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How to Speak and Write Correctly
CHAPTER XIV
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Beginning--Different Sources--The Present
The English language is the tongue now current in England and her
colonies throughout the world and also throughout the greater part of
the United States of America. It sprang from the German tongue spoken
by the Teutons, who came over to Britain after the conquest of that
country by the Romans. These Teutons comprised Angles, Saxons, Jutes
and several other tribes from the northern part of Germany. They spoke
different dialects, but these became blended in the new country, and
the composite tongue came to be known as the Anglo-Saxon which has
been the main basis for the language as at present constituted and is
still the prevailing element. Therefore those who are trying to do
away with some of the purely Anglo-Saxon words, on the ground that
they are not refined enough to express their aesthetic ideas, are
undermining main props which are necessary for the support of some
important parts in the edifice of the language.
The Anglo-Saxon element supplies the essential parts of speech, the
article, pronoun of all kinds, the preposition, the auxiliary verbs,
the conjunctions, and the little particles which bind words into
sentences and form the joints, sinews and ligaments of the language.
It furnishes the most indispensable words of the vocabulary. (See
Chap. XIII.) Nowhere is the beauty of Anglo-Saxon better illustrated
than in the Lord's Prayer. Fifty-four words are pure Saxon and the
remaining ones could easily be replaced by Saxon words. The gospel of
St. John is another illustration of the almost exclusive use of
Anglo-Saxon words. Shakespeare, at his best, is Anglo-Saxon. Here is a
quotation from the _Merchant of Venice_, and of the fifty-five words
fifty-two are Anglo-Saxon, the remaining three French:
All that glitters is not gold-- Often have you heard that told; Many a
man his life hath sold, But my outside to behold. Guilded _tombs_ do
worms infold. Had you been as wise as bold, Young in limbs, in
_judgment_ old, Your answer had not been inscrolled-- Fare you well,
your _suit_ is cold.
The lines put into the mouth of Hamlet's father in fierce intenseness,
second only to Dante's inscription on the gate of hell, have one
hundred and eight Anglo-Saxon and but fifteen Latin words.
The second constituent element of present English is Latin which
comprises those words derived directly from the old Roman and those
which came indirectly through the French. The former were introduced
by the Roman Christians, who came to England at the close of the sixth
century under Augustine, and relate chiefly to ecclesiastical affairs,
such as saint from _sanctus_, religion from _religio_, chalice from
_calix_, mass from _missa_, etc. Some of them had origin in Greek, as
priest from _presbyter_, which in turn was a direct derivative from
the Greek _presbuteros_, also deacon from the Greek _diakonos_.
The largest class of Latin words are those which came through the
Norman-French, or Romance. The Normans had adopted, with the Christian
religion, the language, laws and arts of the Romanized Gauls and
Romanized Franks, and after a residence of more than a century in
France they successfully invaded England in 1066 under William the
Conqueror and a new era began. The French Latinisms can be
distinguished by the spelling. Thus Saviour comes from the Latin
_Salvator_ through the French _Sauveur_; judgment from the Latin
_judiclum_ through the French _jugement_; people, from the Latin
_populus_, through the French _peuple_, etc.
For a long time the Saxon and Norman tongues refused to coalesce and
were like two distinct currents flowing in different directions.
Norman was spoken by the lords and barons in their feudal castles, in
parliament and in the courts of justice. Saxon by the people in their
rural homes, fields and workshops. For more than three hundred years
the streams flowed apart, but finally they blended, taking in the
Celtic and Danish elements, and as a result came the present English
language with its simple system of grammatical inflection and its rich
vocabulary.
The father of English prose is generally regarded as Wycliffe, who
translated the Bible in 1380, while the paternal laurels in the
secular poetical field are twined around the brows of Chaucer.
Besides the Germanic and Romanic, which constitute the greater part of
the English language, many other tongues have furnished their quota.
