authority of Leibnitz and Frederick, of the first of her philosophers and the greatest of her kings." When Gibbon submitted to Hume a specimen of his intended history composed in French, he received a remarkable letter in reply. "Why," said Hume, "do you compose in French, and carry fagots into the wood, as Horace says in regard to Romans who wrote in Greek? I grant that you have a like motive to those Romans, and adopt a language much more generally diffused than your national tongue. But have you not remarked the fate of those two ancient tongues in following ages? The Latin, though less celebrated, and confined to more narrow limits, has, in some measure, outlived the Greek, and is now more generally understood by men of letters. Let the French, therefore, triumph in the present diffusion of their tongue. Our solid and increasing establishments in America, where we less dread the innovations of barbarians, promise a superior stability and duration to the English language."-T. WATTS, Lond. Phil. Soc., vol. ii., p. 211. How have the prospects of the English language brightened since this prophecy of Hume was written, nearly a century ago! How are the evidences increasing of the final accomplishment of that prophecy in its becoming the universal language! It is calculated that, at the close of the present century, it will be spoken by at least one hundred and fifty millions of human beings. It should be added, that the English is a medium language, and is thus adapted to diffusion. In the Gothic family, it stands midway between the Teutonic and the Scandinavian branches, touching both, and, to some extent, reaching into both. A German or a Dane finds much in the English which exists in his own language. It unites by certain bonds of consanguinity, as no other language does, the Romanic with the Gothic languages. An Italian or a Frenchman finds a large class of words in the English which exists in his own language, though the basis of the English is Gothic. Thus it is adapted to spread among the races that speak those languages, both in Europe and America. What it has in common with these border languages, gives it power to replace what is peculiar to them, and thus to identify them with itself. PROSPECTS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. § 106. Having looked at the past history of the English language, and at its present character, we naturally inquire what will be its ultimate Destiny. Will it ever cease to be a living language, and, like Sanscrit and Greek, Latin and AngloSaxon, be studied by the scholar on the printed page, but not heard from the lips of the people? Will the nations who speak it ever be overrun by a race of barbarians, as were the Classical nations of antiquity? Will another Julius Cæsar, another Hengist and Horsa, another Danish Canute, another Norman Conqueror, in turn gain possession of England, and change the dynasty, the laws, and the language of the land? And, then, is the fate of the mother-country to be our own? Will a band of irresistible warriors come from the ocean to change our institutions, our laws, and our language? Will our mother-tongue become a dead language, and be found only in books? To this it may be replied, that the experience of the past is not to be the mould of the future. From the horoscope of the present a brighter destiny may be predicted. The application of the art of printing on the one hand, and popular education on the other, have so multiplied books and readers, that the language has become fixed not only in multitudes of standard works pubblished, but also in the minds of the people who read it and speak it. It will not, therefore, experience any great change, like that of the Latin into the Italian. The Anglo-Saxon race will not only keep their own institutions and their own language, but they will impress those institutions and that language upon others. Besides the natural growth of population, that grasping spirit, that love of conquest for which they have been distinguished ever since they traversed the German Ocean in their frail boats, pursuing plunder, will help to extend and perpetuate the English language. The love of religious conquest, as when the pious missionary goes forth under the banner of the cross; the love of literary conquest, as when the schoolmaster is abroad; the love of commercial conquest, as shown by our merchants and navigators; the love of military conquest, which the Anglo-Saxon race have shown all over the globe, and are now showing, will only extend the language. Even now, the British empire, extending over a population of one hundred and fifty-six millions in different parts of the globe, listens to that language as to a voice of power. The population of our own country, doubling every twenty-five years, amounts to more than twenty-five millions. The Celtic language in the British Isles, namely, the Gaelic in the Highlands of Scotland, the Erse in Ireland, the Cambrian in Wales, is passing away, just as in Cornwall it has passed away. We may believe, too, that somewhere in the future, the French population of Canada, the Celts, the Spanish population of Mexico and Cuba, the Celts, will give place to the Anglo-Saxon race, or, rather, as in past times, be absorbed in it, and become one with us in blood and language. We may believe that a like assimilation will take place between it and the other races which find a home in our country, are educated in our schools, and placed under the influence of our institutions. We may believe that, fixed in the standards of the national literature, the language of the Constitution will be familiar to the hundreds of millions in North America as their vernacular tongue; and that Shakspeare and Milton will be read ages hence on the banks of the Connecticut and the Potomac, on the banks of the Columbia and the Sacramento. QUESTIONS UNDER CHAPTER VI. 1. What are the principal elements which enter into the composition of the English language? 2. Give HARRIS's statement with respect to borrowing from other languages; also WHEWELL'S and CAMDEN'S. 3. What is said of its copiousness? 4. What is said of the number of Anglo-Saxon words in the language, and also of the comparative number in actual use? 5. What is said of the kind of Anglo-Saxon words in use? 6. What is said of English grammar in its relation to the Anglo-Saxon part of our language? 7. What is said of the stability of the English language? 8. What is said of the Latin-the French-the English, in respect to a universal language? 9. Can you mention what passed between GIBBON and HUME? 10. What reasons have you for the opinion that the English will be the universal language? 11. Describe the prospects of the English language. EXERCISES UNDER PART I. HISTORICAL ANALYSIS. § 107. BY HISTORICAL ANALYSIS is meant that process by which each word in a sentence is referred to the particular language from which it was historically derived. In order to do this, the fourth part of this work can be consulted, and also an etymological dictionary. EXAMPLES. 1. Happiness is like the statue of Isis, whose veil no mortal ever raised.-LANDON. Statue and mortal are from the Latin; Isis from the Greek; all the other words are from the Anglo-Saxon. 2. High on a throne of royal state, which far To that bad eminence.-MILTON. State, exalted, eminence, and merit, are from the Latin; throne, richest, and royal, from the Norman-French; barbaric, Ormus, and Ind, from the Greek; Satan, from the Hebrew; the remainder from the Anglo-Saxon. 3. From what languages do the following groups of words come? a. Cromlech, bard, pibroch, clan, bran, mop, button? b. Province, funeral, liberty, college, firmament,ruminate? c. Hand, thousand, full, wealth, hills, valleys? d. Whitby, tarn, Codale, Milthorp, hose? e. Conquest, castle, venison, pork, feasts, beauty, mountains? f. Idol, episcopacy, diamond, magic, melody, monarch? |