Questions at Issue in Our English Speech

by Edwin W. Bowen

Now, there may be several independent linguistic provinces. If so, a hard struggle for supremacy follows. Eventually some one of the provinces succeeds in establishing its political mastery over the others, and then begins the process of linguistic expansion and assimilation. Thus the dialect of the most powerful province or district is at length made the speech of the entire people. In this manner not only all the local patois, but all the competing dialects also, are either absorbed, or are crushed out by the dialect of the dominant political community.

A striking illustration of this process is furnished in the history of the development of the Latin tongue. This dominant language which still survives, more or less disguised, in the speech of a large part of Europe, as well as in the speech of Latin America, and which has so generously enriched our own English tongue, as Whitney tells us in his “Language and the Study of Language,” was the vernacular less than twenty-five centuries ago, of an insignificant district in central Italy, the inhabitants of which at that remote day were but little above savages. History is silent as to when and how this tribe found their way into that region of the Italian peninsula. Their speech was only one of a group of related dialects, “descendants and joint representatives of an older tongue, spoken by the first immigrants, which had grown apart by the effect of the usual dissimilating processes.” There still survive remains of at least two of the rival dialects, Oscan and Umbrian, which throw a flood of light on the prehistoric period of Italian speech. The Latin dialect was threatened on the north by the Etruscan, the vernacular of a civilized people dwelling beyond the Tiber; and it was likewise menaced on the south by the Greek language, spoken by the Hellenic colonies, long before settled in southern Italy and Sicily. Both of these tongues are assumed to have been superior in intrinsic character to the crude, primitive dialect of the early Romans. But the rudimentary Latin speech spread pari passu with the extension of the Roman dominion. As the Roman arms brought one Italian district after another under Roman sway, the tongue of that mighty people grew apace and diffused itself throughout the whole of Italy, gradually absorbing all the rival dialects. Finally all the dialects of Italy were forced to acknowledge the predominance of the speech of the conquering city on the Tiber,—from the uncultivated Gaulish of the north to the facile and polished Greek of the south. Thus all Italy came at last to have one uniform language, to wit, Latin.

Yet there did not result, after all, absolute uniformity of speech throughout the whole of Italy. For though the rival dialects had one by one given place to the triumphant advance of the all-absorbing Latin, still in the remote rural districts relics of the native local dialects tenaciously maintained their foothold in the popular speech; and like paganism before the advance of Christianity, the local dialects were loth to relinquish their strongholds in the inaccessible country districts. Traces of the vanquished tongues were still to be discerned in the varying local dialects throughout the remote parts of the Italian peninsula. Nor was the common speech of Italy everywhere current the pure classic Latin of Cicero and Vergil. On the contrary, the vernacular of the ancient Romans, by and large, was a far less polished and graceful idiom, “containing already the germs of many of the changes exhibited by the modern Italian and the other Romanic tongues.”

A second shining example is found in the history of the rise of the French language. This marvelously lucid tongue had its origin in a little island in the Seine, at present the heart of the great city of Paris. The language of the inhabitants of that tiny isle, to be sure, was at first a rude lingo no whit superior to the various patois of Romanized Gaul. But the inhabitants of that vigorous district soon gained the political ascendency over their neighbors and gradually extended their speech throughout the whole of Ile-de-France. The upshot was that the numerous local patois speedily lost caste, sinking to a lower and lower level, till they all finally disappeared, and the dialect of Paris came to be recognized as the official language of the entire central part of France. But there were also other provinces of France besides that of Ile-de-France. Normandy, Provence and Burgundy had meantime risen to marked political distinction, and the speech of each of these provinces in due course attained to the dignity of a dialect with a considerable body of literature. But no one dialect was supreme. However, in the process of time the people of central France established their pre-eminence, extending their dominion over the entire country. Thus the sister provinces were, in turn, brought under the sway of the predominant Ile-de-France which imposed its dialect upon its subdued rivals. In this manner the Parisian dialect spread over the whole of France and was destined speedily to become the accepted speech of the country. Naturally enough, as the Parisian dialect gained the ascendency, the Provençal, the Norman and the Burgundian dialect each fell into decay and finally ceased to exist as a spoken dialect, being preserved only in certain literary monuments.

Now, the Parisian dialect did not attain to the honor of the standard language of France without a long and hard struggle. During this struggle the language was in process of development and underwent some changes by attrition and contact with its strenuous rivals. In the conflict the Parisian dialect sloughed off some of its unessentials, its eccentricities of speech in the form of inflexions and syntax and came forth somewhat simplified in its grammar. At the same time it borrowed not a few idioms and phrases from its defeated rivals, thus enriching its vocabulary and simplifying its syntax by contact with the decadent dialects.

