Part 4

We next observe that the first part of the Latin _viginti_ and of the Sanskrit _vin’sati_ contains the same number, which from _dvi_ has been reduced to _vi_. This is not very extraordinary; for the Latin _bis_, twice, which you still hear at our concerts, likewise stands for an original _dvis_, the English _twice_, the Greek _dis_. This _dis_ appears again as a Latin preposition, meaning _a-two_; so that, for instance, _discussion_ means, originally, striking a-two, different from _percussion_, which means striking through and through. _Discussion_ is, in fact, the cracking of a nut in order to get at its kernel. Well, the same word, _dvi_ or _vi_, we have in the Latin word for twenty, which is _vi-ginti_, the Sanskrit _vin-’sati_.

It can likewise be proved that the second part of _viginti_ is a corruption of the old word for ten. Ten, in Sanskrit, is _da’san_; from it is derived _da’sati_, a decad; and this _da’sati_ was again reduced to _’sati_; thus giving us with _vi_ for _dvi_, two, the Sanskrit _vi’sati_ or _vin’sati_, twenty. The Latin _viginti_, the Greek _eikati_, owe their origin to the same process.

Now consider the immense difference—I do not mean in sound, but in character—between two such words as the Chinese _eúl-shĭ_, two-ten, or twenty, and those mere cripples of words which we meet with in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. In Chinese there is neither too much, nor too little. The word speaks for itself, and requires no commentary. In Sanskrit, on the contrary, the most essential parts of the two component elements are gone, and what remains is a kind of metamorphic agglomerate which cannot be understood without a most minute microscopic analysis. Here, then, you have an instance of what is meant by _phonetic corruption_; and you will perceive how, not only the form, but the whole nature of language is destroyed by it. As soon as phonetic corruption shows itself in a language, that language has lost what we considered to be the most essential character of all human speech, namely, that every part of it should have a meaning. The people who spoke Sanskrit were as little aware that _vin’sati_ meant _twice ten_ as a Frenchman is that _vingt_ contains the remains of _deux_ and _dix_. Language, therefore, has entered into a new stage as soon as it submits to the attacks of phonetic change. The life of language has become benumbed and extinct in those words or portions of words which show the first traces of this phonetic mould. Henceforth those words or portions of words can be kept up only artificially or by tradition; and, what is important, a distinction is henceforth established between what is substantial or radical, and what is merely formal or grammatical in words.

For let us now take another instance, which will make it clearer, how phonetic corruption leads to the first appearance of so-called grammatical forms. We are not in the habit of looking on _twenty_ as the plural or dual of _ten_. But how was a plural originally formed? In Chinese, which from the first has guarded most carefully against the taint of phonetic corruption, the plural is formed in the most sensible manner. Thus, man in Chinese is _ģin_; _kiai_ means the whole or totality. This added to _ģin_ gives _ģin-kiai_, which is the plural of man. There are other words which are used for the same purpose in Chinese; for instance, _péi_, which means a class. Hence, _ĭ_, a stranger, followed by _péi_, class, gives _ĭ-péi_, strangers. We have similar plurals in English, but we do not reckon them as grammatical forms. Thus, _man-kind_ is formed exactly like _ĭ-péi_, stranger-kind; _Christendom_ is the same as all Christians, and _clergy_ is synonymous with _clerici_. The same process is followed in other cognate languages. In Tibetan the plural is formed by the addition of such words as _kun_, all, and _t’sogs_, multitude.(27) Even the numerals, _nine_ and _hundred_, are used for the same purpose. And here again, as long as these words are fully understood and kept alive, they resist phonetic corruption; but the moment they lose, so to say, their presence of mind, phonetic corruption sets in, and as soon as phonetic corruption has commenced its ravages, those portions of a word which it affects retain a merely artificial or conventional existence, and dwindle down to grammatical terminations.

