Introduction to the study of the history of language

by Herbert A. Strong; Willem Sijbrand Logeman; Benjamin Ide Wheeler

The method whereby a standard language may best secure the greatest possible agreement over the largest possible area, and may join to this agreement the necessary adaptation to the changed circumstances of civilisation, is by keeping to the ancient models in syntax and accidence, and by allowing, at the same time, a certain freedom in the creation of new words, and in the application of new significations to old ones.

Our great national languages are at once literary and colloquial, and hence they possess a standard literary language and a standard colloquial pronunciation and vocabulary. The problem is how to keep those two languages in harmony. The colloquial language is, of the two, as we have seen, liable to change in its phonetic conditions—a change to which the written language is not so much exposed. It is therefore obvious that the more a language changes phonetically, the less will it be represented by the written language; and it is also plain that in a language like English, whose spelling is so very far from phonetic, the discrepancy between the written and spoken language may go so far that the former may cease to exert much, if any, influence upon the latter. To remedy this state of things, phonetic alphabets have been drawn up, and various reforms in spelling have been recommended from time to time, in order to bring the written into harmony with the spoken language.

The more that the natural language of each individual departs from the standard language, the more will he naturally regard the standard language as something foreign; the effect of this will often be that, as the discrepancies between his natural dialect and the standard language are more clearly felt, he will make a more conscious effort to seize and get over those differences. Thus, in the border counties of Wales, or of the Highlands, a more correct literary English is spoken than in many English counties.

The different individual dialects of any country, i.e. the forms of language used by each individual, are constantly changing their position in respect to the norm, or standard written language. On the one hand, the natural changes incident to all language are always tending to alienate these from the norm; on the other, the conscious and artificial efforts made to approximate the individual language to the norm are constantly in play side by side with the other tendency. The main method whereby this conscious approximation is effected is, in the first place, the instruction given in civilised countries at school; and, in this case, the standard language, or an approximation to it, is learnt at the same time as the language of the district. But the dialect of each individual’s home cannot fail to influence largely his acquisition of the standard language. England, as before remarked, forms an exception to most other countries in this respect, that many children are brought up comparatively free from the dialect spoken in their geographical area.

But, when all is said, there remains to be taken into account the difference in each individual’s pronunciation, and his greater or less capacity for assimilating the difference between the artificial dialect and his own. These considerations will always operate as powerful solvents of the integrity of a standard language.

It must further be noticed that the stock of words and their meanings, as well as inflections and syntax of the artificial or standard language, are constantly being recruited from the natural language. Instances in point would be the different Scotch words, such as ne’er-do-weel, adopted into standard English. Where the same word occurs both in the natural and the artificial language, it sometimes happens that both words are preserved in the latter; sometimes with a differentiation of meaning and sometimes without; instances are birch, church, shred, as distinct from the Northern birk, kirk, screed. It will thus be seen that the colloquial language which serves as the model of each individual is itself a compromise between the strict normal language and the home dialect.

In the second place, the artificial language affects the natural language by supplying it with words and inflections in which it is deficient. Such terms would naturally be such as the artificial language is more fitted to supply. No dialect throughout Britain is free from such influence as that described.

In the third place, it should be observed that when persons speak an artificial and a natural language side by side, the use of the former spreads at the expense of the latter. The artificial language was originally confined to writing, and was employed as a means of communication with persons speaking a strange dialect. Once established as an official channel of communication, it has a tendency to spread to all literature, and gradually to private correspondence. And this is easy to understand, seeing that the young generation generally learns to read and write from written records, and that it is obviously easier to accept a form of orthography made ready to our hand than to invent a system of orthography which shall be applicable to other dialects besides one’s own.

When the artificial language has once become the fashion, then, and not till then, will the employment of dialect seem a mark of want of culture. There are many countries still in which the most educated persons are not ashamed to speak in their natural dialect. This is the case, for instance, in Switzerland and in Greece at the present day, and, to a less extent perhaps, in Scotland. It is therefore a mistake to suppose that the natural language must necessarily be deemed inferior or more vulgar than the artificial. It is, in fact, the necessity for the employment of the artificial language which causes it to be universally adopted.

We have now briefly to consider under what circumstances a common language becomes established. It seems to be certain that no common language would have arisen without some necessity for its appearance; and that necessity arose from the fact of the different dialects into which any linguistic area must naturally be split up becoming so far alienated from each other as to be reciprocally unintelligible, and, of course, the difficulty of comprehension would be greater in the case of dialects, geographically more widely separated, than in the case of those spoken by neighbouring people. Indeed, the wider the area over which a common language spreads, and the more numerous the dialects which it embraces, the more successful does it commonly turn out. Good instances of this truth are afforded by the Greek κοινή, and in that of the Latin language in its spread over the Romance-speaking areas.