Of these the Celtic is perhaps the oldest. The Britons at Caesar's
invasion, were a part of the Celtic family. The Celtic idiom is still
spoken in two dialects, the Welsh in Wales, and the Gaelic in Ireland
and the Highlands of Scotland. The Celtic words in English, are
comparatively few; cart, dock, wire, rail, rug, cradle, babe, grown,
griddle, lad, lass, are some in most common use.
The Danish element dates from the piratical invasions of the ninth and
tenth centuries. It includes anger, awe, baffle, bang, bark, bawl,
blunder, boulder, box, club, crash, dairy, dazzle, fellow, gable,
gain, ill, jam, kidnap, kill, kidney, kneel, limber, litter, log,
lull, lump, mast, mistake, nag, nasty, niggard, horse, plough, rug,
rump, sale, scald, shriek, skin, skull, sledge, sleigh, tackle,
tangle, tipple, trust, viking, window, wing, etc.
From the Hebrew we have a large number of proper names from Adam and
Eve down to John and Mary and such words as Messiah, rabbi,
hallelujah, cherub, seraph, hosanna, manna, satan, Sabbath, etc.
Many technical terms and names of branches of learning come from the
Greek. In fact, nearly all the terms of learning and art, from the
alphabet to the highest peaks of metaphysics and theology, come
directly from the Greek-- philosophy, logic, anthropology, psychology,
aesthetics, grammar, rhetoric, history, philology, mathematics,
arithmetic, astronomy, anatomy, geography, stenography, physiology,
architecture, and hundreds more in similar domains; the subdivisions
and ramifications of theology as exegesis, hermeneutics, apologetics,
polemics, dogmatics, ethics, homiletics, etc., are all Greek.
The Dutch have given us some modern sea terms, as sloop, schooner,
yacht and also a number of others as boom, bush, boor, brandy, duck,
reef, skate, wagon. The Dutch of Manhattan island gave us boss, the
name for employer or overseer, also cold slaa (cut cabbage and
vinegar), and a number of geographical terms.
Many of our most pleasing euphonic words, especially in the realm of
music, have been given to us directly from the Italian. Of these are
piano, violin, orchestra, canto, allegro, piazza, gazette, umbrella,
gondola, bandit, etc.
Spanish has furnished us with alligator, alpaca, bigot, cannibal,
cargo, filibuster, freebooter, guano, hurricane, mosquito, negro,
stampede, potato, tobacco, tomato, tariff, etc.
From Arabic we have several mathematical, astronomical, medical and
chemical terms as alcohol, alcove, alembic, algebra, alkali, almanac,
assassin, azure, cipher, elixir, harem, hegira, sofa, talisman, zenith
and zero.
Bazaar, dervish, lilac, pagoda, caravan, scarlet, shawl, tartar, tiara
and peach have come to us from the Persian.
Turban, tulip, divan and firman are Turkish.
Drosky, knout, rouble, steppe, ukase are Russian.
The Indians have helped us considerably and the words they have given
us are extremely euphonic as exemplified in the names of many of our
rivers and States, as Mississippi, Missouri, Minnehaha, Susquehanna,
Monongahela, Niagara, Ohio, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa,
Nebraska, Dakota, etc. In addition to these proper names we have from
the Indians wigwam, squaw, hammock, tomahawk, canoe, mocassin, hominy,
etc.
There are many hybrid words in English, that is, words, springing from
two or more different languages. In fact, English has drawn from all
sources, and it is daily adding to its already large family, and not
alone is it adding to itself, but it is spreading all over the world
and promises to take in the entire human family beneath its folds ere
long. It is the opinion of many that English, in a short time, will
become the universal language. It is now being taught as a branch of
the higher education in the best colleges and universities of Europe
and in all commercial cities in every land throughout the world. In
Asia it follows the British sway and the highways of commerce through
the vast empire of East India with its two hundred and fifty millions
of heathen and Mohammedan inhabitants. It is largely used in the
seaports of Japan and China, and the number of natives of these
countries who are learning it is increasing every day. It is firmly
established in South Africa, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and in many of the
islands of the Indian and South Seas. It is the language of Australia,
New Zealand, Tasmania, and Christian missionaries are introducing it
into all the islands of Polynesia. It may be said to be the living
commercial language of the North American continent, from Baffin's Bay
to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and it is
spoken largely in many of the republics of South America. It is not
limited by parallels of latitude, or meridians of longitude. The two
great English-speaking countries, England and the United States, are
disseminating it north, south, east and west over the entire world.