I am afraid I should tax your patience too much were I to enter here on an analysis of the grammatical terminations in Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin, in order to show how these terminations arose out of independent words, which were slowly reduced to mere dust by the constant wear and tear of speech. But in order to explain how the principle of phonetic decay leads to the formation of grammatical terminations, let us look to languages with which we are more familiar. Let us take the French adverb. We are told by French grammarians(28) that in order to form adverbs we have to add the termination _ment_. Thus from _bon_, good, we form _bonnement_, from _vrai_, true, _vraiment_. This termination does not exist in Latin. But we meet in Latin(29) with expressions such as _bonâ mente_, in good faith. We read in Ovid, “Insistam forti mente,” I shall insist with a strong mind or will, I shall insist strongly; in French, “J’insisterai fortement.” Therefore, what has happened in the growth of Latin, or in the change of Latin into French, is simply this: in phrases such as _forti mente_, the last word was no longer felt as a distinct word, and it lost at the same time its distinct pronunciation. _Mente_, the ablative of _mens_, was changed into _ment_, and was preserved as a merely formal element, as the termination of adverbs, even in cases where a recollection of the original meaning of _mente_ (with a mind), would have rendered its employment perfectly impossible. If we say in French that a hammer falls _lourdement_, we little suspect that we ascribe to a piece of iron a heavy mind. In Italian, though the adverbial termination _mente_ in _claramente_ is no longer felt as a distinct word, it has not as yet been affected by phonetic corruption; and in Spanish it is sometimes used as a distinct word, though even then it cannot be said to have retained its distinct meaning. Thus, instead of saying, “claramente, concisamente y elegantemente,” it is more elegant to say in Spanish, “clara, concisa y elegante mente.”

It is difficult to form any conception of the extent to which the whole surface of a language may be altered by what we have just described as phonetic change. Think that in the French _vingt_ you have the same elements as in _deux_ and _dix_; that the second part of the French _douze_, twelve, represents the Latin _decim_ in _duodecim_; that the final _te_ of _trente_ was originally the Latin _ginta_ in _triginta_, which _ginta_ was again a derivation and abbreviation of the Sanskrit _da’sa_ or _da’sati_, ten. Then consider how early this phonetic disease must have broken out. For in the same manner as _vingt_ in French, _veinte_ in Spanish, and _venti_ in Italian presuppose the more primitive _viginti_ which we find in Latin, so this Latin _viginti_, together with the Greek _eikati_, and the Sanskrit _vin’sati_ presuppose an earlier language from which they are in turn derived, and in which, previous to _viginti_, there must have been a more primitive form _dvi-ginti_, and previous to this again, another compound as clear and intelligible as the Chinese _eúl-shĭ_, consisting of the ancient Aryan names for two, _dvi_, and ten, _da’sati_. Such is the virulence of this phonetic change, that it will sometimes eat away the whole body of a word, and leave nothing behind but decayed fragments. Thus, _sister_, which in Sanskrit is _svasar_,(30) appears in Pehlvi and in Ossetian as _cho_. _Daughter_, which in Sanskrit is _duhitar_, has dwindled down in Bohemian to _dci_ (pronounced _tsi_).(31) Who would believe that _tear_ and _larme_ are derived from the same source; that the French _même_ contains the Latin _semetipsissimus_; that in _aujourd’hui_ we have the Latin word _dies_ twice!(32) Who would recognize the Latin _pater_ in the Armenian _hayr_? Yet we make no difficulty about identifying _père_ and _pater_; and as several initial h’s in Armenian correspond to an original _p_ (_het_ = _pes_, _pedis_; _hing_ = πέντε; _hour_ = πῦρ), it follows that _hayr_ is _pater_.(33)

We are accustomed to call these changes the growth of language, but it would be more appropriate to call this process of phonetic change decay, and thus to distinguish it from the second or dialectical process which we must now examine, and which involves, as you will see, a more real principle of growth.