Thus arose modern French—a language beautifully transparent and precise and almost as untrammeled by inflections as English is and as admirably adapted for the conveyance of nice distinctions and fine shades of thought. It appears, then, that modern French is developed from one of the pristine provincial dialects which probably enjoyed no superior advantage over its sister dialects, but which owes its success as a literary medium to the happy circumstance that it was the vernacular of the most important political province. Furthermore, it is manifest that the Provençal, Norman and Burgundian dialects are in no sense a corrupt form of the standard speech. They are rather kindred dialects which by sheer force of political conditions were outstripped in the race for the distinction of being chosen as the national language.

Let us now consider the history of the English language. The development of the English tongue is quite similar, if not, indeed, parallel, to the story of Latin and French. It is in order to give here a brief survey of the origin and development of the English speech.

In the earliest period of our language it is assumed that there were numerous patois spoken by the Jutes, the Angles and the Saxons who had settled in Britain as rovers and adventurers. True, we have no record preserved of these several patois; but philology warrants the inference that they existed. In the earliest stage of the Anglo-Saxon speech of which history furnishes a record, these various patois had already given rise to some three or four distinct dialects commonly designated, according to their respective geographical positions, Kentish, Southern, Midland, and Northern. There are documents extant of each of these early English dialects which constitute our Anglo-Saxon literature. Now, each of these dialects (if Kentish is included in the Southern dialect) marks a separate period in the political history of Teutonic England. In the northern part of England, then known as Northumbria, where the Angles settled after migrating from the Continent, the Anglian dialect was first pre-eminent as the literary language. This was during the eighth century when the leading writers in that dialect were Caedmon and the Venerable Bede. In those early times the Angles appear to have extended their control over Mercia, too, even down to the northern banks of the Thames. However, this district later had a local dialect of its own, apart from the Northumbrian, and its chief literary monuments are a translation of the Psalter and a version of Matthew’s Gospel designated the “Rushworth.” The part of Britain south of the Thames and lying toward the west was settled by the Saxons. Their dialect which scholars call the West-Saxon was quite unlike the Anglian dialect; and it is distinguished above its fellows as the dialect in which the bulk of our earliest literature is written. The West-Saxon, therefore, from the grammatical point of view is by far the most important of our early English dialects, and is recognized by scholars as the standard for inflection and idiom. But the pre-eminence of West-Saxon was of later date than that of the Northumbrian dialect. From the death of Bede in 734 to the accession of King Alfred in 871, it is interesting to note that no one of the English dialects seems to have been supreme. However, from the accession of Ecgberht in 802 the West-Saxon had been gradually gaining its ascendency which was of course completed in the days of King Alfred. This good king signalized his reign by a great revival of learning, in which he himself was the leading figure. He summoned to his court an earnest and enthusiastic body of scholars from various parts of the world, and himself set them a worthy example of industry and scholarship by translating into the vernacular Pope Gregory’s “Pastoral Care,” Boethius’s “Consolations of Philosophy” and Orosius’s “Chronicle.”

After the death of King Alfred there was a sad decline in literature. But the prowess and overlordship of Wessex had made the West-Saxon dialect the standard literary language of England; and it continued so till the Norman Conquest destroyed the political prestige of that kingdom and consequently deprived that dialect of its evident advantage as the official language. While the West-Saxon dialect was recognized, it is true, as the literary language, still it did not entirely supplant the Anglian and the Mercian, both of which continued to be spoken and, to some extent, also written. But it is a significant fact that the earlier Northumbrian poetry was translated into this southern speech and is preserved to us only in the West-Saxon version.

West-Saxon lost its supremacy as the standard language when, as a result of the Conquest, Norman French was adopted by the ruling class as the cultivated speech of the realm. Still, “the native tongue,” to quote Professor Lounsbury (History of the English Language), “continued to be spoken by the great majority of the population, but it went out of use as the language of high culture. The educated classes, whether lay or ecclesiastical, preferred to write either in Latin or French—the latter steadily tending to become more and more the language of literature as well as of polite society.” The result was that West-Saxon, being supplanted as the literary language by Norman French, lost prestige and was reduced ultimately to the level of its sister dialects, Anglian and Mercian. After the loss of West-Saxon ascendency no one dialect was again pre-eminent in England till the fourteenth century. For two centuries prior to that date the several provincial dialects were employed in their respective territories; and each had an equal chance of becoming standard English. An author, therefore, was free to use his own local speech. To be sure, French was the accepted language at court and in high society; but this foreign tongue at no time enjoyed such a commanding position as to threaten the extinction of the native dialects.