CHAPTER XI
MASTERS AND MASTERPIECES OF LITERATURE
Great Authors--Classification--The World's Best Books.
The Bible is the world's greatest book. Apart from its character as a
work of divine revelation, it is the most perfect literature extant.
Leaving out the Bible the three greatest works are those of Homer,
Dante and Shakespeare. These are closely followed by the works of
Virgil and Milton.
INDISPENSABLE BOOKS
Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Goethe.
(The best translation of _Homer_ for the ordinary reader is by
Chapman. Norton's translation of _Dante_ and Taylor's translation of
Goethe's _Faust_ are recommended.)
A GOOD LIBRARY
Besides the works mentioned everyone should endeavor to have the
following:
_Plutarch's Lives_, _Meditations of Marcus Aurelius_, _Chaucer_,
_Imitation of Christ_ (Thomas a Kempis), _Holy Living and Holy Dying_
(Jeremy Taylor), _Pilgrim's Progress, Macaulay's Essays, Bacon's
Essays, Addis on s Essays, Essays of Elia_ (Charles Lamb), _Les
Miserables_ (Hugo), _Heroes and Hero Worship_ (Carlyle), _Pal-grave's
Golden Treasury_, _Wordsworth_, _Vicar of Wake field_, _Adam Bede_
(George Eliot), _Vanity Fair_ (Thackeray), _Ivanhoe_ (Scott), _On the
Heights_ (Auerbach), _Eugenie Grandet_ (Balzac), _Scarlet Letter_
(Hawthorne), _Emerson's Essays_, _Boswell's Life of Johnson_, _History
of the English People_ (Green), _Outlines of Universal History, Origin
of Species, Montaigne's Essays, Longfellow, Tennyson, Browning,
Whittier, Ruskin, Herbert Spencer_.
A good encyclopoedia is very desirable and a reliable dictionary
indispensable.
MASTERPIECES OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
_Scarlet Letter, Parkman's Histories, Motley's Dutch Republic, Grant's
Memoirs, Franklin's Autobiography, Webster's Speeches, Lowell's
Bigelow Papers_, also his _Critical Essays_, _Thoreau's Walden_,
_Leaves of Grass_ (Whitman), _Leather-stocking Tales_ (Cooper),
_Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_, _Ben Hur_ and _Uncle Tom's Cabin_.
TEN GREATEST AMERICAN POETS
Bryant, Poe, Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Whitman, Lanier,
Aldrich and Stoddard.
TEN GREATEST ENGLISH POETS
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, Keats,
Shelley, Tennyson, Browning.
TEN GREATEST ENGLISH ESSAYISTS
Bacon, Addison, Steele, Macaulay, Lamb, Jeffrey, De Quincey, Carlyle,
Thackeray and Matthew Arnold.
BEST PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE
In order of merit are: _Hamlet_, _King Lear_, _Othello_, _Antony and
Cleopatra_, _Macbeth_, _Merchant of Venice_, _Henry IV_, _As You Like
It_, _Winter's Tale_, _Romeo and Juliet_, _Midsummer Night's Dream_,
_Twelfth Night_, _Tempest_.
ONLY THE GOOD
If you are not able to procure a library of the great masterpieces,
get at least a few. Read them carefully, intelligently and with a view
to enlarging your own literary horizon. Remember a good book cannot be
read too often, one of a deteriorating influence should not be read at
all. In literature, as in all things else, the good alone should
prevail.