In order to understand the meaning of _dialectical __ regeneration_ we must first see clearly what we mean by dialect. We saw before that language has no independent substantial existence. Language exists in man, it lives in being spoken, it dies with each word that is pronounced, and is no longer heard. It is a mere accident that language should ever have been reduced to writing, and have been made the vehicle of a written literature. Even now the largest number of languages have produced no literature. Among the numerous tribes of Central Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, language still lives in its natural state, in a state of continual combustion; and it is there that we must go if we wish to gain an insight into the growth of human speech previous to its being arrested by any literary interference. What we are accustomed to call languages, the literary idioms of Greece, and Rome, and India, of Italy, France, and Spain, must be considered as artificial, rather than as natural forms of speech. The real and natural life of language is in its dialects, and in spite of the tyranny exercised by the classical or literary idioms, the day is still very far off which is to see the dialects, even of such classical languages as Italian and French, entirely eradicated. About twenty of the Italian dialects have been reduced to writing, and made known by the press.(34) Champollion-Figeac reckons the most distinguishable dialects of France at fourteen.(35) The number of modern Greek dialects(36) is carried by some as high as seventy, and though many of these are hardly more than local varieties, yet some, like the Tzaconic, differ from the literary language as much as Doric differed from Attic. In the island of Lesbos, villages distant from each other not more than two or three hours have frequently peculiar words of their own, and their own peculiar pronunciation.(37) But let us take a language which, though not without a literature, has been less under the influence of classical writers than Italian or French, and we shall then see at once how abundant the growth of dialects! The Friesian, which is spoken on a small area on the north-western coast of Germany, between the Scheldt and Jutland, and on the islands near the shore, which has been spoken there for at least two thousand years,(38) and which possesses literary documents as old as the twelfth century, is broken up into endless local dialects. I quote from Kohl’s Travels. “The commonest things,” he writes, “which are named almost alike all over Europe, receive quite different names in the different Friesian Islands. Thus, in Amrum, _father_ is called _aatj_; on the Halligs, _baba_ or _babe_; in Sylt, _foder_ or _vaar_; in many districts on the main-land, _täte_; in the eastern part of Föhr, _oti_ or _ohitj_. Although these people live within a couple of German miles from each other, these words differ more than the Italian _padre_ and the English _father_. Even the names of their districts and islands are totally different in different dialects. The island of _Sylt_ is called _Söl_, _Sol_, and _Sal_.” Each of these dialects, though it might be made out by a Friesian scholar, is unintelligible except to the peasants of each narrow district in which it prevails. What is therefore generally called the Friesian language, and described as such in Friesian grammars, is in reality but one out of many dialects, though, no doubt, the most important; and the same holds good with regard to all so-called literary languages.

It is a mistake to imagine that dialects are everywhere corruptions of the literary language. Even in England,(39) the local patois have many forms which are more primitive than the language of Shakespeare, and the richness of their vocabulary surpasses, on many points, that of the classical writers of any period. Dialects have always been the feeders rather than the channels of a literary language; anyhow, they are parallel streams which existed long before one of them was raised to that temporary eminence which is the result of literary cultivation.

What Grimm says of the origin of dialects in general applies only to such as are produced by phonetic corruption. “Dialects,” he writes,(40) “develop themselves progressively, and the more we look backward in the history of language the smaller is their number, and the less definite their features. All multiplicity arises gradually from an original unity.” So it seems, indeed, if we build our theories of language exclusively on the materials supplied by literary idioms, such as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Gothic. No doubt these are the royal heads in the history of language. But as political history ought to be more than a chronicle of royal dynasties, so the historian of language ought never to lose sight of those lower and popular strata of speech from which these dynasties originally sprang, and by which alone they are supported.

Here, however, lies the difficulty. How are we to trace the history of dialects? In the ancient history of language, literary dialects alone supply us with materials, whereas the very existence of spoken dialects is hardly noticed by ancient writers.

We are told, indeed, by Pliny,(41) that in Colchis there were more than three hundred tribes speaking different dialects; and that the Romans, in order to carry on any intercourse with the natives, had to employ a hundred and thirty interpreters. This is probably an exaggeration; but we have no reason to doubt the statement of Strabo,(42) who speaks of seventy tribes living together in that country, which, even now, is called “the mountain of languages.” In modern times, again, when missionaries have devoted themselves to the study of the languages of savage and illiterate tribes, they have seldom been able to do more than to acquire one out of many dialects; and, when their exertions have been at all successful, that dialect which they had reduced to writing, and made the medium of their civilizing influence, soon assumed a kind of literary supremacy, so as to leave the rest behind as barbarous jargons. Yet, whatever is known of the dialects of savage tribes is chiefly or entirely due to missionaries; and it is much to be desired that their attention should again and again be directed to this interesting problem of the dialectical life of language which they alone have the means of elucidating. Gabriel Sagard, who was sent as a missionary to the Hurons in 1626, and published his “Grand Voyage du pays des Hurons,” at Paris, in 1631, states that among these North American tribes hardly one village speaks the same language as another; nay, that two families of the same village do not speak exactly the same language. And he adds what is important, that their language is changing every day, and is already so much changed that the ancient Huron language is almost entirely different from the present. During the last two hundred years, on the contrary, the languages of the Hurons and Iroquois are said not to have changed at all.(43) We read of missionaries(44) in Central America who attempted to write down the language of savage tribes, and who compiled with great care a dictionary of all the words they could lay hold of. Returning to the same tribe after the lapse of only ten years, they found that this dictionary had become antiquated and useless. Old words had sunk to the ground, and new ones had risen to the surface; and to all outward appearance the language was completely changed.

