HOW ENGLISH DIFFERS FROM OTHER LANGUAGES.
[1.] Perhaps this absurdity, and the complications it involves, may be better illustrated by the following few lines from one of DeBertrand’s novels. (They might be found in a dozen others.)
“Madame,” dit il, “il y a là une [feminine] personne qui demand M. le Baron.”
“Quelle [feminine] est cette [feminine] personne?”
“C’est un [masculine] monsieur,” etc.[I]
Thus, it will be seen, both feminine and masculine articles must be used to designate the same object; and a person must be spoken of as feminine, although the person is a man; the reason being that personne, the word, is feminine.—Richard Grant White.
[I] “Madame,” said he, “there is a person without who asks for the Baron.”
“Who is this person?”
“It is a gentleman,” etc.
[2.] For contrary to apparently reasonable assumption, the history of language shows that minute and highly wrought grammatical forms are the signs, or at least the accompaniments, not of advanced civilization and high culture, but of a rude and savage condition of society. The further we penetrate the obscure of antiquity, the more grammar we find. The oldest language known to us, the Sanskrit, is the most complex and elaborate in its grammar; the youngest, English, is, to all intents and purposes, grammarless; and Sanskrit grammar is at least four thousand years old. My readers will now see why it was that I said the minute forms and complicated grammatical relations of the Greek language are not the signs of a high development of language, but were relics of barbarism.—Richard Grant White.
[3.] “Galore,” gā-loreˈ. Plenty, abundance.