Introduction to the study of the history of language

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

We assume, then, in the first instance, the necessity felt for a common language, before such is called into existence. It is further an indispensable preliminary that a certain degree of intercourse, whether literary, commercial, or otherwise, should exist between the areas, however distant they may be, which are to partake of the common language. It might seem natural to suppose that as soon as, and whenever any certain given number of dialects had reached a certain degree of difference from each other, there would naturally be evolved a common language which would suffice for their needs. But, as a matter of fact, we do not find this to be the case. The common language sometimes develops between two or more areas possessing dialects less nearly related to each other, more readily than between similar areas linguistically nearer related, supposing that there are special circumstances to favour the development. In some cases political circumstances may effect this, as where a common dialect for Germany was called into being on the basis of a common German nationality. As a contrast to this, we may take the case of Polish and Czechish, which are, linguistically speaking, more nearly related than High and Low German, and which yet, as in the main belonging to different political areas, have no necessity for a common language, and have therefore never created one.

If a common language has once established itself in a large area, it is rare for another common language to arise for a portion only of that area. Thus a Provençal common language would be an impossibility in the face of the powerful French which has spread over the greater part of France. Again, a common language can hardly arise for any large area whose single parts have already some common language which suffices for their needs. This may be seen in the failure of the Panslavists to create a common language in an area already occupied by Polish, Servian, etc. No example of this fact can be drawn from England.

The introduction of printing is a powerful aid to the extension of a common language. Thanks to the invention of printing, a written record can quickly be communicated to a large linguistic area in the shape given to it by the author, and an impulse is likewise given to studying what is presented to readers in such an attractive and commodious guise. But it is necessary that the alphabet employed should be identical for all the people in the linguistic area in question; and, of course, the language expressed by that alphabet must be widely understood over that area.

It should further be noticed that a common language must, generally speaking, be based upon an existing dialect, and that this dialect then modifies itself to suit the demands of the different dialectic areas which demand the common language. Thus, Luther expressly tells us that he based his translation of the Bible upon the dialect of the Saxon Chancellery: Modern French is based upon the dialect of the Ile de France: Chaucer chose the London dialect as the most appropriate for his purpose. Such cases as the modern attempts to form a common language in the instance of Volapük, etc., have been but partially successful; there was no strong existing basis upon which to found them.

It must be assumed as a necessity to the success of any common language, that there are a number of persons compelled by circumstances to make themselves acquainted with one or more foreign dialects. This may be brought about by the demands of commerce, or from the fact that the persons in question are compelled to live in the foreign linguistic area, and to employ its tongue. We can see the operation of these causes in such cases as the creation of such a lingua franca as Pigeon English, which arises not merely from the fact that the English and Chinese who use it as a vehicle of communication are ignorant of each other’s language, but further from the fact that the Chinese who employ it speak dialects so different as to be partially or wholly unintelligible to each other. Similar remarks hold good of the Spanish in South America,—which is learned by Italian immigrants speaking different dialects, and serves as a lingua franca to them. But even when such lingua franca, or common language, has been formed, it is liable in its turn to further development. It may be influenced, for example, by the more perfect acquisition of the standard language on the part of those who use the dialect based upon it as a common language; as is probably the case with the Pigeon English spoken by the Japanese: or, by the adoption into the common language of an increasing number of words from the vocabulary of those who are gradually allowing their own dialects to be superseded by the common language.

Supposing, however, that a special dialect has been selected as the model for a standard language, even in civilised countries, we must not assume that it is possible to adopt it as the actual and pure model. The model dialects cannot fail to be influenced by the dialect of the special speaker or writer, and in many cases this mixture may make itself very prominent. This is especially seen, perhaps, in the case of literature which, like journals and periodicals, is intended mainly to circulate in the special dialectic area. Thus, for instance, Americanisms, Scotticisms, and Hibernicisms, are more common in the newspaper press of America, Scotland, and Ireland than in the standard literature published in those countries. Again, the dialect, on which the model or normal language was based, will, from the very nature of language, change more rapidly than the normal language itself, which must from its nature be more conservative; so that here, again, a discrepancy cannot fail to set in between the dialect and the model language. The truth of this may be well seen in the changes which have passed over the London dialect in comparatively recent times. The habit of omitting the aspirate, or, as we say, dropping the h, seems to be quite a recent development in English,[219] and to have spread probably at the end of the last century. Dickens’ Londoners frequently drop their aspirates: and he seems to be the first writer who makes his characters do this on a large scale. On the other hand, the ven and vy of his characters are hardly now heard in London.

And thus the artificial language, if it extend over a large area, becomes differentiated into dialects more or less strongly marked, in much the same way as the natural language within a particular district. Probably English is the language in which this fact can be noticed more easily and on a wider scale than in the case of any other language, from the fact that the areas of English-speaking races are so widely separated in many cases; and all isolation must tend to strengthen the power of the dialect as against the artificial language. So-called Americanisms, for instance, may be older forms of the English language retained by the American dialect and lost by the English. On the other hand, they may be new importations into the standard or model language from the colloquial language, or from some dialect. These Americanisms, again, spread to such English-speaking countries as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand more readily and quickly than they do to England. Consequently, the artificial language, in spite of its tendency to conservatism, is manifestly changing in the different English-speaking areas, although the change is not, of course, as great or as quick in its fulfilment as that which comes to pass in the development of dialects in the area of a definite territory.

It is, of course, possible to arrest to some extent the change in an artificial language by the influence of academies, who shall authoritatively decide upon the permissibility or otherwise of the use of a certain word or phrase; but under normal circumstances the involuntary development which we have spoken of is characteristic of a standard language as well as of language in general.

A single linguistic area may, under the proper conditions, develop a duality or even a plurality of standards, though instances of the entire co-ordination of two different standards are, in the history of language, very rare. The classical example for the duality of standard is offered by the linguistic conditions in Greece during the period between 250 and 50 B.C. Two types of normalised or standard language, neither of them corresponding exactly to any one folk-dialect, and each of them almost entirely uninfluenced by the other, asserted their pre-eminence over the folk-dialects in two distinct districts. The one, which we may call ‘Eastern Greek’ or the Attic κοινή, was based upon the Attic dialect; the other, which we may call ‘Western Greek,’ was based upon the Laconian. The former was the language of those political and commercial interests that centred about the Ægean; the latter, of those that centred about the Gulf of Corinth. The former represented the new cosmopolitan spirit of Hellenism, the latter the conservative and provincial spirit that had its political expression in the Achæan and Ætolian leagues.

Here, as elsewhere, the levelling of the peculiarities of provincial speech in the interest of a standard language represents and corresponds to a levelling of provincial barriers in the interest of a unitary civilisation, and under the impulse of great common movements of commercial intercourse, political organisation, or religious thought, and the appearance of two areas of levelling in language betrays the existence of two areas of common commercial, political, literary, or religious interest. The division of German Protestantism into the Lutheran and Swiss wings, coupled with political distinctions, availed to maintain for a long time, even in the printed form, a Swiss standard of German, as distinguished from the so-called Modern High German.