Nothing surprised the Jesuit missionaries so much as the immense number of languages spoken by the natives of America. But this, far from being a proof of a high state of civilization, rather showed that the various races of America had never submitted, for any length of time, to a powerful political concentration, and that they had never succeeded in founding great national empires. Hervas reduces, indeed, all the dialects of America to eleven families(45)—four for the south, and seven for the north; but this could be done only by the same careful and minute comparison which enables us to class the idioms spoken in Iceland and Ceylon as cognate dialects. For practical purposes the dialects of America are distinct dialects, and the people who speak them are mutually unintelligible.

We hear the same observations everywhere where the rank growth of dialects has been watched by intelligent observers. If we turn our eyes to Burmah, we find that there the Burmese has produced a considerable literature, and is the recognized medium of communication not only in Burmah, but likewise in Pegu and Arakan. But the intricate mountain ranges of the peninsula of the Irawaddy(46) afford a safe refuge to many independent tribes, speaking their own independent dialects; and in the neighborhood of Manipura alone Captain Gordon collected no less than twelve dialects. “Some of them,” he says, “are spoken by no more than thirty or forty families, yet so different from the rest as to be unintelligible to the nearest neighborhood.” Brown, the excellent American missionary, who has spent his whole life in preaching the Gospel in that part of the world, tells us that some tribes who left their native village to settle in another valley, became unintelligible to their forefathers in two or three generations.(47)

In the north of Asia the Ostiakes, as Messerschmidt informs us, though really speaking the same language everywhere, have produced so many words and forms peculiar to each tribe, that even within the limits of twelve or twenty German miles, communication among them becomes extremely difficult. Castren, the heroic explorer of the languages of northern and central Asia,(48) assures us that some of the Mongolian dialects are actually entering into a new phase of grammatical life; and that while the literary language of the Mongolians has no terminations for the persons of the verb, that characteristic feature of Turanian speech had lately broken out in the spoken dialects of the Buriates and in the Tungusic idioms near Njertschinsk in Siberia.

One more observation of the same character from the pen of Robert Moffat, in his “Missionary Scenes and Labors in Southern Africa.” “The purity and harmony of language,” he writes, “is kept up by their pitches, or public meetings, by their festivals and ceremonies, as well as by their songs and their constant intercourse. With the isolated villagers of the desert it is far otherwise; they have no such meetings; they are compelled to traverse the wilds, often to a great distance from their native village. On such occasions fathers and mothers, and all who can bear a burden, often set out for weeks at a time, and leave their children to the care of two or three infirm old people. The infant progeny, some of whom are beginning to lisp, while others can just master a whole sentence, and those still further advanced, romping and playing together, the children of nature, through their livelong day, _become habituated to a language of their own_. The more voluble condescend to the less precocious; and thus, from this infant Babel, proceeds a dialect of a host of mongrel words and phrases, joined together without rule, and _in the course of one generation the entire character of the language is changed_.”

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. Speeches at pitches or public meetings, popular ballads, national laws, religious oracles, exercise, though to a smaller extent, the same influence. They will arrest the natural flow of language in the countless rivulets of its dialects, and give a permanency to certain formations of speech which, without these external influences, could have enjoyed but an ephemeral existence. Though we cannot fully enter, at present, on the problem of the origin of language, yet this we can clearly see, that, whatever the origin of language was, its first tendency must have been towards an unbounded variety. To this there was, however, a natural check, which prepared from the very beginning the growth of national and literary languages. The language of the father became the language of a family; the language of a family that of a clan. In one and the same clan different families would preserve among themselves their own familiar forms and expressions. They would add new words, some so fanciful and quaint as to be hardly intelligible to other members of the same clan. Such expressions would naturally be suppressed, as we suppress provincial peculiarities and pet words of our own, at large assemblies where all clansmen meet and are expected to take part in general discussions. But they would be cherished all the more round the fire of each tent, in proportion as the general dialect of the clan assumed a more formal character. Class dialects, too, would spring up; the dialects of servants, grooms, shepherds, and soldiers. Women would have their own household words; and the rising generation would not be long without a more racy phraseology of their own. Even we, in this literary age, and at a distance of thousands of years from those early fathers of language, do not speak at home as we speak in public. The same circumstances which give rise to the formal language of a clan, as distinguished from the dialects of families, produce, on a larger scale, the languages of a confederation of clans, of nascent colonies, of rising nationalities. Before there is a national language, there have always been hundreds of dialects in districts, towns, villages, clans, and families; and though the progress of civilization and centralization tends to reduce their number and to soften their features, it has not as yet annihilated them, even in our own time.